Spring Flooding 2013

 

Our winter wasn’t as cold as last years, but we had more snow which set us up for serious flooding if the right conditions were met.  Winter did not want to leave and we were still  having very cold temperatures into the month of May. Usually we experience a few days of melting at the end of April or beginning  of May, not this year.  On the first of May the night time temperature dropped to –20F/ –29C  and  it wasn’t until after the middle of May before we had temperatures getting above freezing.  On the 1st of May I took the monthly ice thickness in the Colville River by our house and even with 17 inches/43cm of snow on top of the ice it was still  68 inches/172.7cm thick.

                                                     Standing on snow machine to start the drilling operation to get through the   thick ice.

The early arriving Greater White-fronted Geese had a rough two weeks before there was much melting providing water and bare ground for feeding.  Our Snow Buntings were three weeks later  than the yearly average with the first male showing up at the feeder on May 6th.

 

   Male Snow Buntings waiting out a  breezy snow squall.

 

 

 

A group of Black Brant with a pair of Snow Geese feeding in a small patch of melted out tundra before breakup.

 

When the weather finally turned warm at the end of May it stayed warm, not even freezing at night so the spring runoff  was rapid and this led to our second worst flood in the past two decades.  We live on a island in the Colville Delta and over 85%   of the island was covered in water.  Several of the waterfowl nesting areas were flooded with several feet of water and many of the early nesters lost their nests. 

 

      Brant flying over a white landscape.

 

 

 

 

River starting to flood its banks with a small group of King eiders resting on a small pan of river ice.

 

 

 

   Local breeding Brant flocking up on some of the last high ground during this years flood.

 

 

 

View showing water around some of the buildings and flooded runway in the center of the photo.

 

 

 

    A flock of King Eiders in the edge of the flooded lake by our house.

 

 

 

Fortunately most were just starting and were able to continue once the water levels receded, although many of the clutch were smaller than in a normal  year. 

         A female Brant starting her second attempt to lay eggs this spring.  She now has two eggs and is starting to add down from her breast to help insulate the eggs  while incubating.  She also covers the eggs with the down when she leaves the nest to go bath and feed for short periods several times a day.  The down will keep the eggs warm for several hours.

 

I will end with a photo showing our island and lake when it is dry and green.

Arctic Renewal

We have drifted from spring into summer and a rapid  renewal has been taking place.  The tundra is now covered with many different flowers and the ground is getting a nice green tinge to it.  With the warm days, the butterflies have  been busy  flitting from flower to flower getting nectar.

Most of the birds have hatched so there are many young about, either in our yard or around the edge of the lake by the house.  Several broods of both Snow Buntings and Lapland Longspurs are now around the feeder out the kitchen window.  With the 24 hour daylight, they go through lots of seed, especially when we have a cold foggy day and the parents have a hard time finding bugs to feed the hungry little ones. 

  On the left a young Snow Bunting  (  Plectrophenax nivalis) with its short tail and a few tuffs of down on the head.

  On the right is a group of white avens (Dryas integrifolia ).

 

 

 

With access to the nest boxes we put up on the various buildings, the Snow Buntings are the first to hatch, followed closely by the larger geese.  Since the Snow Geese only need 22 days to hatch, they are the first to start hatching, followed closely by  Brant and White-fronted Geese.   The last part of June sees a flurry of hatching activity as the shorebirds, ptarmigan, longspurs,  and some of the early duck species hatch.  The hatch continues into the first part of July with eiders, scaup, Long-tailed Duck, swans, loons, and late shorebirds finishing up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens) brood left, and a Black Brant brood (Branta bernicla) moving through the yard.

 

  Greater White-fronted Goose (Anser albifrons) hatching out.

Even as the hatch is taking place, there are signs that this is a place of a short growing season.  The geese that didn’t nest or failed early on have moved out of the area, headed off to one or more of the summer moulting  areas.  This frees up the limited food  in the brood rearing areas for the young that need lots of good forage to be ready to migrate south in less than two months.

 

 

Willow Ptarmigan  ( Lagopus lagopus)  family feeding in the grass around the house.

The shorebirds are also starting to flock up and non-breeding and extra adults will be starting their migration  south in the nest few days. Usually one parent stays with the chicks till they are flegged and then they are pretty much on their own.  The Semipalmated Sandpiper is our most common shorebird that nests on our island and we usually have at least 10 nests near by our house.  By late July the yard is full of Juvenile Semi’s of various sizes, and all the adults have already left on their southbound journey.  Summer activities must progress quickly in the Arctic.  Time is of the essence.

