Saturday, August 29, 2020 Pacific Golden-plovers!

Seward, Alaska

Sunrise 6:48 am, sunset 9:11 pm for a total day length of 14 hours and 23 minutes. Tomorrow will be 5 minutes and 22 seconds shorter.

Today’s high reached 56º but the calm, sunny morning soon hid her smile. By noon a strong south wind kicked up white caps on the bay and glowering dark clouds surged over the mountains. Bouts of heavy rain began by early evening with more forecast for the next 10 days.

Knowing the forecast, I enjoyed a great walk along the tidelands this morning. I heard one SEMIPALMATED PLOVER but saw no other shorebirds; it seemed very quiet. Then I saw two PACIFIC GOLDEN-PLOVERS standing quietly about 15 feet away. They watched me without fear, as if I were the first person they’d ever seen. I crept around them to put the sun behind me and on them. What beautiful, gold-flecked shorebirds!

I recalled being smitten when first seeing this species nesting in the tundra in Denali National Park many years ago. How special for Seward to be part of their long migration to and from Hawaii. After fattening up on amphipods and other invertebrates, they could fly the 2800 miles to their same overwintering territory in Hawaii in 3-4 days.https://phys.org/news/2011-06-plovers-tracked-pacific.html

Cool note from Wikipedia, their genus Puvialis means relating to rain, from the Latin “pluvial”. How appropriate!

Bon voyage! Hope to see you back here in the spring!

Happy Birding!
Carol Griswold
Seward Sporadic Bird Report Reporter

Update:

Many thanks to Pat Pourchot who noted that I most likely saw American Golden-plovers nesting in Denali. Pacific Golden-plovers breed in coastal western Alaska. The sighting was so long ago, he also noted that technically it could have been the same species, as that was before the species were split.