Our friend Mary arrived three hours late on Wednesday night at the airport. Great to see her. On the way home, since it was still light at 11 pm, we drove through Lake Hood so she could see all of the beautiful float planes. We talked a while when we got home – but hit the sack early because Thursday was going to be a long day. Saw a moose first thing Thursday morning in our camp site. We started out that morning by taking Mary to Gwennie’s Alaskan Restaurant where I always get the French Toast and Mary wanted to sample the Reindeer Sausage. Then we headed for the Alaska Native Heritage Center where we were immersed in native culture for over three hours. Mary loved it. We left there for Potter’s Marsh which was south of Anchorage. She saw her first lifer, a Red Necked Grebe with a baby on it’s back. A lifer is a bird you actually see for the first time in your life. It was the first of many lifers she would have Tom really enjoyed using his new binoculars, Nikon Monarch model, watching the birds. He sort of enjoyed it. Now, if I could get Tom interested in bird watching – he might last for more than two years in Chevak.

That night Mary and I shared a salmon and halibut dinner at SourDough Mining Company. I take all my guests there. I think I said already the owner was from Elijay Georgia.

The next morning we got up and packed to go to St. Paul. Left around noon and arrived about 4pm at the island after a short stop at Dillingham. We had two tours before bedtime. Mary said to me about an hour after we arrived, “I’m in heaven!” First thing we saw another lifer - actually the first time that bird was ever seen on this island. He was a Whiskered Auklet. I couldn’t believe it! Look him up. He has a feather plume that droops over the top of his head. Look him up! Also saw a Wood Sandpiper – third lifer for Mary and also an unusual bird for St. Paul.

We were really lucky in that there were only five people in the tour. Tom and I are always lucky in that regard – small tours. The two women with us are both retired social workers from Cambridge and St. Louis who have been traveling together since they were in college. One is a clinical social worker and the other was in administration. Great co-tourists. We enjoyed them immensely.

We had at least four tours a day and we had three guides. Young men who knew all about birds, flowers, volcanos, lava tubes, rocks, fur seals, etc. One of them is starting his own birding adventure in Arizona and comes up here for experience. Another guy works with him and the third man is going back to school in the fall to be a math teacher and hopes to teach in the bush. I encouraged him to consider Chevak. They are all three knowledgeable and great guides.



My favorite activity has been the fur seals. There are thousands of them here on the beaches, on the rocks, on the grass, sometimes they even get in the road. In some places you have to look carefully to tell the seals from the rocks – they are exactly the same color and shape. The fur seals are just fascinating. The guides told us all sorts of information about them, where they came from, where they are going, how they decide who to mate, how they have their own space, etc. I tried to listen look and learn – however it was the most fun just to look. These guys are BIG and LOUD! There is a bachelor beach where the males are that didn’t get mates – they just lie there all the time, just lie there. They don’t even eat anything. Then there are the young males who are fighting and pushing and shoving (practicing for when they get their own harem)– like recess.
There are males down near the water who have their little domain of about six females or more and then the little pups are with them as they are born. They are beautiful. In fact we saw a live birth while we were there. I took about 300 photos of the seals.

Now, the birds are everywhere. Mary is quite the experienced birder. The whole time she was discussing various birds with the guides, birds she had seen, birds they had seen. She would recognize every bird she saw even if it was the first time she had ever seen it. In fact she found over 25 lifers – birds she had never before seen in person. I was really impressed with her knowledge. I actually was really impressed with the beauty of all of these birds. Each night we got the bird list out and checked off the ones we had seen. I have about thirty photos taken as we were walking back to the bus and Mary and the guide are still looking through the scope at some bird on the cliff. I was impressed with her determination to see every last bird she could. Even this afternoon when our plane was delayed – the guide came in to see if anyone wanted to go back and look for more birds. Of course Mary did ending up with her own private tour. Indeed she is in heaven.


On Sunday a big boat came in with 80 tourists to see St. Paul. I’m not joking. They got off the boat, came in for Aleut dancing, a tour of the museum and church, an hour of bird watching and an hour of fur seal observation. They had started in Nome, gone to some place in Russia, then here, then to Hull and St. Matthew and then to St. Lawrence. I believe it ended in Dutch Harbor. It was quite exciting to see so many folks after we had been so alone. They were gone before we knew it.

So, puffins, fur seals, foxes, huge rock quarries, volcanoes, lava tubes, fish processing, all kinds of birds, and so much more. We have truly enjoyed this place. It is about 45 miles square miles and I think we saw all of it in three days.

When I got my job in Chevak, I saw a 12 hour marathon of The Deadliest Catch! Who would know that I would some day be in St. Paul. St. Paul is one of the places where those guys on the crab boats deliver their fish and crabs. So we were excited to get to the local food market and find some Deadliest Catch souvenirs! However the best was yet to come. Our guides found out how much we liked Deadliest Catch. He called over to the fish processing plant and asked the manager if we could have a short tour. It was fantastic. They were processing halibut. They bring up workers from California – various ethnicities like Latino and Vietnamese, house them, feed them and pay them $7.50 an hour for a few months and then they go back home. The workers live on the second floor of the fish plant. They were tickled that us folks were touring and taking photos. So, while we are on the tour, the Deadliest Catch topic came up. The manager who was a real friendly guy, just really entertaining, said he had been on the show. He knew all those guys personally and they had filmed him over 12 hours and he was on the show about 2 minutes. That did not matter to us – we were in the presence of a star of the Deadliest Catch. Immediately he had to pose for photos with us. So much fun! I do not know when I have enjoyed a plant tour more than I did that one! It was great. The halibut looked just delicious, even uncooked.

Met an interesting German (Canadian by marriage now) at breakfast one morning. He ended up downloading all my photos to his computer and burning them to DVD for me. And then did it again the next day with my new photos. I have to invest in a second memory card. This German (Canadian by marriage) was a photographer. He writes books, leads bear photography tours and is a freelance or contract photographer and had photographed for National Geographic. And here he is in little St. Paul… I thought I had taken a lot of photos the last couple of days.He took thousands a day. His name was Matt Brieger – I hope I have that spelled correctly. He showed me some of his photos on the web and I was certainly impressed. His home is in Churchill Manitoba, Canada. He looks like Oscar Werner but he didn’t know who Oscar Werner was.

St. Paul is a pretty well off place. Their tribal organization is TDX and they have invested well – owning hotels and other real estate in Anchorage and Seattle. They can afford lawyers, grant writers, etc. They got a 480 million dollar grant to improve facilities a couple of years ago and have replaced the roof of every home and structure on the island – all different colors of metal roofs – so the snow will slide off. They also got new weather proof windows for every house and structure too. So the place is just beautiful, well taken care of and clean and neat.

We have had a great time – everyone should come here who loves birds and fur seals or thinks they might.

Here is Mary’s life list of birds – all birds she saw for the first time in her life in St. Paul.

Brant
King Eider
Harlequin Duck
Northern Fulmar
Red faced Cormorant
Pelagic Cormorant
Wood Sandpiper
Rock Sandpiper
Red Necked Phalarope
Red Phalarope
Glaucous Winged Gull
Glaucous Gull
Black Legged Kittiwake
Red Legged Kittiwake
Thick billed Murre
Ancient Murrelet
Parakeet Auklet
Least Auklet
Crested Auklet
Whiskered Auklet
Horned Puffin
Tuffted Puffin
Lapland Longspur
Snow Bunting
Grey Crowned Rosy Finch