I will end this entry today with a photo of a young Caribou taken next to our house last week.

Early Spring Catch-up

I have been trying to get back to posting, but seem to be to easily distracted with other projects.  The long nights of winter have given way to spring and the time of long daylight hours.  

For most of the winter the only birds seen were Common Ravens as are able to find enough to eat  even in the coldest time of year.  The population in our area has increased from only one pair in the early 1980’s to over 45 individuals these days.  most of the increase has been from all the added  buildings and pipelines in the area that now give the ravens a place to nest.  The  flat tundra was never home to many ravens.

We enjoyed having the muskox herd continue to winter not far from us and we could watch them from the house with the spotting scope.  I also made a couple snow machine trips to film the winter herd.

 

 

 

 

Winter Muskox in the glow of  a low sun January

April brought our first new birds, our local nesting population of Snow Buntings started arriving.  To us spring has arrived when you can step out the house and hear the lovely song of a Snow Bunting.  The other April bird I saw was a male Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus mutus) on a short snow machine trip up river from the house. 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                              Male Snow Bunting

 

  Rock Ptarmigan Male

April also saw the end of our Polar Lights viewing as the night were becoming to light and only extremely bright ones could be seen by the middle of the month.   And of course the sun started to have some strong solar activity which we weren’t able to enjoy.

                                              Pulsating Polar Lights over our home.

Early May brought a couple highlights for me. First I found my first local Raven’s nest on one of oilfield bridges.  The nest showed that the raven was using all the products around to line its nest from traditional to modern, caribou hair, moss, and fiberglass insulation.  She had four greenish blue, speckled eggs.

                                                              Common Raven Nest & Eggs.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

                                      

The other event was getting to see a couple of very small muskox calves playing on a bright sunny day. Still plenty of snow and we were still having night temperatures dropping down to –20F.  Little muskox are tough being born at this time when we are still having such cold temperatures and winter type blizzards.

 

 

 

 

 

               Muskox Herd Early May- Small Calves Dashing About.

Nesting Season Underway

Breakup turned out to be on the mild side this year and we enjoyed one of the few non-flooding ones we have had in the last 15 years.  Once we had our initial flooding, we still had 12 days to go before reaching the final breakup and all of the ice disappeared from the river channels.  The weather remained overcast and cool right up to the day before ice went out.  Then with a week of clear skies, warm nights, and temperatures up to +56F, our snow pack receded rapidly and by the end of the week the only snow left was from the deep drifts around all the buildings.

As the tundra rapidly emerged from under the snow, the geese started building nests and laying eggs.  The late spring seems to have depleted some of the Greater White-fronted Geese’s body reserves for egg laying, and the clutches have been much smaller than normal.  Last year the average clutch was 6, and I even found clutch counts as high as 10.  This spring most White-front nests are running between 2-3 eggs, which is quite a drop in production. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Above is a photo of a White-fronted Goose nest, and to the right is a gander trying to draw attention away from setting female.

 

 

The Snow Goose is the other  large goose that nests in our local area, and while they arrived about two weeks behind the White-fronts, their clutch size seems to be down by about 30%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above shot shows a pair of Snows and the male is a blue morph.  Photo to the right shows a Snow Goose nest with the white down used to cover the eggs when female is off the nest.

 

The Brant arrived much later than the White-fronts and their egg production is normal, with an average of 4 eggs per nest.  Out of several hundred Brant nests, the highest count so far has been 5, and a very few 2 egg counts have been found.   At this time it looks like it is going to be a very good year for the Brant colony.

A Brant nest showing the dark speckled down and how much more down the Brant have in their nests, compared to other geese. Nest on mound with old Caribou skull.

Other waterfowl that will be nesting near by are Greater Scaup, Long-tailed Duck, Northern Pintail, the lovely King Eider and perhaps this year for the first time since 2003 we might have a Spectacled Eider nesting near our lake.

         Two male King Eiders tussling over females.

With nest boxes available, the Snow Buntings were the first to start nesting and some of the  eggs should be hatching shortly. Both the Savannah Sparrow and Lapland Longspur are also nesting, but I have only found Longspur nests so far this spring.

The Semipalmated Sandpipers were the first shorebirds to start nesting and it looks like it will be another good year for them, as I have already found several nests in a small area around our Lodge. 

