A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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Red Breasted Merganser:Red Breasted Merganser Payii or Payiq My son Steven and I were canoeing in late August on one of the clear water rivers near Marshall when he spotted a couple of ducks taking off. “Those look like loons, dad.” I checked with my binocs and identified them as Red-breasted mergansers. They take off almost exactly like loons with rapid wing beats, and it takes them a long time to get into the air compared to most other ducks because of their narrow wings (something referred to as high wing-loading). Farther down the river we came across a large flock of 8 young still with their mother. I told Steven she would soon leave them, however, because by now they were able to fend for themselves. But I’m ahead of myself. The story of the Red-breasted merganser begins in the second year of the female when she finds a mate on her wintering territory in North American Pacific coastal waters. During their migration flight north their pair bond strengthens and by the time they arrive in Alaska in late spring they are soon ready to settle down and begin nesting. Not before a very curious courtship ritual, however, when the male stretches his neck forward and upward, then abruptly dips it and the front of his body under the water. He then angles his head up out of the water with his bill wide open, exposing his handsome serrated orange bill and uttering a soft catlike yeeow. I have to smile at the impossibility of trying this pose myself, along with the call. This posturing doesn’t last for long, though, because the female by now has already selected and begun to build her nest in a sheltered spot on the ground usually near freshwater ponds or rivers. Her nest is a scooped out hole or simple depression, which she lines with vegetation and her own downy feathers. After a few more days you might find up to 13 olive-buff-colored eggs in her nest, and sometimes some of them may not be her own because females have been known to lay eggs in other merganser nests or even in the nests of other species of ducks. Their semi-colonial nesting behavior probably facilitates this. As soon as incubation begins the male makes himself scarce, meaning the female does all of the tedious work of brooding and protection of the nest from predators. And this lasts for 28-35 days! But within a day after all of the eggs hatch (and they hatch almost all at once) the young follow their mother to water where they begin to feed themselves. Quite often, in areas of high nest density, two or more broods will join and form a crèche, which is something akin to our day care where one or more females will tend all of the little ducks. When you see long strings of newly hatched downy young swimming in a line behind one of these females it’s just about the cutest thing you could ever experience during a canoe trip on a river. After a few weeks when the little downy ducklings begin to look more like their mother she takes off never to return, leaving them to finish growing to where they too can take flight, which is usually when they are about two months old. During their duckling stage they feed mostly on insects, although when they begin to mature they change to a diet that consists mostly of fish, plus some crustaceans, aquatic insects, worms, tadpoles and even frogs. Fishing is facilitated by the serrated edges of both upper and lower bill. They feed by diving and swimming underwater like loons. Sometimes they hunt cooperatively, with several birds lining up and driving schools of small fish into shallow water where they easily catch them without diving. That kind of cooperative behavior you don’t find among other duck species. Since mature mergansers are mostly fish eaters, they can hang around the rivers in the fall until they freeze over, which these days could be as late as October. The two Yupik names I have for the Red-breasted merganser are Payiq or Payii, which could be related to the sound the male makes during courtship. The scientific name Mergus serrator, means “the diver that saws,” referring to the backward-pointing serrations on the cutting edges of the bill (the “saw-teeth”). Its common name translates as “diving goose.” Other common names are: Common saw-bill, fish duck, Long Island Sheldrake, pheasant duck, red-breasted goosander, red breasted Sheldrake, saltwater Sheldrake, saw-bill, spring Sheldrake, shellbird, shelduck, sea robin, and fuzzyhead.  |
Red-breasted Nuthatch:Red-breasted Nuthatch (Qaneksuartuli) You're scratching your head? Never heard this Yupik bird name? Well, that's because it's my invention. If you've ever listened to this little bird talk, though, you'd swear it was murmuring -- which, to the best of my knowledge, is what qaneksuartuli means, i.e., the one that murmurs or mumbles. Mind you, you don't see the Red-breasted nuthatch very often in the Y-K Delta. I have only seen two of them, and that was back in the mid-1990's in Marshall. One afternoon while walking down by the old airport, I heard their tell-tale high-pitched nasal ank, ank, ank, ank. Their relative rarity in the Delta might explain why I've never run across a real Yupik name for them. Now that I live near Fairbanks, however, I see these birds fairly often at feeders, and am constantly amazed at how aggressive they are, both with other species and with their own kind. This chickadee-size bird receives its common name from its color and the fact that it often hacks (hatches) open nuts and seeds with its long narrow bill. Its scientific name, Sitta canadensis, means the "Canadian bark pecker." It is curious that the Greek philosopher Aristotle gave the family name, Sittidae, to nuthatches. Just goes to show you how observant he was. Nuthatches don't actually peck at the bark, but rather at the seed or nut that they've wedged into a bark crevice with their bill. Unlike chickadees that hold the seeds with their feet as they peck them apart, nuthatches use the bark itself as a gripper. The Red-breasted nuthatch and its cousins are the only tree-trunk foraging birds that regularly feed moving