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Fins to Feather

by Scarlet Colley - September - 2003

Marlow’s on the Kenai. What a coincidence. Fins to Feathers calls Marlow’s on the Kenai to make reservations for a birding tour on the river, stay at their B&B and do some fishing. Ken Marlow answers and remarks that yes they know who we are. Here we are way down on South Padre Island, they are in Alaska and they know who we are? It turns out they came down for the Harlingen Birding Festival last fall and took one of the tours that we lead to the Island. Small World! So we booked a private float trip down the Kenai, three nights at their B&B over looking the river and asked about fishing. We would then go on to Seward to visit with local Capt. Sam, a great friend that is running Whale watching excursions there in the summer and wintering here.

This was our first trip to the Northwest area and after two days in Bellingham and Vancouver off we flew to Anchorage, rented a SUV and off to Kenai. We stopped in to eat at an off the beaten path restaurant and watched black bear walk across the parking lot as we ate. There were flowers everywhere and though our primary target was to look for birds that we had never seen before the flowers and magnificent trees stole the show. As we came to a T in the road, left for Seward, right for Kenai, we turned to the right and immediately spotted a highly prized sight, trumpeter swans with their young. What a graceful beauty and a new bird for our list.

We found our way to the Marlow’s arriving at midnight. It was still light. In fact it never got dark the whole stay there. The Marlow’s were still up and greeted us with thumbs up on the weather for the next day’s river trip. There were people fishing all night on the river. Ken found bird after bird for us and took us to his special spot for the red-throated loon. Eagles were every where. The warblers we saw were so vibrant in color which they lose on their migration when we see them here on the Island. The little birds were so high up in the trees that we had to crane our necks to see them. Something we are not use to when we bird here. The woodpeckers were everywhere and we saw the three-toed, hairy and the downy. The Boreo chickadee was on our list to see and there it was on above our heads scolding us. Many of the birds we would hear before we would see them. Knowing bird calls was a must for this kind of birding. The river was lined with fisherman and that evening a man was mutilated by a grizzly on the Russian River and it was then closed to night fishing and sent a plethora of fisherman to the Kenai. We never saw any more bears but we did see moose right next to the cabin. The Marlow’s place, right on the Kenai is wonderful and the fisherman staying with them were hauling in the Salmon. We quit after one beauty weighing over ten pounds. We ate for two days on that one.

With an impressive new birds list we headed off to Seward where Capt. Sam awaited us and took us onboard his vessel the Star of the Northwest. The weather was so warm we were wearing our South Padre Island garb and brought jackets for the boat trip. First thing we saw were sea otters floating on their backs as we drifted by. Then Stellar’s sea lions played with us, starfish decorated the rocks as Sam nosed the vessel in for close looks. The water was deep right up to the rocky shoreline. Birds were everywhere, flying and floating on the water. I heard an oyster catcher and knew that it was the Black one that Capt. Sam pointed out to us on near by rocks. That was one of our top birds to see. The nesting areas of many of the birds were in the rocky cliff sides.

We could hear the other Whale watching boats reporting their sighting of Dahl’s porpoise and soon the little things approached us and played in the wake. Puffins and Cormorants were everywhere. This trip we had the pleasure of seeing the red-faced and pelagic cormorants and both the Horned and Tufted Puffins. Capt. Sam took us on the Kenai Star the next day and we dined on Salmon and Prime Rib buffets and saw both humpback and killer whales. Capt. Sam took us to the Seward sea life center where we got the back scene tour and there we saw the marine life up close. The octopus gave us a show and was so much bigger than our’s get here.

Capt. Sam was proud to say that just a few weeks before Father Tom Pincelli, Nila Wipf, Linda and Beto Silva of Harlingen were there on the boat with him and he noticed they were birding and they looked familiar. Father Tom asked Sam where he was from and he said Port Isabel in the winter and when Father Tom said he was from Harlingen Sam asked him if he knew Fins to Feathers and they all said of course they know George and Scarlet. They had all seen the yellow-billed loon with us on the Laguna Madre which is an Alaskan bird and hard to find in Alaska! Again a small world. The trip was all to short and a whole summer there would do just fine. What an awesome, breathtaking place. The glacier air must be the purest air in the world. Both the Marlow’s and Major Marine tours have websites and some of my pictures are on the Major Marine Tours website. Majormarine.com and Marlowsonthekenai.com are their websites and ours is fin2feather.com. What a trip and think that arriving in Washington State was only half way to Alaska. We were on the tourist end this trip instead of the tour guide. It was fun to have our own tour guides and thanks to the web and friends we found great ones and it was worth every penny. The knowledge shared was endearing to their love for their home and the nature around it. We saw over one hundred and sixty five species of birds in three weeks and sixty five of them were new for us to see. We are getting close to having seen five hundred birds on our list now and the five hundredth one will be in the Rio Grande Valley somewhere and maybe even on South Padre.

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