          A well hidden Semipalmated Sandpiper Nest.

Some of the other shorebirds near-by the lodge that are “on territory” and will be nesting shortly, if not already started, are Pectoral, Dunlin, Red-necked Phalarope, Red Phalarope, and Black-bellied Plover.  I have seen Long-billed Dowitchers, and Stilts close by also, so perhaps we will get a nest from one of them.  All the Ruddy Turnstones seem to have moved off to other islands to nest, with just the odd one or two that are still coming into the feeder for a quick bite. 

Today I watched a female Hoary Redpoll pulling long dog hair from one of the willow bushes by the house, so she is working to line her nest, thus should be laying in the next day or two.  She is probably the only Hoary to line her nest with silky Pyrenees dog hair!

Remember, we now have 24-hour daylight…the land of the mid-night sun. This is a time of year filled with bird songs and there is never a time when birds cannot be heard, photographed, or just observed.   Shortly the yard and surrounding area will be full of young Snow Buntings begging to be fed.

 

 

 

Willow Catkin, the first flowering plant by the house this year.

Windy May

May came in on a strong wind and it has continued on the windy side with 12 of the first 19 days having winds of 20 knots or more.  Besides being windy, most days have been overcast with blowing snow, creating many whiteout days.

Today we are into "day four" of the latest wind storm, with visibility less than a mile in blowing snow and mist.  The temperature over the past 24 hours has been pretty steady with a low of +26F and a high of +28F.  With all the drifting snow and temperatures below freezing the tundra is still 100% snow covered and almost no grass above snow level. 

Despite the storms, birds have been working their way north.  The southern part of Alaska has been having very warm temperatures and it looks like this has prompted some birds to continue north sooner than they should have.  The worst species to be hit hard (that we know about at this time) are some of the eiders.  We started finding King and Common Eiders weak and dying as early as the12th of May, and most have been females.  Perhaps these are birds that were migrating on east to northern Canada, but ran out of body reserves and perished in our area.  We wouldn’t expect King Eiders that are going to nest in the Colville Delta to arrive before the last couple days of this month or first few days of June.

 

Roosting Willow Ptarmigan-Male just starting to get summer feathers on its neck and head.

 

 

Here on the homestead our first migratory birds (Snow Buntings) returned on the 17th of April as I reported in “They’re Back” in April’s blog.  Earlier this month some of our Willow Ptarmigan showed up around the house, even roosting outside our bedroom window for a couple nights.

  Short-eared Owl that passed through the yard in the early morning hours.

Today even with this wind we have had six new species arrive: a Savannah Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Lapland Longspur, Hoary Redpoll, Short-eared Owl and a Sanderling.  Only the owl and Sanderling kept going, the others were happy to find food and shelter out of the storm, joining our Snow Buntings and Ruddy Turnstones at the feeders. The Savannah Sparrow and some of the female Longspurs seem quite weak and after eating from the feeders, took quick naps before going back to refuel on more seed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Resting Savannah Sparrow

 

 

 

 

 

Sparrow preening after eating, getting ice off its     feathers.

For most of these species, this is an early arrival date, some by over a week.  Also, we would expect to have only male longspurs, in the beginning, with the females trailing 4-5 days behind them. Today we have 6 females and only one male at the feeder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Male Longspur

 

 

           Female Longspur – good view of long hind claws

 

 

As hungry as these birds have been, it makes me wonder about all the ones that didn't find our place with shelter and food and how many will perish from this late spring storm. Combine this with the many birds coming north too soon, and it is a sad picture of many lost birds.

They're Back!

Here in the Arctic we like to think of the return of the Snow Buntings as the first sign of the awakening of spring.  While it will still be weeks before any flowers are in bloom, the little bird’s melody drifting on the wind lifts ones spirits with this sure  sign of the coming season.

Male Snow Bunting- Mid April

One Snow Bunting was seen on the 4th of April, which set a new record for seeing one in the spring here.  It made one circle around the lodge then was never seen again. So it seems it was an early bird that was traveling to some other destination.  Our first Snow Bunting that came into the feeder arrived on the 17th, which is the long term average arrival date.  The following morning a second male was seen at the feeder, and the two males were busy chasing each other around the yard. 

