Alaska with the BBC

 

I have been unusually quiet for a reason. I just got back from Alaska and working with the BBC to find and film hummingbirds in Juneau. In this age of strangeness, I didn’t want to alert anyone to the fact that I was going to be out of town to protect my home and wife from those who may want to know that kind of thing. I had a great adventure. IMG_1299

 

 

IMG_1292

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got flown up to Alaska to work with some of the most talented guys in the industry. Alex Lanchester has been everywhere in his 10 or so years with the BBC as a producer. He’s made films about Birds of Paradise in Papua New Guinea and met headhunters! It’s a good thing that the BBC finds his head more desirable to have around then headhunters do.   Mark MacEwan was the cameraman and you will have seen his work in almost any BBC animal documentary. He has chased lions through the Savannah, drank the ceremonial blood drink with Masai and been rescued from a charging elephant by Pygmys in the Congo. Talking to these two guys was like watching an Indiana Jones movie!
Alex and Mark

 

 

 

 

 

Mark gave me a choice of his business cards with images from his work, lamenting that all the good ones were gone, but I got a mother elephant cuddling it’s young and that’s a great image.

 

One of the great things about Alex and Mark, who have seen so much of the world’s diverse wildlife, is the reverence with which they hold it. Having seen the most fragile and the most robust species of animals, their over riding purpose is to get people to see the fragility of the planet and to wake up to our overpowering influence. By showing these creatures, we get to know them. When we get to know them, we get to like them. When we like them, we want to protect them. And we have to protect them, especially now.

 

IMG_1296 IMG_1295

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So this was one of the greatest adventures I have ever had. I spent 11 days with a BBC Wildlife camera crew filming hummingbirds in Alaska. That’s my dream vacation!

I had sent up nesting balls for people to put out to enrich the nesting area for the hummingbirds and to see if there was any nesting action. We had a report of nesting activity a few days before we arrived by Don and Darcy so we went right there to look when we arrived. I set up the camera and upon review of the tape, saw quite a nice Rufous female pulling nest material off the ball. I watched that bird for a day, but given the impenetrable forest, decided to move to our next place, the Arboretum.

 

IMG_1177

IMG_1178

IMG_1184

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a city arboretum located a few miles out of Juneau and was home to a wide variety of plants in a beautiful public garden kind of way. Kelly and Meryl crafted it into a beautiful showcase of natural and imported plants, like primroses. It was a beautiful spot right on the water and it was home to about 4 or 5 hummingbirds and a sapsucker. It turns out that hummingbirds follow sapsuckers sometimes and feed at the sap wells that the sapsuckers drill into trees. It’s one of the ways that hummingbirds survive up here.

There were not many hummingbirds at the Arboretum, and I searched an entire two days in the woods and only heard one. Mark was set up to film them at a feeder but he was only getting one an hour. Finding a nest seemed doubtful.

 

IMG_1197 IMG_1215

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we got a call from Anisa who told us that she had a lot of hummingbirds at her house. I went to investigate. Her balcony overlooked Gastineau Channel and offered a great view of Douglas island. Her balcony was about 10 ft by 30 feet faced south. And there were hummingbirds!!! More hummingbirds then I had seen since Costa Rica. Now we had a chance to find a nest and film some birds! I set up a nest ball and when we all arrived the next morning, it was nearly picked apart. Birds were flying in from deep in the rainforest to feed here and now, to get nesting material. I set out to find one. The forest consisted mostly of very tall mossy Hemlocks and Sitka Spruce. Lichen and moss covered all the branches and the ground. Trees and branches had fallen on this ground for millenniums and it showed. Many places, the moss hid deep holes or rotting wood which would grab my leg and pull me down. This was going to be hard. I tried to follow the direction of the birds from the nestball, but I could only follow them for 50 ft before losing them to the trees. I tried to find lower ground cover, like alder or ocean spray, with mixed success. Devil’s club covered most of the ground in devious ways. Devil’s club is a spiny plant that stretches long tendrils with spikes that whip up when you step on them. To top it off, the barb on their thorn has some kind of hook and toxin that causes things to stay under your skin and fester till you give in a dig it out with a needle.

IMG_1210 20140516173346(1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally on the fourth day I found a nest. I was elated! I proudly showed Alex and Mark and set up the camera to monitor and see Mama. Unfortunately she didn’t show up. It was a new nest, not stretched out or weathered, but after a couple of days of hoping, I took a look and saw there were no eggs. They had probably been eaten by some other bird. Crestfallen, I continued looking. I tried everything, listening, watching nest balls, following and just plain walking in the woods hoping to randomly come upon one. I knew they were nesting, I saw them picking nest material. I never did find another. I think the large majority of them nest high in the trees. Also, the Rufous is a very quiet bird compared to the Anna’s that I am used to. They are migratory, instead of resident so they don’t seem to set up territories. They just seem to pull into town and set up camp. There was very little squabbling to be heard. Plus, I think the Rufous is overall a quieter bird.

IMG_1343

Instead we focused on the story of the hummingbirds following sapsuckers. Hummingbirds in Alaska sometimes survive by eating the sap from wells created by Sapsuckers. This is a very valuable food source for them when the weather is cold and flowers are not around. In order to tell that story, Mark and Alex set up stumps on a table on Anisa’s balcony to mimic trees and designed a path for the hummingbirds to follow to get to the feeder. It’s like they had to run a maze to get their sugar fix.

Mark and Alex’s  standards are amazing. Mark would shoot all day for 5 seconds of film. He told me once he trekked for 5 weeks through the Congo to capture 3 minutes of chimpanzee behavior.

Their cameras cost in the upper 5 digits and can be set to record up to 10 seconds prior so you can wait for the action to happen before you have to push record.

Everything is shot at frame rates like 1000 per second or 1500 per second and the clarity is amazing. Even on a sunny day, you would see Mark with a fill light positioned on his lap to make sure it was the richest image he could create.

 

IMG_1308 IMG_1346

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our last day, we had a treat by a sapsucker. Having followed directions to a sapsucker tree which long time naturalist, Bob Armstrong told Alex about, we found the friendliest sapsucker. He came around every 30 minutes and by the end of the day, we were able to be within 10 feet of it and it paid us no mind. It stayed around so long that Mark has year`s worth of footage should the need for sapsucker footage come up.

It was a great experience for me and I learned a lot. I am a richer person for having met Alex and Mark.

 

IMG_1339 IMG_1338 IMG_1335 IMG_1313 IMG_1311 IMG_1305 IMG_1304 IMG_1302 IMG_1288 IMG_1287 IMG_1286 IMG_1290 IMG_1223 IMG_1294