Chuginadak

 Monday August 24

This morning we approached Chuginadak, the largest of the “Islands of the four mountains” group west of Unalaska. These are volcanic islands created only about 10 thousand years ago. They are so rugged and isolated that they have never been inhabited. All four islands are part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and permission must be obtained to land in specific locations. Chuginadak includes Mount Cleveland, a still active volcano (last eruption 2022) which is monitored because an ash cloud here could disrupt a lot of pan-pacific flight patterns. As far as the local pilot knew, no tourist vessel has gone ashore here in recent memory, and certainly none of the staff or crew of our ship had. 

As we pulled in to Shiff Cove, the winds were at 40 knots and gusting higher, with the beach a collection of kelp-covered (slippery!) boulders. Not a good landing spot, although the landscape itself was lovely and green. We proceeded to the second of our permitted landing sites (Appleton Cove), and while the wind was still fierce, a gently sloping black sand beach allowed us to land and go ashore. A bumpy zodiac ride got us to shore, where we disembarked in knee-deep surf. We hiked for about 90 minutes through a landscape our guide described as “the surface of the moon”. It was great to hike, but between the wind and the sand, it was a workout!  Once back on the ship we cruised past the other islands, pausing by bird cliffs full of Common Murres. The volcano cones of the islands played hide and seek with the clouds and fog throughout our visit. 

Pictured: sunrise, lovely waterfall at Shiff cove, our black sand hiking landscape, Mount Cleveland from Appleton cove, fumerole from our ship cruise, the cliff of murres. 

Unalaska—birds and whales

 Sunday August 23rd

Overnight into Sunday we traveled south, reaching the uninhabited Baby Islands by mid morning. We sailed past thousands of sea birds in the air and on the water, and at the Baby Islands found ourselves near a rookery for Tufted Puffins. It was hard to even look for other birds because the puffins were so numerous and distracting. We also got our first look at Steller Sea Lions, the largest species in North America.  The fog raised and lowered throughout the morning, adding to the viewing and photography challenges. 

Sunday afternoon the group split up to do several activities around Dutch Harbor, some related to local history and some to nature. We chose a nature walk and saw more sea lions, sea otters and both songbirds and seabirds. The weather was sunny and warm, a real change from the morning. 

Dutch Harbor is the port for the city of Unalaska, population 4200. It is one of the largest fishing ports in the US and central to the King and Snow Crab industries. The nearest town of any size (Kodiak) is 600 miles to the east. As isolated as that sounds, we are at the eastern end of the Aleutians and have many hundreds of miles yet to go. 

Unalaska Island has been inhabited by the Aleut people for thousands of years, and was an important Russian fur trade site. There was a US military base in Dutch Harbor created after the 1942 attack. 

Many of the birds we have been seeking (and seeing) are members of the auk family.  These are birds like puffins who swim underwater with their wings rather than their feet and can fly (sometimes a bit awkwardly). They tend to be black on the back and white on the tummy, which is camouflage both with respect to avian predators and the prey that the auks pursue underwater. All are colonial nesters, meaning that whether they nest in burrows or on ledges, they return to nesting sites with hundreds of their friends and relations. The largest current auk is the thick-billed murre (18” body length) and the smallest is the least auklet (6”). We have seen both, as well as many other species in the same family.

At dinner, as we headed away from Dutch Harbor into deeper water along the north shore of Unalaska Island, we thought we saw the “blow” from a pod of whales off to the side of the ship. The captain pivoted the ship to increase our chances of seeing them. As we ran up to the bow, we encountered an amazing sight. Directly in front of the bow, the sea was black with seabirds, literally thousands of shearwaters (medium sized sea birds), as well as gulls and fulmars and puffins and murres. There were also about 20 humpback whales which moved back and forth sucking in herring and then closing their baleen-filled mouths to strain the water back out. We stood mesmerized. As the ship got closer to the action, we heard the sound of rain on the water—- but it was the herring, surfacing in pursuit of their own prey (phytoplankton ) that tends to rise to the surface around dusk. Amazing.

Finally, just at sunset (and moonrise), about 10 pm, a pod of killer whales chose to feed near the ship. Credit to our captain and her pilots for getting us into position for both of these encounters. 

Pictured: Kittlitz’s murrelet, American pipit, Arctic ground squirrel, bald eagle, feeding frenzy, humpback feeding amongst the birds, male killer whale 

The Pribilof Islands

 Saturday August 22nd

Overnight and on Saturday morning we traveled another 200 miles south to St Paul, the more northerly of the Pribilof Islands. It has about 400 residents. These islands are a famous birding destination during spring and fall migration, and even now in mid-summer the islands host a few species that are hard to see elsewhere. St Paul is also the location of a vast Northern Fur Seal rookery. 

