Seward Alaska, 2008 Seabirds and Sea mammals Armendaris Ranch, 2009 Small Critters

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in getting ready for our next adventure, I forget all the things we have done and places we have worked.

Recently I was looking back at some of our blog posts. The pieces below were written by my partner, Sandra Noll, and posted on our blog site at ervandsandra.blogspot.com. They were written a year apart and the contrasts make me smile. Sandra does most of the writing and we both take the pictures. We began the blog 1-1/2 years ago, when we started our trip from Bosque del Apache to follow the cranes to their nesting areas in Alaska.

Since that time, we have covered thousands of miles and worked lots of places, usually as volunteers with temperatures ranging from well below freezing, in Alaska, to 120-plus degrees on the Armendaris here in New Mexico. We have lived in tents, bunkhouses, log cabins, plush lakeside homes and motorhomes. Looking back on the marvelous experiences we have had, I realize how fortunate we are to have chosen this lifestyle. Now we are off to Texas to work with more birds at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge and with birders as canoe guides on the Rio Grande for the World Birding Center in Roma Bluffs, Texas, for the next six months.

I hope you find our travels and columns interesting and will follow us through this newspaper and on our blog.

Our best single-day Alaska experience thus far was the nine-hour glacier and wildlife viewing cruise in Resurrection Bay out of Seward. I use the term cruise as a verb — what the small excursion boat with 34 passengers did vs. cruise ship touring. Our trip took place under overcast skies with occasional sun breaks — a good Alaska day here on the Kenai Peninsula.

We were enchanted by the diversity of sea mammals encountered — Orca (killer) and humpback whales (one Orca did a full breach out of the water); stellar sea lions sunning on rocks in their traditional hauling-out spots along the coastline; Dall's porpoise (speedy wake riders who look a lot like orcas in coloring); the always adorable sea otters and harbor seals floating on glacial ice flows where they were pupping.

Our captain had a special passion for Orca and brought his personal hydrophone, which enabled us to listen to several pods' unique vocalizations by which, in addition to the subtle differences in dorsal fin characteristics, he was able to identify each of three matriarchal groups we encountered.

Seabirds — tufted and horned puffins, cormorants, mures, kittiwakes and gulls — were another delight. A special bonus was a chance to watch two coastal mountain goats grazing, meandering and finally lounging high on the cliffs above us. There were, of course, two regal bald eagles — not as many as in Homer. The scenery was equally as magnificent — snow-capped mountains on either side of the bay, many glittering with gushing waterfalls of spring run-off, some a quarter of a mile in length as they coursed down the mountains; glimpses of the vast Harding ice field (about the size of Rhode Island) high above, and a few of the many fiords and sand bars its glaciers have carved over the millennia. And then, the awesome glaciers themselves, most with blue-tinged areas marking recently "calved" icebergs where the electric blue-reflecting inner layers of dense, ancient ice is exposed; all this in contrast to the varied shades of sea and sky, the new greening leaves and shifting cloud cover. Awesome.

We camped two days near landlocked Exit Glacier to which one can easily hike and even touch. It was a lovely campground with few guests. Food preparation and storage areas were several hundred feet from campsites as a bear precaution. Black bears were sighted while we were there, but not by us. The temperatures were in low 30s at night, which was OK, but the rain on the second night made packing up unpleasant. I was grateful, however, that the rain had stopped by morning. Now it's back at work, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., four days a week until our next three-day adventure! We'll keep you posted!

Although our vistas are large scale, we spend most of our work time on a small piece of real estate about 20 yards square and have become increasingly aware of the small critters that are co-inhabitants in that space.

Being fans of E.O. Wilson, the premier naturalist and ant expert, we've especially enjoyed watching the five or six varieties of these come and go on their daily business. Observing one carrying a dead comrade from the front of the shelter to its ant hill (about 50 feet in 10 minutes) we calculated the human equivalent to be a 5-foot-6 adult carrying an 80-pound weight 1.5 miles in 10 minutes! And we're not alone in this ant fascination. One of our fellow site attendants from the White Sands site — a Tennessee State student — tossed out half a pop tart then counted how many ants it took to pick it up and move it. Our equivalent is ants teaming up to carry away quail parts that fell off the tower as the falcons ate. Fascinating stuff!

While Erv watches ants, I've developed a fascination for lizards and beetles. And neither of us can help but notice the few, but large tarantulas. We've seen lizards eat ants and the roadrunner eat beetles, but never a face-off with a tarantula.

Erv Nichols is a longtime volunteer for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. He and his partner, Sandra Noll, reside part time in Socorro.