May 2, 2017 Auke Bay AK

We’re tired after our first day of touring and birding the Juneau area.  The generator and furnace are on.  Anne is frying fresh salmon.  All is well.  We were surprised to wake up to sunshine this morning.  The forecast was for storm.  Some of that came through the night.  The seasonal employee we met this morning told us that here forecasts are only suggestions for the weather.  It seldom follows them.  I told him we changed our plans because of it.  He said that was wise.

We first stalked the secretive Varied Thrush.  A few of them inhabit our campground giving their unusual song of long-spaced single notes of varied pitch and quality.  They can be tough to find because  they stop singing when you approach.  So as not to prolong the endeavor we briefly played a recording of the song and had one fly close looking here and there for his rival as we enjoyed watching him. 

Then we began our “long drive” to Eagle Beach.  One can drive only about 80 miles around Juneau before running out of roads, so there are no long drives here.  The ride “out the road” goes the farthest, all of about 38 miles.  We went about half of that to enjoy walks along the channel, through the rain forest, and to the Shrine to St. Therese.  The “shrine” as it is called here includes cabins and a trail that follows a pedestrian causeway to a high island that houses a chapel made of local round granite cobbles.  Along the trails one finds stations of the cross under porcelain roofs.  Charming.  Behind the chapel at the point facing the bay is a life-sized porcelain statue of Christ upon the cross.  Behind him the path leads to a rail overlooking the bay.  Across the bay are the Chilcat Mountains all pointy and enshrouded in puffy snow fresh from last night’s precipitation.  What a sight!

Below were coastal birds.  Hooded and Red-necked Grebes joined Marble Murrelets and both Red-breasted and Common Mergansers in fishing.  Bonaparte’s, Glaucous-winged, Herring, and Mew Gulls did their best to steal their catch.  Perched above were various Bald Eagles.  I prefer to call them White-headed Sea Eagles, but that name will not catch on.  Here we nickname them Alaska Seagulls.  Common as dirt they scavenge and steal as they can or pluck live sushi from the surface of the bays.  Returning to the mainland we found a dozen extravagantly attired Harlequin Ducks along the rocky shore with common Mallard.  This is what Alaska birding is about!

We stopped and ate lunch at Eagle Beach where a glacial stream makes a delta upon the bay.  There we saw more birds and more mountains.  A wind had come up to make the weather seem cold to us.  It was 46 degrees however and an obviously native Alaskan took his children and dogs out in short sleeves.  We felt like such wimps.

We returned to camp to pick up our computer and drove into town to find the McDonalds and Wifi.  Along the way we passed the Mendenhall River and looked upstream to see the face of the famous Mendenhall Glacier.  It ends at a lake a few miles from Juneau.  It was probably a tidewater glacier only a millennium ago.  Today it is probably the most visited American valley glacier.  Cruise ships come to Juneau and the buses go to the visitor center.  From there the visitors walk up to the lake to look across at the wall.  Tomorrow we may take a more remote path to the ice itself.  The guidebook warns against climbing the ice.  It is very slippery.

This evening it rains again.  This is a rain forest.  Tomorrow we venture forth again to visit the Mendenhall wetlands and the glacier itself.