Eiders and Buntings and Owls, Oh My!

Our 2024 Alaska tour season is off to a great start! As we have since 2017, we began with our annual trip to Kodiak Island and tacked on a quick trip up to Nome. Most visiting birders don’t make time to visit the Kodiak. But this fascinating island has great birding and is well-worth a visit.

Isn’t March a little early for a birding trip to bird in Alaska? Nay, I say, nay! Late March in Alaska is a great time, especially when your trip includes Kodiak Island! The sheer numbers of wintering waterfowl near the shoreline and in the many bays and inlets on the island are staggering. These wintering birds include some real hot items, including Emperor Geese and Steller’s Eiders. As in past trips, we enjoyed many great looks of both of these species. Along the water, we also found Barrow’s Goldeneye, Common Eider, and Harlequin Duck. Unfortunately, this year we did not connect with a Red-faced Cormorant or Yellow-billed Loon. Our shorebird list included Rock Sandpiper, Surfbird, Black Turnstone, and Black Oystercatcher.

Unlike last year, the forests of Kodiak were full of finches. This year’s heavy spruce cone crop attracted large numbers of several finch species. Pine Siskins and both Red and White-winged Crossbills were common. Common Redpolls were around in smaller numbers and we found a few gorgeous Pine Grobeaks. We even got to see Kodiak’s first record of a Cassin’s Finch staked out at a feeder. Varied Thrushes and Pacific Wrens were common this year, we saw two different American Goshawks, and we caught up with an American Three-toed Woodpecker at Abercrombie State Park.

On our second evening in Kodiak, we got a break in the weather and were gifted near-perfect owling conditions so we followed up on a hot tip from a Kodiak birder and with a little effort managed to get excellent views of a Boreal Owl just after dark and just in time–it started to rain just a few minutes after we found the owl!

We spent our day in Anchorage birding area parks and green space and added Bohemian Waxwing, American Dipper, and Boreal Chickadee to our list. A few of us went out after dark and called in a Northern Saw-whet Owl.

The next morning we flew to Nome for our two-day extension. Nome is still very much locked in winter’s grip in late March and bird diversity is very low. However, it is a reliable place to find McKay’s Bunting in winter and provides the simplest way to see this range-restricted beauty. The McKay’s Buntings didn’t disappoint this year and we saw several small flocks of them around Nome. We also hit our all-time species count for Nome in March with a whopping nine species! Snow Bunting, Willow and Rock Ptarmigan, Hoary and Common Redpoll, Raven, American Dipper, and a very surprising Downy Woodpecker made up the rest of our Nome list.

It was an excellent trip with a great group of folks and a fantastic start to our 2024 season. I’m already looking forward to our March 2025 trip to Kodiak. More information on our next Kodiak and Nome trip can be found here.