My birding activates have been restricted the last couple of mouths do to academic problems, but over the weekend I was able to get out a bit.
Saturday evening I went down to the park to see what birds were around.
I saw several shore birds that I had not seen yet this year including, Marbled godwits, Dunlins and western sandpipers. I also saw a Sanderling, I have already seen one of those this year, but I have not seen many of them.
On Sunday I went to the park, lake and the turnaround.
The park and the turnaround were fairly quite. There was a semipalmated plover and some least sand pipers along with a couple of tree swallows at the park. At the turnaround there was a Greater yellowlegs and that was about it.
When I stopped by the lake I saw quite a few swallows flying around, so I stopped at watched them. While I watched them I saw a Cliff swallow and a Violet-green swallow, I have seen both those species in Sitka before, but only once. There were some scaups, Greater white-fronted geese, Cackling geese and some Mallards. While I was trying to get better photos of the swallows I noticed a raptor soaring. I looked at it through my binoculars and realized that it looked like and Golden eagle, which I have never seen in Alaska, so I started taking photos of it as it soared high, then it set it’s wings and headed north.
Cliff swallow
Immature Golden eagle