head downward on the tree. In this way, descending nuthatches may find food (usually insects) in bark crevices overlooked by "up the trunk" feeding tree creepers and small woodpeckers. Like so many of its other characteristics, the male's courtship display is also unique. He raises his head and tail as he droops his wings and fluffs up his back feathers. Then he sings his high-pitched wa-wa-wa-wa-wa penny trumpet song and sways from side to side with his back turned towards his future mate. If men were as talented as nuthatches in this department, we'd never have a problem finding a good aipaq. After nuthatches have paired they may remain together on their feeding territory throughout the winter if food resources are adequate. Otherwise they will probably go their separate ways. In any case, they do remain faithful to each other during the nesting and fledging period, sharing in both incubation of the eggs and the feeding and raising of the chicks. As with most birds, the female alone excavates the nest to suit her fancy in the cavity of a rotten tree stump or branch. She lines the bed of the nest with shredded bark, small roots, mosses and grass. When she's finished she uses her bill to smear pitch from spruce trees around the entrance to the nest cavity. This is probably to guard against larger predators like ravens. She lays five or six white to pinkish-white eggs that are peppered with brown spots. Both male and female brood the eggs for 12 days, after which the young hack their way out of the shells (good practice for later). For the next three weeks both dad and mom have their hands full feeding their family in the nest. After fledging, however, the young slowly but surely learn to feed and care for themselves. It is during this period they learn to forage "upside down" and to hack seeds and nuts into edible bits and pieces in the crevices of tree bark. Two other interesting common names of this small bird are: devil-down-head and topsy-turvy-bird. Anyone for climbing down a tree head first?  |
Red-necked Phalarope:Red-necked Phalarope Talegcaaraq When I first saw Red-necked phalaropes I thought they were birds gone crazy. Spinning like tops on the surface of the water, they absolutely captivated me. I later learned they do this to stir the bottom to cause food items to rise to the surface so they can eat them there. This is because their dense breast plumage traps so much air that it makes them too buoyant to dabble or dive for their food, which usually consists of the larvae of small insects like mosquitoes. The Yupik name I found in Hooper Bay that describes their frenetic behavior well is, Talegcaaraq, meaning “trying really hard to scratch or scour something.” I was recently (May, 2010) in Hooper Bay walking in the sand dunes near the ocean and I saw these little whirling dervishes again. And again I was captivated as I watched them do their little dance on the top of the water. I noticed the red color of the male was lighter than that of the female. This is because phalaropes (including the two other species in North America) practice something called sequential polyandry, meaning that after the female mates with a male and lays her eggs, she ends the relationship and leaves him to incubate the eggs and care for the young while she goes off to repeat her actions with another male. Since the male is responsible for brooding the eggs, he has to be less visible to predators while on the nest, hence his duller coloration. This role reversal also means that the female is the one who competes with other females for the attentions of a male. I remember watching one do this a few summers ago in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where a lot of these birds nest. She flew around the male with whirring of wings, then settled on the water and swam circles around him, calling him in a low voice, trying to make him follow her to mate. At first, he was reluctant, but eventually, after she aggressively drove other rival females away, the temptress had her way. Before she lays her eggs, though, both male and female clear shallow scrapes on the ground in low vegetation near water. The female chooses the actual nest site, then the male, sometimes with the help of the female, lines the scrape with grass, leaves and moss. She lays four, brown-blotched, olive-colored eggs, then he settles in to brood them for about 19 days. The eggs all hatch at about the same time, then the downy young leave the scrape within 24 hours and find the nearest body of water to swim on. Although they know how to feed themselves from the get-go, their father watches over them and broods them for the next two weeks. During this period of day care, he sometimes will adopt orphans from someone else’s brood where the father was grabbed by a predator. At the end of the third week the young take to the sky for their first flight and prepare for the fall migration. During their fall migration phalaropes go to sea, and that’s where they remain for the entire winter. This makes them the most pelagic of all the shorebirds. And they are able to do this because they have salt glands that separate the salt from the seawater they drink to sustain themselves. Lower Yukon-Kuskokwim birds winter in the Pacific Ocean, mainly south of the Equator off the coast of western South America. Let’s finish off with some names. Their scientific name is Phalaropus lobatus, meaning “lobe-footed coot,” although this bird is most definitely a shorebird and not a coot. It has other Yupik names, including Imarcaaraq, meaning “really trying hard to get what’s in the water,” and Ceqcaaq, which means “being excitedly active and noisy.” This last moniker describes best what this bird represents to me. Finally, as with all birds, this phalarope has other common English names: bank bird, gale bird, hyperborean phalarope, mackerel-goose, sea-goose, sea-snipe, northern phalarope, web-footed peep, whale-bird, and white bank-bird.  |
