There were 131 species seen at the Festival this year. This list is on the Kachemak Bay Birders’ website http://kachemakbaybirders.org/.
If there are other species that you are sure were seen during the Festival, please let me know. I did not get many reports of raptors and woodpeckers and some others possibly seen.
A RED KNOT was seen at the end of the Spit by the Harbor and in Mud Bay on.
BAR-TAILED and MARBLED GODWITS were seen in several places on the Spit. (No Hudsonians were seen here during the Festival but were at the Kasilof River.)
RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRDS were seen on the 4th out East End Rd about 6 miles and then again at the Lighthouse Village Platform and in Beluga Slough the next day.
A KING EIDER pair was seen off “the bluff” west of Homer on the 4th. Great photographs posted.
A WESTERN WOOD-PEWEE was seen at the end of the FAA Rd. by the lower platform on the Lake on the 6th.
RING-NECKED DUCKS, GADWALL, and CANVASBACKS were seen in Beluga Lake.
A THAYER’S GULL was seen at the Lighthouse Village, Green Timbers and a few other places. Also an An ICELAND GULL was seen near Green Timbers on the 6th.
GREAT BLUE HERONS were seen on the 4th near Bishop’s Beach.
CASPIAN TERNS were seen on the 6th in Mud Bay.
An OSPREY was seen near Beluga Slough/Bishop’s Beach before the Festival and again on the 7th.
There was a report of BRISTLE-THIGHED CURLEWS at Anchor Point on the 6th but attempts to refind them were unsuccessful.
Always nice during the Festival to have some swallows back, HERMIT THRUSH, ORANGE-CROWNED and YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS, terns, and TUFTED PUFFIN. And this year a hummingbird and a flycatcher, too! The Festival means many happy hours being out birding and enjoying the beauty and diversity of all those wonderful birds! It was a Great Festival to Bird (as our motto tells us)!
Post-Festival
Shorebirds still arriving since the Festival…
The following is an amazing report from Toby and Laura Burke:
“On Wednesday evening, May 10, between 5 and 6 PM, on the falling tide in the greater Mud Bay area of Homer we encountered the largest aggregation of shorebirds we’ve ever seen in 12 years of birding the Kenai Peninsula… During the previously 12 years the most shorebirds we had ever counted in the larger Mud Bay area approached 15,000. Wednesday evening from the intertidal mudflats from below the airport, across the east side of the Mud Bay spit, across the mouth of the inner Mud Bay, along the gravel bars working south, and toward Green Timbers – a distance of 1.4 miles – where we roughly stood nearest the center – we counted 150,000 WESTERN SANDPIPERS and 6,000 DUNLIN along this shoreline with peak numbers between 5:30 to 5:45 PM.”
View or download the complete festival species checklist: