Be sure to enter GreatBirdPics.com’s latest Bird Photography Contest! Win $100 for the best photograph using the theme Birds of Prey With Prey. Click the following link – Birds of Prey With Prey – for important details. Deadline for submission is August 2, 2026.
My good friend Dennis sent me this Bird of Pray pic and asked if it was good enough for the contest. No, but nice try Dennis!
We woke up to sunny skies in Anchorage and packed up our luggage. This was our first full day of the trip and it had two parts: first, birding around the Anchorage area, then we would drive south to Seward. We headed out after breakfast to Kincaid Park to look for birds.
Two things struck me at Kincaid Park. First, it had very wide paths (20 feet). My guess is that this gives people and wildlife ample opportunity to spot each other – narrow paths could bring hikers very close to a foraging moose or bear before being noticed, which could be dangerous. The second thing I noticed were the swarms of mosquitoes! I have never seen so many mosquitoes in my life! They were bigger than the ones we get in the midwest, but there were hundreds around each one of us in sections of the park. Bug spray helped, but you didn’t want to stop walking for very long, even to take a picture.
We did see some good birds there. A Three-toed Woodpecker was nesting in the top of a telephone pole and some thought they heard the peeps of chicks in the nest but they didn’t stick their heads out. The adult went to and from the nest regularly.
Another bird seen a couple of times at Kincaid was a Fox Sparrow. I love seeing the bright rufous tones of Fox Sparrows in the wintertime around Chicago, but when I looked at this one it looked duller.
It turns out this was one of four Fox Sparrow subspecies, the Sooty, which has duller colors. We typically see the Red subspecies in the midwest, which is much brighter.
After spending a couple of hours at Kincaid we hopped back in the van and headed to the airport. We were looking for birds along the perimeter of the runways, but what we saw more of were moose. Mostly females and young males; this moose stood right next to the road eating the tender grasses there.
We continued on to Westchester Lagoon, which was a series of interconnected ponds and lakes. Several types of waterfowl were nesting there including this female Gadwall.
There were lots of gulls in the Anchorage area and the Short-billed Gull (formally Mew Gull) was the most numerous. They were a little smaller than the Ring-billed Gulls we see around Lake Michigan.
After lunch we started our drive south to Seward. The landscape was breathtaking along the way!
When we first arrive in Anchorage there were Black-billed Magpies flying around the hotel. I didn’t get any pictures of them there, but I was able to get this shot of the large magpie next to a salmon-filled stream near Seward.
The stream was filled with coho salmon because it led into the Bear Creek Weir. The Bear Creek Weir is part of a coho and sockeye salmon fishery system that ultimately leads to Resurrection Bay at Seward. Here at Bear Creek the salmon queue up before attempting to jump up the artificial waterfall to get upstream. Once they make it up the waterfall they are counted by staff. Some are removed for scientific study, harvested to help pay for the facility, or bred for more salmon. It was fascinating to watch them fight their way up the falls.
We heard a Townsend’s Warbler singing not far from the weir so we waked down the road to a residential area. The warbler’s song led us right to it, as it flitted around a pine tree.
Here’s our group walking down that “residential” street as we searched for more birds. Not a bad view!
We made it to downtown Seward about dinnertime, so we checked into the Harbor 360 Hotel and had a bite to eat. After dinner we walked along the boardwalk bordering the harbor. Many of the boats there were private fishing charters and some were coming in with the day’s haul. Here a happy couple of fishermen pose with their 125 lb. halibut catch! Incidentally, every time we were in an airport we saw fishermen with 5-15 boxes of fish on dry ice that they were bringing back home with them.
As the sun started to get low in the sky we looked out over the harbor to the snow-covered mountains in the background. The next morning we boarded the boat seen in the foreground of the picture below for a day of birdwatching in Resurrection Bay and along the Kenai Fjords National Park.
CLICK HERE to see all the posts about our Alaskan Bird Tour. Karen and I have had the opportunity to travel to many interesting places in search of birds. If you would like read about some of our other Bird Tours CLICK HERE.
If you enjoy seeing beautiful pictures of birds from around the world and reading about them CLICK HERE to sign up for our mailing list. Members can post their own GreatBirdPics and learn more about bird photography techniques.