Red-Tailed Hawk:Red-Tailed Hawk Eskaviaq So, what do you think Red-tailed hawks and humans have in common? The nose, no, although we have heard of people referred to as “hawk-nosed.” Wings, definitely not, although many of us have tried to fly with artificial wings. Fingers, no, but our fingernails sometimes do look like talons. What about, yes, you guessed it, our eyes are located on the front of our heads, like the eyes of hawks. Look at a picture of a hawk head-on, and you’ll see what I mean. There is a reason for this. Early in our human evolutionary history this “binocular vision” came in very handy for us. Our distant ancestors, small tree-dwelling primates, had to be able to leap from limb to limb and snatch insect prey with their hands. Not an easy task unless you had sharp visual acuity, part of which derives from binocular vision. It was the same with the Red-tailed hawk and its broad-winged cousins. They needed these visual abilities to precisely estimate ever-changing distances to their constantly moving prey. Voila! Over the course of eons Mother Nature finally rotated their eyes toward the front of their head, so that the visual fields of the eyes overlapped; not as much as they do with us humans, but almost. I confess to never having seen this remarkable hawk out on the coast of the Y-K Delta, but inland I sometimes spotted one soaring low over the wooded hills. They were not common, possibly because of other hawk-eyed predators they had to compete with, such as Rough-legs, Gyrfalcons, Peregrines and Golden and Bald eagles. They are much more common in Interior Alaska, although the form usually found there has dark plumage, including its tail, and is often referred to as the Harlan’s hawk. I see them a lot during the summer, especially in the eastern Interior. The Red-tail is not only the commonest of all the broad-winged or buteo hawks, it is also the most variable, having at least 26 different forms. But they are all Red-tails, which means the behavior of Harlan’s hawks in Interior Alaska is the same as that of their red-tailed cousins on the Y-K Delta. In spring, after migrating back from as far away as Central America and Mexico, the male and female, who are thought to mate for life, find their original nesting territory, and immediately begin their aerial mating game, with the smaller male spiraling round and round the female, then suddenly stooping down like a falcon on her. She just as suddenly turns over in midair and presents her claws to his in mock combat. Then they’re off again soaring and circling about and screaming their shrill raspy cries at each other. During his spectacular maneuvering the male might even catch a prey animal and pass it to the female in midflight. They finally end this lovely aerial display by swooping to a perch in a tree and mating. Meanwhile, both birds have been building a nest in a tall tree higher than all the others. They usually construct it in the crotch of the tree in the form of a bulky bowl of sticks and twigs lined with finer materials such as green leaves, evergreen sprigs and strips of inner bark. The pair alternately may use one of several nests from previous years. 2-3 brown-spotted whitish eggs are laid and, although both parents incubate them, the female does most of this work while the male hunts for food and feeds her on the nest. The eggs hatch asynchronously (one per day or so) between 30-35 days later. The mother bird remains with the nestlings most of the time over the next few weeks while the male hunts for food (including small mammals, birds and large insects), which he brings to the nest, where the female tears it into small pieces to feed the young. After 4-5 weeks, food is simply dropped into the nest by both adults and the young feed themselves. The young finally fledge about 6-7 weeks after hatching and remain with their parents for several more weeks to learn some of their survival strategies. To be successful hunters themselves, the young Red-tails will be able to take advantage of the same hawk-eyed visual acuity their parents have. In addition to binocular vision, an important aspect of that acuity is the large size of their eyes; another is their telescopic vision, allowing them to see things many times closer than humans can. A Red-tail’s eye has a somewhat flattened lens placed rather far from the retina, giving it a long focal length, thus producing a larger image. Yet another reason these hawks are able to see better than we do is that their retina is packed tightly with “cone” receptors, which produce an exceptionally fine-grained image. Finally, Red-tails and other buteos have keen color vision, thus allowing them to distinguish their prey even better. With all of these advantages for survival, it’s no wonder Red-tailed hawks are the most common buteo in North America. Let’s finish with a few names for this amazing bird. Its Yupik name is Eskaviaq, which probably relates to the way the hawk scatters the remnants of its prey, especially smaller birds. The scientific moniker is Buteo jamaicensis, and takes its species name from Jamaica where the first specimens were collected (probably while they were wintering down there). In addition to the name we know it by, it has other common names: buzzard; buzzard hawk; eastern redtail; hen hawk; mouse hawk; red hawk; redtail; red-tailed buzzard; and western redtail. You usually hear this hawk before you see it. Listen for that shrill raspy cry you hear in the movies, and look up. Then grab your binocs and check it out.  |
