Canada and Alaska 6 - Cruise Ship Seawatch

 

I am not a great fan of seawatching. I like to be able to recognise and put a name to what I am looking at and with seawatching my ability to identify distant black dots is severely limited. I didn't carry a telescope on the trip, but with a long lens and the ability to crop and expand pictures on the screen when you get home there is scope to pick up some good birds. There is also scope for some errors, particularly when it comes to identifying some of the Gulls.

I had seen reports of large numbers of Shearwaters following the Cruise ships on this route and the occasional Albatross as well but it didn't happen for me. Most of my pictures are of  Ducks, Alcids, and Loons and most are of the rear end of those birds as they fly away from the ship as it plows through their territory.

Identification - I used Peterson - Field Guide to birds of Western North America and Armstrong - Guide to the Birds of Alaska whilst on the trip but found that Sibleys North American Bird Guide gave clearer diagrams and plumage detail for the difficult identifications. The first two I picked up cheap in second hand bookshops. The Sibley I bought new and it stays on the bookshelf as it is too heavy to carry around.

So what did I see?

Black Oystercatcher

Kittlitz's Murrelet (White outer tail feathers are diagnostic)

Ancient Murrelet

The Ancient Murrelet with white patch on the side of the neck, short pale bill and with the next picture showing the white underwing.

Ancient Murrelet

Barrow's Goldeneye

Common Loon (Great Northern Diver)

Marbled Murrelet

Marbled Murrelet

Pacific Loon (Pacific Diver)

Common Merganser (Goosander)

Pigeon Guillemot

Pigeon Guillemot

Red-faced Cormorant

Surf Scoter

Surf Scoter

White-winged Scoter

Tufted Puffin 😁

Glaucous-winged Gull

Bonaparte's Gull

Black-legged Kittiwake

I'm not doing anymore gulls

Not the show stopper pictures I was looking for but they all count and most were life ticks.

I couldn't finish the blog without including a picture of a Sea Otter family , one of many that would swim out and spend the day watching the cruise ships go by.

Sea Otter Family

It was a good holiday but perhaps not the best we have been on. Covid restrictions caused some disruption and the late spring reduced my birding opportunities. Some of the scenery was spectacular and it was worth going to Alaska but as with Norway you would see more of the real Alaska if you traveled on local ferries and avoided the tourist towns.

As far as the birds go, I saw seventy species of which around fifty would have been life ticks for me.  The bird numbers were down a bit on what I had hoped to see. I did hit a lot of my targets particularly the Murrelets but I saw very few raptors other than the Bald Eagles and I missed out on the Clark's Nutcracker which was top of my wish list.