The spring season was easy, the right kind of spring among the already flowering alpine azaleas, arctic avens, and windflowers. When green comes to the tundra landscape, new life begins, and birds arrive from places far to the south. I too look forward to my own arrival in this north country. Not so much for the long and dusty roads of this once thriving gold rush landscape but for the wildness it offers today. Nothing can be more rewarding than introducing a small group of nature photographers to the abundance of life as summer unfolds here on the Tundra surrounding Nome, Alaska.
While spring is much about the diversity of birds here, we will get back to that later. With our group’s photographic goals centered on finding and photographing muskox, we aimed to find at least one group or herd of the woolly ungulates each day and spend a good photographic session in as close a proximity as a safe situation would allow. Seeing wild muskox on the open tundra is a wondrous opportunity; photographing them was even more so, and we did photograph Muskox. Over the course of our week, we saw seven different groups and managed to photograph individuals from five of them. Normally fairly stoic, the muskox were excellent photographic subjects. Their long, shaggy coats and curled, upturned horns recall denizens of ancient times. Each group we photographed had two to three newborn calves in tow, adding to the possibilities for action and composition. We were treated to a muskox rodeo one evening, as one of our larger herds seemed to be feeling energetic and took off bucking and chasing each other on a runabout, much like the zoomies.
Other notable mammal sightings included a cow moose with twin spring calves and another with yearlings still following mom. We also had a brief session with an Arctic ground squirrel as it posed upright among some blooming alpine azalea. Of the two red fox sightings, we did manage to stop the van and get off a few shots of a red fox while returning from a morning photographing along the coast.
With spring conditions arriving in the landscape, so did the birds. Nearly every place we stopped along our photographic drives, we could hear the calls and songs of spring migrants. Redpoll songs and Wilson’s snipe winnows filled the air with a background song during many of our shoots.
Willow ptarmigan were plentiful this year, along with a greater abundance of Arctic warblers than in previous years. Of course, bluethroats, eastern yellow wagtails, and red-throated loons were about so we could train our camera on them. There were a goodly number of long-tailed jaegers around this spring, providing for plenty of photographic opportunities.
Later in the week, I like to check out a favorite spot for photographing Aleutian terns. The visit to this location was very successful, as the group managed to locate and photograph seven resting terns, while I sought assistance from a local father-and-son team to help me extract the van from some deep sand I had buried it in.
All told, we had the chance to photograph most of the sixty-plus bird species observed during our trip, though some were easier than others to photograph. Of course, there were the many shorebirds, warblers, sparrows, and waterfowl to photograph. For me, the highlights were the annual chance to sit and photograph quietly with other like-minded photographers among the willows, listening to the bluethroats sing, as well as the time we spent sitting on weathered drift logs along the beach, photographing Lapland longspurs.
I really do love sharing the chance to photograph wildlife in the vast expanse of the tundra, and this year was no different. I believe we all were sorry to see the trip come to an end; I know I was. Like the long-tailed ducks and the western sandpipers we photographed, I hope I have the pleasure of returning next spring to this Arctic place!