Red-throated Loon:Red-throated Loon Qaqataq Have you ever listened to Red-throated loons call at night? If you have, you'll understand why we have expressions like "crazy as a loon," and "loony." The calls can only be described as weird and run the gamut from deep groans, growls, clucks, cackles, prolonged wails and shrieks, and something that sounds to me like a series of big burps. Their Yupik names Qaqataq, Qaqaq and Qucuuniq describe some of these sounds well. Listen for yourself to see what I mean. You'll find these loons (known as Gavia stellata to those who study them) during summer on rivers and lakes in much of Alaska where they are distinguished from other loon species by their small size, upturned slender bill, and handsome red throat. They are by far the most numerous and widely distributed of Alaska's loons, and also nest farther north than any other species, reaching the northernmost coast of Greenland. Although other loons require a running start on water, Red-throated loons can leap directly into flight, and it is the only species of loon that can take off from land. On a recent canoe trip down the Kobuk River I found the Red-throated loon to be one of the signature species of that river. I had never seen or heard so many of them before, even on the Lower Yukon Delta where it is also a summer resident. Their wailing, shrieking and burping often kept me listening past midnight and into the wee hours of the morning. They are truly a fascinating bird. So what else makes them fascinating, you ask. Although they are clumsy on land, they are like speeding bullets under the water. They also have a special physiology which allows them to remain there for up to 90 seconds. The reason they present such a low profile to the water when they swim is because their specific gravity is near that of water. By simply expelling air from their lungs and compressing their feathers they are able to sink slowly and ever so quietly under the water without a whisper, leaving scarcely a ripple. In this way, too, they can alter their buoyancy so they float with only their eyes and bill above the water. They are also powerful fliers, with speeds of 60 mph or more. And, like other loons, when they fly they have a streamlined upsidedown appearance, which is one of the reasons why they fly so fast. Although these loons are generally fish eaters, easily catching small trout, salmon, char, grayling and sticklebacks, they also eat aquatic insects and larvae, leeches, snails, frogs and even some plant material. Qaqataq may mate for life and their courtship displays are a wonder to behold. Both birds dip their bills rapidly up and down in the water, then splash noisily as they dive under the surface and rush rapidly back and forth past each other. Once courtship is ended, the couple both defend the nesting territory and help in the construction of the nest, which is located on shore or in shallow water. The nest is either a depression on top of a hummock of vegetation or simply a scrape on bare ground. Usually two brown-spotted olive-green to dark brown eggs are laid. Both male and female also help brood the eggs during their 24-29 day incubation period. Although the eggs do not hatch at the same time as among ducks and geese, when both young are finally shuck of the eggs and all fluffed up they leave the nest and follow their parents to water about 24 hours later. Both parents feed the young mainly insects and crustaceans for the first few days after hatching, then begin feeding them minnows. Rarely do they carry their young on their backs as do other loon species, possibly because of their smaller size. Within seven weeks after hatching the young can not only feed themselves, they are also ready for their maiden flights: They are clumsy at first, but in just a few more days they will easily match the dexterity of their parents. It is no wonder that Red-throated loons and their cousins have been around for so long. According to paleontologists, scientists who study the evolution of animals, the earliest fossils of loons go back to the Paleocene Epoch, about 65 million years ago. So they've been around for more than ten times longer than we have. Which may make them one of the oldest original forms of life still living on Earth. That's fascinating!  |
Rock Ptarmigan:Rock Ptarmigan Elciayuli The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced the Rock Ptarmigan, and not the Ruffed grouse, deserves the Yupik name Elciayuli, which translates as "the one who is really good at belching or burping." If you've ever happened upon one of these little fellas as you're climbing or skiing in the mountains above the treeline, you'll know what I mean. There are times when I was just rounding the comer of a big rock and suddenly one flew up right in front of my face, making the most god-awful belching noise and scaring me half out of my wits. In fact, the sound to me was more like the surprised growl of a grizzly bear, which added even more terror to the incident. Elciayuli is anything but a grizzly bear, however. If you follow the flight path of the bird, you'll see that it lands within a long stone's throw from where it originally flew up. If you're curious, and careful enough, you should be able to sneak very close to it. Then, depending on the time of year, and the sex of the bird, notice its coloring. In winter, white for both sexes. In summer, a lovely muted brown for the hen, and a mottled gray-brown and white for the male. In spring, however, the male has splotches of brown on its yellowish-brown tinged white feathers -- not as striking as the Willow ptarmigan's rufous head and neck feathers, but still very handsome. Which leads us into some of their interesting spring courting behavior. The first thing you'll notice is the male's sexy red eyebrows. These become swollen towards the end of winter as he looks for a hummock above what he hopes to be an adequate nesting territory for his future mate and family. From this hummock he advertises his availability to any prospective hen within visual and listening range. He does this by stretching his head out, raising and spreading his tail, and drooping his wings, all the while uttering a guttural croaking rattle (the "burping" of Elciayuli) followed by a quiet hiss, something like this: krrrr-karrrrr, wsshhh. He may even slide off the hummock on his breast, then roll over and leap into the air as he tries to impress the hen. Most of the time it works, although it is extremely rare for any human to ever witness either the courtship display or what follows, namely, the scratching out of a shallow hollow by the hen among the rocky debris on the mountain or in any tundra that might be present. She lines the hollow with grasses, mosses and feathers, then quickly gets down to the serious business of mating and egg laying. As many as 13 brown-splotched buff-colored eggs may be layed and, although the hen does all of the incubation, the