Friday, June 19, 2015

Spotted

A mis amables osos polares,

This missive is fired your way from Denali, Alaska! We flew from Nome back to Anchorage on Wednesday and then drove up here on Thursday. Today was our tour of Denali National Park, which involves a 66-mile bus ride from the park entrance to the Eielson Visitor Center, located about 30 miles away from Mt. McKinley, and back again.

You can't appreciate how big Mt. McKinley is unless you get a clear view of it. Like LeBron James surrounded by the Fern Grove Elementary basketball team, McKinley literally towers above the other mountains around it. I've seen big mountains before, but nothing like this, which was a very cool experience.

Aside from the scenery, the other cool thing about today's tour was the fauna. We saw Moose, as well as our first-ever sighting of Caribou and Dall Sheep! Plus, we found one of our two target birds for the park, a beautiful Gyrfalcon hanging out on a cliff ledge near its nest! (pics to follow soon)

But, the weirdest thing happened on Wednesday.

We were sitting in the tiny Nome Airport, and I was reading the daily Rare Bird Report out loud to The Wife.

"Hmm...maybe we should go to Tucson soon to find the Tufted Flycatcher," I mused aloud.

At which time a voice behind me says, "Hey, are you Ms. Biggish Year?" apparently to my wife.

"Uhhh....," says The Wife, stunned, "yeah?"

"And are you Mr. Biggish Year?" he asks me.

"Well, ummm...." I said, thinking quickly about how the heck he could have known our names, and where the closest exit door and security officer were.

"Cool. We saw your names on eBird reports and so knew you were around. My buddy here is doing a Big Year and he's near you on the list. We've been following your progress, so were wondering if we'd run into you."

Now, I've been doing my own share of cyber-stalking this year, identifying several people we've met in the field by comments they made, their first names, and eBird reports. But of course I didn't tell them that; having a stranger call your name tends to freak people out.

But, the tables had turned! Now, we were the ones being stalked! Freaky!

Fortunately, the guys were very nice, and we exchanged stories about our experiences in Nome until the plane boarded. They had spent a week in Nome and found many more birds than us, which made us insanely jealous and instantly started us planning how we could get back to Nome before the snows hit. Which, sadly, probably won't happen.

So, guys, if you read this... congrats on your week and good luck the rest of the year!

At least there weren't any paparazzi...yet.

Me

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