We were very lucky to have clear skies and mild winds; the locals said it had been very foggy for weeks. We walked to the seal rookery, where we enjoyed watching mothers and pups. We also got to see a few males, away from the rookery, and sea birds on the cliffs.  We had hoped to cruise past the bird cliffs on St George (the other island of the Pribilofs) after dinner to see the colonies of red-legged kittiwakes, but the fog closed in, preventing views. 

The Pribilof islands were uninhabited until the mid 1800s, when Russian fur trappers brought Unangan (Aleuts) from Unalaska to work the seal processing plants. The local population rapidly merged with the Russians (many of whom were from Siberia, rather than from European Russia), creating a respected and well educated creole class. The Unangans  adopted the Russian Orthodox faith and Russian names. The church in turn incorporated many concepts from the nature-focused local religion to make the transition easier. The creoles were literate in both Russian and Aleut, and had positions of authority in the seal fur business.

That all changed when the US bought Alaska in 1867. The American government took direct control of the seal fur business and changed the Unangans into government employees. Basically the Aleuts were treated as “Native Americans”: the Unangan managers were replaced with Americans; it was forbidden to speak the Aleut language in public or in the schools, and local cultural traditions were encouraged to fade away. The Unangans were not recognized as US citizens until 1924. 

In 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor, several sites in the Aleutians were bombed by the Japanese. The US government forced anyone with 1/8 or higher Unangan heritage to evacuate from the Pribilof Islands. They were sent to a camp in SE Alaska without running water or sufficient supplies. When they returned to their homes they found they had been ransacked by US troops; even the icons from the church had been taken.

The seal fur trade was banned in 1983, and the community has struggled since then. The islands are working hard to re-establish Unangan customs and to save the language while there are still some native speakers to instruct others. Unexpectedly, the fur seal population has not recovered but continues to decline. It is suspected that a combination of commercial fishing and climate change have reduced the available food supply, and there is great concern about the possible introduction of bird flu. 

Pictured: male Northern Fur Seal, St. Paul with Orthodox Church, seal pup nursing, Horned Puffin, helmeted crab 

First days in the Aleutians

 Thursday August 20th and Friday August 21st 

We flew to Anchorage on Wednesday August 19th and on to Nome on the 20th, where we boarded our ship.  Nome has been inhabited by indigenous tribes for centuries, but the American city of Nome grew (explosively ) due to the 1898 Klondike gold rush, especially after gold was found along the shoreline. Today Nome is about 3700 people, over 70% of them Alaska native. It is courtesy of the native Alaskans that the city has a good medical center and other services. Gold dredging is still an important local industry, as is fishing. The houses are built on pylons to avoid melting the permafrost. There is a sea wall and protected harbor, with a plan to extend the sea wall and dredge a deeper port in support of increased US military presence in the Arctic. 

We headed south to St. Matthew Island, a volcanic island formed 80 million years ago, and located about 320 nautical miles south of Nome. Numerous sea birds accompanied us on our travel. When we arrived mid-afternoon Friday, the ship moored off shore, we suited up in waterproof gear and muck boots, and headed ashore.  We walked along a pebbled beach searching for wildlife.  Between the time at sea and the time ashore we saw 17 kinds of birds, 6 of them new to us. It was particularly fun to see a McKay’s Bunting during our walk. It is the only endemic bird in Alaska. 

St. Matthew Island has been uninhabited for most of its history. The exception was a brief period during WWII when the Coast Guard established a temporary radar station there. They also introduced reindeer as an emergency food source. As has happened on other islands, the original 29 reindeer grew to over 6,000 by 1963. However harsh winters and overpopulation caused the number of reindeer to drop to 42 by 1965  and by 1980 they reindeer were gone. 

Saint Matthew is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, so before we went ashore every piece of outerwear (including our backpacks) had to be checked and cleaned to prevent the introduction of non-native seeds or dirt (spores) into the environment. We also step into a biocide to clean our boots before leaving the ship. Upon returning we must scrub our boots and again step into the biocide. This will be the routine throughout our time in the Aleutians. 

Pictured: McKay’s Bunting, Parakeet Auklets, Rock Sandpiper, Nome waterfront, Tufted Puffin 

Atka Island

 Tuesday August 25

Atka, Andreanof Islands

Today we stopped at two bays on the north side of Atka. Atka is the largest island in the Andreanof chain, about midway along the Aleutian archipelago. The island is about 50 miles long and ranges from 2 to 20 miles across. 