male may stick around for the three weeks it takes for the eggs to hatch. He is definitely not as patient and dedicated a dad as his cousin the Willow ptarmigan, however, and often goes AWOL before hatching begins. As with all grouse, the hatchlings are precocial, that is, they are able to follow their mom away from the nest soon after pecking themselves out of their egg cases. They follow her everywhere among the talus and scree of mountain slopes and over the now greening tundra in search of wild berries, insects and spiders. She never feeds them, but shows them what to eat by eating the foods herself. The chicks are quick learners, and within two weeks are able to make short flights to escape any would-be predators lurking on the mountainside. In 10-12 weeks they are fully independent of their mother and must now fend for themselves. There is another Yupik name for the Rock ptarmigan, Elciayagaq, meaning "the dear little (or baby) burper," which perhaps is used to describe the Rock ptarmigan at this early stage of their development. I haven't mentioned it yet, but, yes, the Rock ptarmigan does have a scientific name, Lagopus mutus. Mutus means "silent," which it is at any time of the year outside of the breeding season (unless, of course, you happen to surprise it on a mountainside somewhere). Lagopus means "hare-footed," referring to the dense feathers that grow on its feet during the winter, similar to the fur on the paws of snowshoe hares. Of all the birds that must walk on snow to survive in winter, only ptarmigan and other grouse have evolved structures that make it easier to do this. Just before the onset of winter, most grouse acquire a fringe of scales along each toe, which enlarges the surface area of the foot. Ptarmigan have evolved a step further. They have developed highly modified dense feathering that covers both surfaces of their feet, and their claws grow much longer. In this way, winter foot feathering not only makes walking easier on snow, but also probably provides the bird with thermal insulation, much as bunny boots on snowshoes would do for us humans. Here's another interesting tidbit, and something you may have already suspected from what I mentioned earlier about feather coloring. You know that all birds molt. Well, all ptarmigan have three molts every year: a complete molt in fall to all-white plumage; a partial molt in spring to breeding plumage; and another partial molt later in the summer. Take a look in a good bird book and check these differences out.  |
Rough-legged Hawk:Rough-legged Hawk Qiirayuli Watch this hawk hunt for one hour, and I guarantee you that your sense of wonder will come back like a shock. That's what I did regularly when I lived in Scammon Bay during the early 1980's. Almost daily on my walks in late summer and fall and on my skis in spring, I would see these amazing hawks flying somewhere on the mountain behind the village. That was their home, and when I found them they were either courting, building their nest, hunting or training their young to hunt. Watch them as they soar like an eagle, then swoop down after their diminutive mammalian prey on the ground. Or as they cruise low over the tundra like a harrier, then abruptly stop to hover in mid-air like a kestrel, and as suddenly plunge to the surface and grab a red-backed vole. Or, best of all, watch them catch the thermals buffeting off a hilly or craggy landscape and ride them in place with no wing flapping. It's as if they're dangling there from some hidden thread, completely motionless, their underwings fully exposed, waiting for someone to point and say, "I knew it was a Rough-leg. I could tell by its black wrists." Of course, in Scammon Bay, the Rough-leg (named for the feathers that extend to their toes) is the only hawk of its kind. By this, I mean it's the only buteo, or broad-winged, hawk in the area. Not in the entire Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, mind you, because its cousin the Red-tailed hawk also lives farther to the east in the more wooded areas. The Rough-leg prefers the tundra, or what is sometimes called the "periglacial" region of Alaska, i.e., any habitat similar to that found near glaciers. In the periglacial zone around Scammon Bay, Hooper Bay and Chevak, the Yupik people call these hawks, "Qiirayuli," because of the squalling nature of one of their calls. The Yupik name literally translates as "the one who is expert at making a squalling call." They make this particular call on the nesting grounds in spring when they are either perched near their nest on a narrow rock ledge or flying in the immediate vicinity of the nest. They also have another call which they utter in spring while circling in the sky. This one is more of a plaintive whistle like that of the Red-tailed hawk and is intimately associated with their short courting period. Since Rough-legs nest in an arctic environment, they don't have long to perform their aerial mating displays in spring. But if you are there on the nesting grounds and you are lucky enough to see these displays, I promise you will be dazzled. In spring I used to go up to nearby Castle Rock and watch these birds do their "sky dance." Both male and female would be spiraling and soaring and whistling close to each other when all of a sudden the male would fold his wings and drop out of the sky in a spectacular dive, then as suddenly pull up in the air again, making the form of a U. He did this time after time, certainly to impress the female with his prowess, but probably also because it felt so good. She must have been duly impressed because nest building began shortly thereafter on a cliff ledge selected by the male. He delivered all of the nest materials and she did the actual construction, starting with sticks and plant stalks, then lining the nest with grasses, feathers and down. She, of course, laid the eggs -three to five of them colored pale bluish-white, splotched with brown and violet. She also did 99 percent of the 31 day incubation duty, but her mate brought her food regularly every day while she was on the nest. The eggs hatch asynchronously, that is, one a day for