Grand Alaska: Ultimate Nome

Bluethroat © Barry Zimmer

Designed to provide the ultimate Nome birding experience, with five days to thoroughly explore the varied tundra and coastal habitats of Alaska’s old gold-rush capital for some of Alaska’s most iconic and sought-after breeding birds, including Bluethroat, Bristle-thighed Curlew, Gyrfalcon, and others. This tour is also timed to maximize the chances for exciting migrants as well as breeders, including regular Alaskan migrants such as Emperor Goose, Sabine’s Gull, Red Phalarope, and Pomarine Jaeger, and, for vagrants from Asia, one or more of which have frequently delighted our late-May and early-June groups. Mammal viewing is often excellent, with Grizzly, Muskox, and Moose, among others, all regularly seen.

If one were to poll bird tour guides as to their favorite spot to guide in Alaska, a hefty percentage would rank the Nome region at the top of the list, and without hesitation! Nome, the old gold-rush capital of Alaska, still retains much of the frontier character that typifies the Alaskan bush, and its network of lightly traveled gravel roads allows ready access to a wonderful cross-section of alpine and coastal tundra habitats. Nome can boast of being home to many of Alaska’s most special breeding birds (including Arctic Loon, Rock and Willow ptarmigan, Gyrfalcon, Bristle-thighed Curlew, Bar-tailed Godwit, Rock Sandpiper, Long-tailed Jaeger, Aleutian Tern, Bluethroat, Northern Wheatear, Eastern Yellow Wagtail, and others). It also offers a diverse assemblage of more familiar North American species, but in unfamiliar, more colorful, breeding plumages, and in very different settings than those occupied on their wintering grounds, where most birders are used to seeing them—think Surfbirds amid alpine flowers; Wandering Tattlers, Harlequin Ducks and Arctic Terns along rushing rivers; Red-throated and Pacific loons and Black Scoters yodeling from tundra ponds; or male Lapland Longspurs and Wilson’s Snipe singing from atop road signs or even telephone wires! Nome is also home to a diverse mammalian fauna, including such iconic species as Muskox, Moose, Brown Bear (Grizzly), and Reindeer (an introduced subspecies of Caribou).

It should be noted that each of VENT’s Nome tour offerings will rightly focus on the many breeding specialties of the Seward Peninsula, but the Ultimate Nome Tour is designed and timed to allow twice as much time to exploit the late-May peak period for migrants, both northbound North American species that do not normally breed around Nome (Emperor Goose, eiders other than Common Eider, Black Turnstone, Red Phalarope, Pomarine Jaeger, Sabine’s Gull, and a variety of other waterfowl and shorebirds), as well as Asiatic vagrants. There are usually a few Red-necked Stints and Slaty-backed Gulls hanging around, and, in past years, this has proven the best time for occasional Asiatic vagrants, particularly shorebirds, among them, Common Ringed Plover, Siberian Sand-Plover, Great Knot, Wood Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, and Gray-tailed Tattler. Non-shorebird vagrants that have turned up at this time range from waterfowl (Whooper Swan, Common Pochard, Tundra Bean Goose), to Common Cuckoo, to gulls (Common Black-headed, Ross’s, and Ivory), to passerines (Gray Wagtail, Red-throated Pipit, Siberian Rubythroat, Hawfinch, and Brambling). Of course, NONE of these vagrants are to be expected on any given trip, but the timing is optimal, and with five days to cover the more dynamic spots thoroughly, we will be perfectly positioned to turn up some surprises.

Ultimate Nome can be taken as a stand-alone tour, or in conjunction with our Pribilofs & Anchorage Pre-Trip, which features breeding seabirds and superb chances for Asiatic vagrants at St. Paul Island, as well as a sampling of boreal forest birds around Anchorage. It can also be taken as a pre-trip to our Gambell & Nome Tour, for those desiring a double-dip of the fabulous Nome experience.

Good accommodations; mostly easy to moderate terrain; mostly roadside birding, with some easy, short walks, and with one optional longer hike (for Bristle-thighed Curlew) involving difficult terrain; commercial flights on large jets between Nome and Anchorage; mostly long days in the field at Nome (typically with picnic lunches and late dinners); other days, perhaps involving early dinner followed by optional post-dinner birding; generally cold climate with temperatures ranging from low 30s F to 50ºF or higher.

Spectacled Eider © Kevin Zimmer