New Print of The Month
Arctic Loon On Nest on the tundra of the North Slope of Alaska
Our New Print of the Month. www.fallriverphotography.com
Upland Game Bird Sanctuary supporting cast
And of course we have moose in the Sanctuary. These guys like our trees, our trees bark, our lettuce and our strawberries. I don’t like them eating my strawberries.
We have another moose buddy that comes through quite often also. He is a 3 footed moose. Yes that is right a 3 footed moose, he only has 3 feet. I have some photos somewhere, I will find them and post. (No I did not cut off his foot because he ate my strawberries, that would be Ol’ Lipless, but that is another story for another time.)
Upland Game Bird Sanctuary
I found these guys when I was putting out some millet for the pheasants. The winters are a wee bit hard up here so when I found out that I had pheasants I put some food out to help them make it through the winter. I walked out of my garage door with my head down looking at the bag of seed and when I looked up I had almost stepped on this bird. They proceeded to allow me to come right up to within 3 feet or so of them. The information on them says they are very fast runners and can easily out run a hunter. I don’t know if they can out run a 10 gauge from 3 feet away though.
Upland Game Bird Sanctuary
Introducing the Chukar. I did not know pheasants were here in Alaska and now I have them and the Chukar. According to Cornell the Chukar was first introduced to the US in 1893 from what is now the country of Pakistan (formerly Karachi, India). So here we have another bird that thrives in the Central/Midwest up here proliferating under my deck. Yes there is a pair of these too.
Upland Game Bird Sanctuary…..or…… What I find under my Deck
I wonder how many chicks we are going to have running around here this summer?
Upland Game Bird Sanctuary…..or…… What I find under my Deck
Apparently my yard has been designated the new Upland Game Bird Sanctuary for the Greater Mat-Su Metropolitan area. It is open 24/7 and includes grassy areas, alaskan dead falls, grass that is getting over run with clovers, some snow, fireweed, and a nice deck.
For your viewing pleasure, a sampling of two of the six pheasants that have moved into the sanctuary.
Hamming It Up
A trip to Wrangell-St. Elias usually serves up Dall Sheep and bears and birds at the very least. Occasionally we will see a moose and some swans and catch some fish too. Well this trip yielded exactly one crazy squirrel. This guy was all over the campsite and extremely busy gathering stuff for the winter and generally terrorizing our dog. (Just one of our dogs Rojo. Hairy is waaaaay to laid back to care about a squirrel unless it jumped in his mouth.) He also just could not resist coming in and checking out the goods to see if we had anything on his winter stash list. So we shot him.
(with the camera of course.)