as many days as there are eggs, so the chicks are stairstepped in size. Mom stays home at first to take care of her young, but once again dad brings home the bacon which mom then feeds to the young. As the nestlings grow larger, both parents hunt and feed their young. After 5-6 weeks of a menu filled with voles and lemmings, mixed with a few insect and bird tidbits from time to time, the young are ready to fly on their own. They don't fly very far, however, and remain near the nesting territory for another 3-6 weeks where they learn to hunt from their parents. They also learn how to do some of that awesome soaring and swooping and hovering and hang-gliding I mentioned above. Too soon, however, the Alaskan periglacial winter starts kicking in and it's time for the Rough-leg family to migrate to warmer climes. Anything else the young need to know before they become bona fide adults they'll have to learn along the way south and in their winter home in the Lower 48 states. While in Scammon Bay I sometimes took my young son Steven out to watch the Rough-legs. Once after returning to the house I wrote a poem about it to remember our time together. We were searching for them
in the hard winds blowing from the south and the closing mists of spring, my young son Steven and I, knowing they were around somewhere, hoping to see them somehow... so we stopped at Castle Rock and hid and waited in a cave made of great hinged rocks on the leeward where Steven crawled around on the green lichen-mats inside while I wondered if the hinge would break... so we crawled out to throw snowballs downhill sidling into the wind trying to avoid its bite but finally facing it, Steven loving it, going back for more. Suddenly we saw them stepping off a near sheltered ledge into a flat lifting glide in the mists, just hanging there, tilting their tails between the uplifting of two rocky spires, holding fast there, in the buffet and play and silent rush surrounding and forcing them up and out, till the mists quietly grasped and pulled them away from our ken and reach. Then Steven and I too departed to find our way back to Scammon Bay and home.  |
Ruby-crowned Kinglet:The Little King Ruby-crowned Kinglet What a delight to hear this tiny bird as it sings its heart out in the spring. It should be arriving right about now, especially in the spruce taiga parts of the LK Delta. And what an energetic bird it is, frenetically moving and feeding through the lower branches of spruce and other shrubs and trees in the northern forest. Notice it flicking its wings almost constantly searching for insects and spiders there and often hovering as it searches. Sometimes it will fly out to catch its insect quarry in midair. And in spring after it first arrives from as far south as the pine forests of western Guatemala, if you are very lucky, you will see it flash its ruby-red crest every time it sings its lovely long bubbling song starting with a lisp and a warble and ending in peter peter peter pete! As soon as they arrive, male Ruby-crowns fly from treetop to treetop, proclaiming their nesting territories to other males that do the same nearby. When the females come in they notice right away that red fire on top of its crown, and when their hormones begin to kick in they take even more notice of the way the male crouches and flutters its wings in a courtship gesture designed to tempt even the most coquettish of females. It doesn’t take long after she makes her choice and selects her nest site 40-90 feet up in a spruce tree that she begins to build one of the oddest of nests in the north. Gathering moss, lichens, strips of bark, twigs, rootlets and gossamer from spider webs, she weaves a deep, hanging globe-shaped nest that she then lines with feathers, plant down and animal fur. She builds this nest near the tree trunk or suspended from a branchlet below a larger horizontal branch that is well protected from above. Inside, the nest measures three inches wide by two inches deep. It has an elastic quality so that it can stretch as the brood grows. To keep it from disintegrating, though, the female has to constantly maintain it. As soon as the nest is complete she lays up to nine creamy-white, brown-splotched eggs, a surprisingly large clutch for such a tiny bird. Incubation is by her alone for about two weeks when all of the eggs hatch at approximately the same time. The male defends the territory and the nest and will sometimes feed his mate on the nest. Both parents feed the naked hatchlings who grow to adult size within 16 days, then fly the coop, and are virtually on their own from then on. These birds are late fall migrants and some years don’t leave till October, depending on the availability of food. Climate change has prolonged the onset of their migration because of warmer weather. I don’t know if the Ruby-crowned kinglet has a Yup’ik name, but its binomial or scientific name is, Regulus calendula, meaning, “glowing little king.” If you watch it flit and flutter about like a king in its kingdom, and the way it flashes its crown when it sings, you’ll understand how it got its name in 1766. It has a few other names, including Ruby-crown, Ruby-crowned warbler, and Ruby-crowned wren. Since it winters in Mexico and Guatemala, it has several Spanish names also: Reyezuelo, Reyezuelo de Rojo, Reyezuelo Monicolorado, and Reyezuelo de Coronilla Colorado. Cool facts: In addition to its hanging globe-shaped nest, which is unique in the north, its clutch of eggs is also unique. Imagine a tiny mite of a bird that only weighs about a third of an ounce, laying up to nine eggs (and up to 12 farther south) in a single nest. And although each egg weighs only about a 50th of an ounce, the entire clutch can weigh as much as the mother bird herself.  |
