Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
water (pelican), pliers ripping apart marshmallows (eagle), but most especially picking up
gummy worms with chopsticks (the aforementioned sandpiper).
At Hartney Bay, a bus disgorges a group of birders bristling with binoculars, cameras
and spotting scopes the size of cannons and we walk out onto mudflats teeming with west-
ern sandpipers. Kelly Weaverling, owner of the local bookstore and enthusiastic amateur
birder, is our guide. “The Copper River Delta has the largest accumulation of shorebirds
in the world,” he tells us. Bird watching is all in the timing. “My favorite thing is to walk
out as far as I can and wait for the tide to come in,” he says. “And then just wait for the
birds to come to me.”
It's a gorgeous day, with a light breeze to keep off the mosquitoes and a mostly clear
horizon, all the better to admire Hawkins and Hinchinbrook Islands, both still with snow
on their peaks. The sandpipers are dark on top and white on the bottom and in flight
they're showing you first one side and then the other in swooping bands of color. “An avi-
an aurora,” Kelly says, and he's not wrong. They swarm like bees from one part of the
shore to the other, forming little living peninsulas that reach out into Orca Inlet.
The birders at Hartney Bay are not only recreational; there is a group of six scientists
who have three gossamer nets strung between slender poles stuck in the mud. It's all part
of an enormous shorebird survey involving the United States Geodetic Survey, the Prince
William Sound Science Center, other government agencies and hundreds of volunteers.
Why the survey? “The western sandpiper is a good indicator of estuary health,” says field
tech Jill Bluso.
“Like the canary in the coal mine,” I say, and she nods. They've been catching forty
sandpipers a day, she says, sandpipers that have traveled all the way up the Pacific coast-
line from Panama. They caught one that had been caught three days before in San Fran-
cisco, which when you look at these birds that stand all of six and a half inches high
hardly seems credible. The technicians take blood and fat samples to determine the im-
portance of stopovers like the Copper River delta to the migrating birds.
What I find as delightful as watching the birds in flight is looking at their footprints in
the sand, accompanied by tiny holes where their beaks have drilled for worms and clams.
Kelly finds a miniature clamshell and holds it up for inspection. “The shorebird's pre-
ferred prix fixe.”
