Watch the Birdie and the Volcanoes: The Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands on the Looney Front, Part 4

Eight hours after leaving Sand Point, Alaska Marine Highway System's good ship, Tustumena, pulls into King Cove, back on the Alaska Peninsula and home to the largest salmon cannery in North America, Peter Pan Fisheries.
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Eight hours after leaving Sand Point, Alaska Marine Highway System's good ship, Tustumena, pulls into King Cove, back on the Alaska Peninsula and home to the largest salmon cannery in North America, Peter Pan Fisheries.

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King Cove

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Another view

It's about 6 A.M., and true Alaska weather - overcast, grey, a little drizzle, the surrounding volcanoes shrouded in thick clouds and mist, and a ferocious wind a-blowing. But the ship's solarium, though open at the back, has heaters fitted overhead, so it's fun watching the others shiver.

Three hours later we arrive in Cold Bay at one of the Peninsula's narrowest necks, a few scant miles separating the Bering Sea from the North Pacific. With 108 residents, it's the headquarters of Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, whose officials now take us on a free trip by minibus to watch the birdies, its main source of pride.

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Cold Bay wharf

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Welcome to Cold Bay

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Area map

I'm already a bit wary about this as birders and Yours Truly don't seem to be birds of a feather. I've never quite understood their multiple orgasms. But who should be our guide but Mandy from Hull, U.K, a lass with a strong Yorkshire accent, who ran aground here with her American husband. He works for the Federal Aviation Authority.

It's still Alaska weather and we can't see the apparently magnificent volcanic panorama that surrounds this flat piece of tundra - 9,372-foot Shishaldin and its lower neighbours, Isanotski and Roundtop on the Aleutian island of Unimak, and Pavlof, which has erupted three summers in a row, and Pavlof's Sister on the Peninsula.

But we've come to see the birds, haven't we.

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Some of the area birds - at park's headquarters

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For the birds

'Is that a loon at 8 o'clock,' chirps a birding looney with the Hubble Telescope affixed to his camera.

'I think there's a cackling goose at 4 o'clock,' cackles another.

'Black Stoater (or something similar) at 10 o'clock,' caws another. The bus screeches to a halt, skidding in the gravel.

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Izembek Park

'Long Tailed Wanker at 1 o'clock,' squawks a fourth. Well, I could swear he said wanker, but my hearing being what it is, and my mind also being what it is, he apparently said 'Jaeger.'

They're all getting so excited even I'm going to wet myself by contagion.

'Could you stop please, please, Mr. Driver, please, I've just seen three mallards,' warbles the first birder. He's really got the vapours. And again: 'Mr. Driver, please stop, I believe there's a raptor at 9 o'clock.'

Again the bus screeches to a halt. What the warbler has seen is a plug atop a telephone pole.

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Bering Sea shore

Thank the Lord for Momma Grizzly. Mandy shouts 'bear at 9 o'clock.' And there, way over there, is a mother bear and her cub on a lakeshore. The cub's running all over the place, back and forth, teasing Mummy who plods along behind.

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Momma Grizzly

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Baby Grizzly

Then it runs back to her, snuggling up close. A brief nose-to-nose and it's off again with Momma Grizzly again plodding behind. They're a way off, perhaps 100 yards or more, but you can clearly make them out, and they're very clear with the zoom lens.

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Mother and child

During autumn surveys more than 150 bears have been spotted in the Cold Bay area alone. Today, let's raise a glass to Mother and Child. Without them I would surely go insane among the birders.

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Snuggle-snuggle

Another sanity-saver is the wonder of the tundra. The region is virtually treeless but for a row of low fir trees planted by homesick troops way back in World War II. There's also an artillery gun they left behind, a relic of the U.S. counter-attack after the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands.

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WWII relic

But if you look under foot on this spongey, stream-crisscrossed ground, especially at Grant's Point on the Bering Sea, you'll find magnificent dwarf forests barely an inch or two high, tiny deep green plants resembling firs and others, and expanses of lighter green mosses and yellow-green and golden lichen.

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Grant's Point

Patches of minuscule flowers dapple these nano-forests - purple and violet, crimson and red, pink, blue, yellow, white. I don't manage to snap any birds but I get these stationary targets. It's a true wonderland of kaleidoscopic colours.

Tundra blooms

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Bye-bye, Cold Bay

On the way from Cold Bay to False Pass, the gods are again smiling. The clouds lift, the sun shines bright, and the huge ice-white flanks of Isanotski appear in all its lofty glory - twin-horned peaks, one 8,135 feet, the other 8,025 feet.

To its side, 6,140-foot Roundtop gleams brilliant white. I'm quietly enjoying the views outside the Tustumena's solarium, albeit in a fierce wind, when I'm accosted by the birder-in-chief.

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Isanotski and Roundtop

'Did you see the fork-tailed storm petrels,' he pants. 'Did you see them? There were hundreds of them.'

'Well, not exactly, Your Grace,' quoths I, 'I was paying reverence to yon fork-tailed volcano and its little sister. Do you see them?'

'What volcanoes,' he caws gruffly.

'Yonder, Your Grace, with the twin horns and...' He looks, sees them apparently for the first time, and merely caws a disinterested 'oh.'

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Isanotski

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Zoom-in

False Pass on the Aleutian island of Unamik, at the land's end of the Alaska Peninsula, is so named because the passage from the Bering Sea into the North Pacific is so shallow at the Bering end that large ships can't get through. But huge whales and hugely fierce winds from the Arctic have no trouble at all in getting past.

It's the only surviving Aleut village on Unamik, with some 40 people. Commercial salmon fishing is the mainstay, and as for volcanoes, 27 of the most active fire-breathers in the U.S. are in the region.

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False Pass

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End of the Alaska Peninsula

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Way to the rear is the entrance to the Bering Sea

A walk round the spread-out village, with a U.S. Post Office and a few scattered houses, reveals two totalled ambulances among a pile of wrecked vehicles. It also reveals the tiny purple, pink and blue flowers of the tundra, ice fields, and treeless hills, whose sage green hues recall the Faroes or Iceland.

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Totalled ambulance

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Flowers

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Inland view

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View towards Tustumena and end of Alaska Peninsula

As we move out through the choppy pass back into the Pacific, the sun silhouettes Isanotski. It rises behind us like a giant Mayan pyramid.

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Mayan pyramids

Yet one further weather miracle awaits. We've yet to see 9,372-foot Shishaldin. There, to starboard, high in the sky, a tiny dark triangle appears above a thick cloud bank, emitting a puff of white smoke from its cone. Wow, it's elected a pope.

Gradually, the thick veil of clouds, fog and mist dissipates, here too. The whole massive cone-shaped bulk emerges, a dark silhouette against the rays of the sun.

[Upcoming blog on Thursday: Unalaska and Dutch Harbor, in the heart of the Aleutian Islands]

Shishaldin views

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______________
By the same author: Bussing The Amazon: On The Road With The Accidental Journalist, available with free excerpts on Kindle and in print version on Amazon.

Swimming With Fidel: The Toils Of An Accidental Journalist, available on Kindle, with free excerpts here, and in print version on Amazon in the U.S here.

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