Our first stop was Bechevin Bay. This is one of nine locations included in the World War II Valor in the Pacific monument. It is the location of the (successful) emergency landing of a B24 Liberator weather reconnaissance plane in 1943. We hiked through really beautiful bogs to the plane remains. The sea was calm, the sun came out, the landscape was beautiful, and we got to watch an Arctic Fox on the beach. A great morning. 

In the afternoon we moored in Wall Bay. Some of our colleagues kayaked in the bay while we went on another marsh grass hike, admiring caribou as we went. The caribou were introduced from Siberia in the nineteenth century, but still play an important role in the food supply for the 100 people who live in the town of Atka on the far eastern end of the island. A few of us walked further along the bluffs and were rewarded with several kinds of ducks and songbirds. It is also important to say that the landscape today, grassy treeless slopes with volcanic highlands behind, were really beautiful and a great contrast from the windswept black sands of yesterday. 

Pictured: Arctic Fox, Caribou, B24 Liberator, landscapes, Lapland Longspur in breeding colors with his dinner

Update/correction on languages

 The Malay language uses the Latin alphabet, and sometimes the Arabic alphabet. Malay is a language that is used across Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Indonesia, and has roots in Sanskrit, Arabic, Tamil and more recently Dutch and English. It has no verb tenses, no gender classes, no plural forms and new words are created by combining existing ones. There are regional differences; for example, in Indonesia there is a higher incidence of loan words from Dutch, while in Malaysia there are more English loan words. Malaysian Mandarin is a completely different language used by the Chinese-background community, which  uses Chinese-style characters. 

Final day in Borneo and reflections on Malaysia

 May 6

On our final morning we left at 4am, driving for 2 hours to reach a private bird viewing location at 1800 m  in the Crocker Range as the sun rose.  The young family that operates this venue took an abandoned “home stay” complex and built a long covered porch overlooking a wooded slope. They added shrubs, water features, and logs on which to set out birdseed and grubs to attract the birds. Simple, attractive, and very effective. 

While we did not see many new species, it was certainly a new experience to see them less than 3 feet away instead of high in the trees or running through the underbrush. There was a “hide” at the bottom of the hill dedicated to seeing partridges, so we got another chance at the roadside glimpse from yesterday of the Red-breasted Partridge. We also did a little roadside birding looking for specific mountain endemics.  We got to watch a Mountain Barbet repeatedly bring food into its nest in the hollow of a large dead tree. 

After lunch we departed to drive back to Kota Kinabalu. This is a 90 minute drive if conditions are good; however on a previous trip a landslide closed the road forcing an 8-hour detour, so our guides were taking no chances.  As we started driving out of the mountains a heavy rainstorm began, lending some credence to the landslide idea. As we reentered the lowlands the rain stopped and the heat and humidity increased (but not nearly as high as earlier in the trip).  Since we had no issues on the road, we had time for a quick birding stop by the beach in Kota Kinabalu, where we saw several new and beautiful birds, particularly the Blue-naped Parrot. 

We have a bit more verification work to do in terms of our bird viewing lists, but our current estimate is that across the two trips / three weeks we saw over 300 new species of birds, 10 primates, 12 squirrel species, about a dozen other mammals as well as a few snakes, assorted insects, and dozens of amazing butterflies.

Malaysia is a very multicultural country. Unlike some countries where “multicultural” means that  the different cultures are somewhat invisible in daily life, here the prevalence of Islamic and Chinese communities affects signage, what foods are served in restaurants, and the rhythm of the society.  To our inexperienced ears, the Malay language sounds similar to Chinese, and in some communities the signage (particularly at restaurants), uses Chinese-like symbols, On other signs, the Latin alphabet is used to transliterate the Malay, a remnant of its history as a British colony. And in some communities Arabic symbols predominate, particularly on schools or houses of worship. Most of the restaurants we ate in served variants of Chinese dishes, with an occasional curry available. For most of the Peninsular Malaysia we noticed a high content of Islamic dress, reminders of the direction of Mecca on the ceilings of hotel rooms, and broadcast calls to prayer. Once we reached the Selangor area on that trip, the incidence of Buddhist temples increased. On our Borneo trip, we did not see a large Islamic presence except in Kota Kinabalu itself, but most restaurants did not serve alcohol, and advertised whether or not they were halal. As we moved into the mountains, every village had a Catholic Church. In the Danum Valley, the cultures of indigenous communities are particularly highlighted and protected. 

The people of Malaysia with whom we interacted were kind, friendly, and everyone spoke at least some English. Younger people had excellent language skills. It is, in that regard, an easy country to visit. 

Pictured: Blue-naped Parrot, Long-tailed Parakeet, Mountain Barbet (with debris from his breakfast), Bornean Leafbird, Red-breasted Partridge, Bornean Spiderhunter.