Today, Thursday July 20th
was the day we were to visit Glacier Bay and just after the Glacier Bay Rangers
boarded the ship I had a Caspian Tern fly alongside the ship but was unable to
get any decent shots of it. After that
there was almost always birds in view that included seventy-one Surf Scoters,
three White-winged Scoters, three Red-throated Divers, five Pelagic Cormorants,
four Bald Eagles, nine Black Oystercatchers, an Arctic Skua, 200+ Kittiwakes,
twenty Bonaparte’s Gulls, a Mew Gull, ten Glaucous-winged Gulls, five Arctic
Terns, two Guillemots, six Pigeon Guillemots, 400+ Marbled Murrelets, ten
Kittlitz’s Murrelet, a Horned Puffin and three Tufted Puffin. There were many more murrelets that I was
unable to identify and I suspect I saw several thousand.
Approaching Glacier Bay
Approaching Glacier Bay
Approaching Glacier Bay
Approaching Glacier Bay
Lamplugh Glacier
View from the John Hopkins Inlet
Tarr Inlet
Tarr Inlet
Tarr Inlet
Margerie Glacier
Margerie Glacier
Black-legged Kittiwake
Glaucous-winged Gull
Black-legged Kittiwake
Sandra and I at the Margerie Glacier
Ice carving at the Margerie Glacier
Ice carving at the Margerie Glacier
Black-legged Kittiwake
Leaving Glacier Bay
Leaving Glacier Bay
Leaving Glacier Bay
Sea Otters doing what they do best
Leaving Glacier Bay
On leaving Glacier Bay we went
out into the Pacific Ocean when there was more of a role on the boat caused by
the swell. It wasn’t long before I found
my first shearwater of the trip, which was a Short-tailed Shearwater and I then
had fourteen Sooty Shearwaters and another Short-tailed Shearwater before I
called it a day. A party of dowitchers
flew south and I had twelve Kittiwakes, three Glaucous-winged Gulls and eight
Guillemots.
We continued north on our
final full day at sea heading for College Fjord and I completed five short
periods of observing from the ship but it remained quiet in what was a
beautiful day. I did see five
White-winged Scoters, two Sooty Shearwaters, three Pelagic Cormorants, 131
Kittiwakes, a Mew Gull, six Glaucous-winged Gulls, four Arctic Terns, a
Guillemot and eight Tufted Puffins in 155 minutes viewing time.
Orce
Alaskan Ferry
Alaskan fishing boat
When we reached College Fjord
the weather was superb being sunny and very warm and as we approached the fjord
and then went in several glaciers were observed and we eventually reached the
pinnacle on reaching Harvard Glacier.
The glacier is over a mile wide and listening to the creaks and cracks
as it edges towards the open water was something quite special, especially as
large bits broke away and landed in the water and there was even a large
iceberg appeared that had broken off below the water line.
Approach to College Fjord
Approach to College Fjord
Approach to College Fjord
Approach to College Fjord
Approach to College Fjord
Approach to College Fjord
The first glacier in College Fjord
Glacier in College Fjord
Glacier in College Fjord
Harvard Glacier
Harvard Glacier
Harvard Glacier
Ice carving at Harvard Glacier
Ice carving at Harvard Glacier
Ice carving at Harvard Glacier
Ice carving at Harvard Glacier
College Fjord
College Fjord
Bird wise in the fjord I saw
three Great Northern Divers, a Bald Eagle, ninety+ Kittiwakes, nineteen
Glaucous-winged Gulls, two Pigeon Guillemots, 127 Marbled Murreltes, and two
Kittlitz’s Murrelets.
Saturday July 22nd our
day of disembarkation and we left the ship around 09:20 being one of the last
groups to go and we then had a motor coach journey to Anchorage. There were two Arctic Terns in the harbour at
Whittier and I saw an American Wigeon, a Shoveler, two Black-billed Magpies and
two Northwestern Crows during the journey and a Dark-eyed Junco in Anchorage.
Whittier in the early morning sunlight
Whittier in the early morning sunlight
Whittier in the early morning sunlight
A stop in a roadside pull-in
allowed us to see Denali the highest peak in North America and to see it from
over 200 miles away is quite unusual, as more often than not adverse weather
covers at least part of the mountain.
Denali
Unfortunately, after a walk
around Anchorage during the late afternoon I was feeling quite unwell and spent
the rest of the day bed at our hotel.
It was an early start on
Sunday July 23rd, leaving the hotel at 04:00 for a flight from
Anchorage to Seattle and then our onward flight to London Heathrow and still
feeling unwell the journey home was far from pleasant. We arrived at Heathrow with nearly a three
hour wait for our National Express bus back to Leicester. We tried to get an early bus but to change
the tickets would have cost £48, which was more than we had paid for the tickets
in the first place and so we decided to wait it out. Once back at St. Margret’s bus depot it was
just a short taxi ride home.
It had been an excellent
experience cruising through the inside passage of British Columbia and Alaska,
with some excellent wildlife moments.
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