Take Off – Male Bunting 

The most recent male has taken to chasing the other one from the feeder every chance he gets.  They still haven’t completely changed into their complete  breeding plumage. Both still have brown caps, brown or black ring across the chest area, and lots of brown in their back feathers.  It will be a while before they have their clear white heads and glossy black backs.
Besides their chirping calls that they make most of the time, I have also heard them making their territorial call.  It sounds like this to me “ATVeeee, ATVeeee”, and is usually made from a high perch next to the area they have selected for nesting.  We have 20 nest boxes around the property for them to use and the males have plenty of time to make a selection as the females won’t start arriving for almost another two weeks.   I watched one male yesterday making his ATVeeee call from several locations, like he was trying out different areas to see where his voice carried the best.



Stepping outside and hearing the sweet melody of the Snow Bunting makes one almost forget that the ground is still 100% snow covered and some of the drifts are nine feet thick.


Checking Out Nest box
The Snow Buntings have been the first birds around the house this winter besides the ever present Raven.  One of the individuals has a wing tag from a study done several years ago by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

            Wing Tagged Raven.

New Bird Sighted At Homestead

With late fall drifting into early winter I thought I would cover some of the rarer birds seen this year.   It is a sad time when the last snow buntings leave for the winter and the feeder sits empty.  It always takes a few days to get over the expectation of seeing them squabbling and chasing each other around the willows and feeder.  About all we are going to see the rest of the winter is ravens, ptarmigan, and perhaps a wintering snow owl.

Our fall storms during migration time occasionally drops a rare bird in our lap.  Most of the time it is a bird that breeds not too far away and has just strayed a bit. Then we get really lucky and a bird from distant shores arrives. Last year for the second season in a row we had a finch show up at the feeder with the Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis).  In 2007 it was a female Cassin’s Finch (Carpodacus cassinii) and then 2008 we had a lovely male Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus ) at the feeder for several days from late September to early October.  September also brought a juvenile Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus ), both were new birds for the Colville.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Purple Finch                Common Cuckoo - Juvenile

This year we managed two fall migrants, one a Wilson’s Warbler (Wilsonia pusilla), a neat bird to see as we get very few warblers this far north. 

 

 

Wilson’s have been recorded several times here both in the spring and fall. 

 

 

 

 

The second bird was seen feeding around the house in mid-October, looking cold and hungry.  It was busy feeding on grass seed heads sticking out of the snow, and even though the light was poor, I was able to get a good picture of it.  At first I thought it was a juvenile Lincoln's Sparrow  (Melospiza lincolnii), the only other Lincolns I had seen was a adult in the spring several years ago.  After review from other birders that had more experience with the subject, it turned out to be a juvenile Chipping Sparrow  (Spizella passerina). 

                 Chipping Sparrow - Juvenile

 

For some reason we also had a few Hoary Redpolls  (Carduelis  hornemanni) show up in October after our local breeders had been gone for several weeks.  In mid month, two showed up and the one juvenile was still being fed by the other bird. It was doing its wing flutter and begging till it was fed. 

 

 

With the days becoming shorter quickly, it won’t be long until the sun is gone and it will be the season for watching the heavens, counting stars and watching the Aurora dance over head.

Snow Buntings Gone For The Winter!

Even with the warmer than normal October weather, the last of our local snow buntings departed on time.  The last snow buntings have been departing around 10-13th of October for several years now, and the last five were seen on the afternoon of the 9th this year.

              Snow Bunting in bright fall plumage. 

My last banded Snow Bunting just before leaving for the winter.

That left the two Dark-eyed Junco’s (Slate-colored sub-species) coming into the feeder.  They showed up in early October hungry and spent lots of time at the feeder bulking up to continue their migration south.  The juncos departed two days after the snow buntings, having built up their reserves to feel ready to continue on. 

Dark-eyed Junco (sub-species  Slate-colored Junco) 

It was fun watching the juvenile snow buntings learn to land in the first snow that fell in late September.  At first they weren’t sure about landing in the white stuff.  They would hover and slowly letting their feet sink into the snow, acting like they thought they were going to get stuck, like happens when they misjudged earlier in the summer when they landed in water.  After a few days they were just plopping right down and letting their body stop them from sinking more, like a big snowshoe.  Once landed they could move about on the snow without sinking in, as they moved about in the yard feeding on the grass seed heads that were sticking above the snow.

    Snow Bunting napping during October snow squall.

 

Male Snow Bunting in bright spring plumage, showing contrast from when they arrive and then depart in the fall.