Alaska, Day 10

Our last day in Alaska was a long one. David and I rented a car to do some birding on our own. We wound up spending most of the day at the Alaska Bird Observatory and Creamer's Dairy. We had all day to bird, our flight wasn't till 9:30 at night, which meant flying all night, but it was worth it to have that last day there:

Us at the Alaksa Bird Observatory
(ABO). I look frowny in a lot of
pictures, but it's just from
trying to take a self-portrait
with the iPhone with the sun in my
eyes. This is an example of that.

A HUGE great horned
owl swooped over me
as I was crossing this
bridge on one of the
ABO trails.

I felt really guilty when I realized
that I had startled the owl and made
him drop his breakfast. So
the owl didn't get to eat, and the
vole died in vain. I felt like a
jerk, but it was an accident.

This was another lifer, the
Bohemian waxwing.

Geese and sandhill cranes at
Creamer's Dairy WMA.

Right after I lamented that we
hadn't seen any spiders, we
encountered this guy. Not sure
what he is, he looks kind of similar
to our fishing spiders.

The ABO had a really
nice collection of
taxidermied birds. They
were way easier to
photograph than the live
ones. This is a
ptarmigen in winter
plumage.

Magpie

Owl

Raven - these are HUGE

Cant remember - falcon?

Ptarmigen in summer plumage.

Owl

Hawk?

Me and David being
accosted by a stuffed
owl.

My regular camera
card was full, so I
decided to try digiscoping
with the iPhone. Not too bad!

Really pretty red
mushrooms.

Me in front of the
Creamer's Dairy sign. It
turns out that they didn't
specialize in cream, the
dairy owner's name was
actually Creamer.

This is a bug trap. The
university is studying bugs.

We were walking along this path
at the ABO, and this HUGE moose
was RIGHT on the path!! I was afraid
to get any closer than this.

We really had a great
time in Fairbanks. We
are already talking about
me taking a sabbatical
from work Summer 2014
to go back and work at
the bird banding station
or to volunteer at some of
the parks!

Funny story here. We stopped for
snacks at a place called The
Cookie Jar. As we were devouring
a Death By Chocolate, I looked
over and saw an add for my gym on
the back of the menu. I laughed
and just had to go take this picture for
Alison, Michael, Heather and all the
boot campers.