Ruddy Turnstone:Ruddy Turnstone Uyarr’uyaq The Ruddy turnstone is a bird to remember. In fact, I can recall the very first time I saw this striking sandpiper. During the spring migration of 1980 my wife and I were ambling along the beach near Hooper Bay when a mixed flock of turnstones and other shorebirds landed near us and began feeding. A number of the turnstones had rusty-red markings on their back and wings and reminded me a little of the stunning color pattern of the Harlequin duck. I quickly reached into my pack for my bird book and identified them as Ruddy turnstones. What an appropriate place to find these birds, since their scientific name is Arenarius interpres, which liberally translates as, “the bird that warns others of danger in sandy places.” We watched them as they dashed on their stumpy legs after the retreating waves, flipping over pebbles and shells and snagging the invertebrates that tried to scurry away. Since then I have also seen Ruddy turnstones on their breeding ground, which is usually in open tundra near stone-studded creeks and rivers. Here they continue to live up to their name and turn over stones in search of insects and their larvae, worms and anything else that may be hiding underneath. They will successfully dislodge even quite large stones, straining against them with what has been described as a crowbar-like bill, eventually rolling them over by pushing against them with their barrel chest. If a stone is too firmly embedded to be removed with its bill or chest, it will try digging out the supporting sand or even enlist the aid of its mate or neighbor to accomplish its purpose. This bullish little sandpiper especially lives up to its reputation while nesting, flying aggressively at intruders either winged or otherwise, and always turning back any would-be advances on its nest. In the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge I’ve seen gyrfalcons, ravens and jaegers try to fly within 500 feet of a Ruddy turnstone’s nesting territory and be quickly and energetically forced to take another route. Look in your bird book and you’ll see why two Yupik names for the bird are Uyarr’uyaq and Uyarruyuaq. These names both refer to its unique bib-like necklace, unlike the markings on any other North American bird. The Ruddy turnstone has another rather unique characteristic. Just before the eggs are laid in spring both male and female develop a brood patch, which is the featherless part of their underbelly that during the breeding season develops a rich supply of blood vessels, thus assuring an adequate source of heat for incubating the eggs. The fact that the male has a brood patch, too, means that he shares in the responsibility of incubation. Only the female builds the nest, though, which is a shallow depression sparsely lined with leaves and grasses. She lays four black-splotched olive-green eggs, and in a little over three weeks they are all ready to hatch together. The downy hatchlings almost immediately leave the nest and follow their father to food. Both parents help care for the young but they feed themselves and quickly grow in size and feathers to where in three more weeks they are able to finally take flight. Before this happens, however, their mother leaves special guard duty entirely up to her mate and she takes off for southern climes. Seems unmotherly, even unusual, but such are the customs of the Ruddy turnstone. Another unique aspect of this sandpiper is the number of common English names it has. To wit: Bishop plover, brant-bird, bead-bird, calico bird, calico jacket, checkered snipe, chicken, chicken plover, common turnstone, horsefoot snipe, jinny, king-crab bird, red-legged plover, red-legs, rock bird, rock plover, sand runner, sea dotterel, sea quail, sparked-back, stone-pecker, streaked-back, chuckatuck and creddock. The last two are names that derive from their call. Another Yupik name for the bird that I gathered in Hooper Bay is Kiuk’aq and probably also relates to the sound of its call.  |
Ruffed Grouse:Ruffed Grouse Elciayuli Elciayuli aren't found everywhere in the Y-K Delta, but if you live near a spruce forest, chances are you'll see one strutting slowly along on the ground somewhere in the neighborhood. In the spring time you're more than likely to hear a male off in the distance trying to entice a female onto its territory with a drumming sound unlike anything you've ever experienced before. I can remember the first time I heard this sound back in the early 1960's along Birch Creek. I thought it was an ailing outboard motor, the way it would putt putt along fine at first, then slowly die. Time after time it would do this, and it had me baffled for a long time. I was just a teenager and new to Alaska, so I guess I had a good excuse, eh? I've found two Yupik names for these fascinating fowl: Elciayuli, which means "one who is really good at making a burping (drumming) sound;" and Egelruciayuli, meaning something like "one who is really good at moving fast," undoubtedly referring to its fast take- off from ground level when approached too close. The concept of burping is interesting, because the Ruffed grouse does not accomplish its drumming by burping. The other bird that takes the same name in Yupik, the Rock ptarmigan, does make a very loud burp-like call, loud enough, in fact, to scare a person out of his wits if he suddenly surprises one. The drumming noise is actually produced by the male as he perches crosswise on a log, tail bracing him as he leans slightly backward, and brings his cupped wings forward and upward in quick beats. The wing strokes are slow at first, making a measured thumping, but they increase in speed until the sound becomes a rapid whir. Suddenly the beating ends and the noise stops. The drumming sound itself results from the cupped wings striking against, believe it or not, nothing more than the air. Ruffed grouse have been known to drum at any time of the year, but the really intensive drumming takes place in early spring to announce territory, attract females, and to repel other males. The name scientists give the Ruffed grouse is Bonasaumbellus. Bonasa refers to the good taste of the meat when roasted, and umbellus refers to the umbrella-like ruffs around its neck that are raised when the bird is excited. Males raise them to special prominence in spring when a female happens by. They also raise their crests, fan their rusty black-tipped tails, and flaunt their bright orange eye combs in an attempt to draw females near enough to their territorial logs to copulate with them. And I do mean "them," since the males are promiscuous and will mate with more than one female. After breeding, the hen scrapes out a slight hollow in the forest floor, usually near a tree, stump or log, and lines it with leaves or spruce needles, twigs and its own molted feathers. She then lays up to 14 buff-colored, often brown-spotted eggs, which she incubates by herself for more than three weeks while her mate stands sentinel not far away. Shortly after hatching, the chicks all walk away from their nest. Within a week after that they can already fly to a perch a foot above the ground. Two weeks later they can fly well enough to roost with their mom in the trees. During this early period they eat spiders, caterpillars, beetles, grasshoppers, ants, wasps and other insects. Later they augment their diet with wild berries, plant seeds, flower blossoms and buds and leaves of aspen, birch, cottonwood, willow, alder and spruce trees. Yes, omnivorous is the key word. In fact, adults have been known to eat even small frogs. The young hang around their mothers for a long time, and when approached by a possible predator, such as the writer and his black dog, the mom does her tried and true "crippled bird act' until she is sure all of her squealing chicks have fled the scene. Then she takes to the trees herself and watches us until we leave the area. The Ruffed grouse is hunted in more American states and Canadian provinces than any other grouse. And more are shot and eaten by hunters than any other grouse. In Alaska, the ptarmigan is more popular as a game bird because it's easier to hunt, but for taste no one will dispute the Ruffed grouse is tops. Back to names. I've not run across a bird with more unusual names. To wit: birch partridge, carpenter bird, moor fowl, mountain pheasant, partridge, pine hen, ruffed heathcock, shoulder-knot grouse, tippet, white-flesher, wood grouse, wood hen, woodpile quarker, woods pheasant, drumming grouse, and drumming pheasant.  |
Rusty Blackbird:Rusty Blackbird Cukcugli What a coincidence. Just moments before starting to write this article, guess what flew over? Yep, Rusty blackbirds, a small troupe of them, headed south for the winter. I used the word "troupe" because it refers to their behavior of gathering in usually quite large flocks, or troupes. In fact, they are a part of the Troupial Family of songbirds that is made up of 91 species and only exists in the New World. For some reason, the scientific name for this family is Icteridae, from the Greek "ikteros," meaning jaundice (yellowish-green). The Rusty blackbird is anything but jaundiced in color, however. It has a glossy black plumage in spring, which turns rusty brown in fall. Its scientific name, Euphagus carolinus, which loosely translates as "well-fed Carolinian," is not nearly as descriptive of its habits as the Yupik name, Cukcugli, which means, "the one that goes chuck ... chuck," referring to a call that it makes. It is yet another of the many birds of the Lower Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that has a name like the sound it makes --onomatapoeia, right? Curiously, the Inupiat moniker for the bird, Tulungiksyauraq, means "little raven." No mystery why it has that name, if you check the illustration. Even one of its common English names, rusty crow, claims a similar relationship to these much larger distant cousins. Cukcugli is an early migrant to Alaska and the Y-K Delta, arriving at roughly the same time as the spring peepers (wood frogs) start calling. I remember in Marshall, I used to see them for the first time between mid-April and mid-May down by Wilson Creek where they liked to nest. There was just the right combination of marshy spruce woods, alders and willows, and shallow pools along the creek to be ideal for setting up a household and having young. Especially while canoeing in the creek in late summer and early fall I would see these blackbirds and their young, stepping deliberately along the shoreline in search of sustenance, such as water bugs, larvae of caddisflies, dragonflies and mosquitoes, wayward ants, spiders and caterpillars, snails and even small fish. They don't limit themselves only to meat, however. They are omnivores and will eat other things like wildflower and tree seeds, bunchberries, cranberries and blueberries. (Have you ever noticed their blue tongues?) But I'm ahead of myself. Let's go back to spring when the blueberries are just beginning to green up and only the giant mosquitoes are quietly lumbering about the countryside. After returning from southern climes, establishing his home territory and attracting a lovely brown mate, this sleek black bird gurgles and whistles his sentinel song while she constructs a cup-shaped nest in a nearby spruce or alder. She usually builds the nest close to water out of twigs, lichens, mud and fine green grasses. She alone also incubates her 4 or 5 brown-blotched pale blue-green eggs, although her mate feeds her while she broods on the nest. Like other songbirds, Cukcugli lays one egg per day, and after the final egg is laid incubates her eggs with the help of her brood patch. This is an oval-shaped patch of bare skin on her belly which during this period develops a rich supply of blood vessels just under the skin. By pressing the brood patch against the eggs, body heat is transferred to them and their embryos begin to grow. Quickly. Only 14 days after the last egg is laid, the young hatch. Within another1 4 days the young test their new wing feathers and fly for the first time. During these two intense weeks and a couple more that follow, both parents devotedly feed and tend their young. And then after the young start feeding for themselves .....Well, this is when I saw them most, foraging by Wilson Creek. I'd stop my canoe on the placid black water and just watch them and listen to their lazy "chuck ... chuck... chuck." They'd be there every weekend . until one day when the willow leaves began to turn a serious yellow, I'd see their little troupes flying over just like I did today. "Chuck, ... chuck... chuck," they'd say, "see you next year."  |
