Russia: The Far East

Kamchatka Brown Bear

I realize this is a long post, so grab a cup or bottle of your favorite beverage and have a look. 


After our land-based birding was completed it was time to join our 50 passenger expedition ship. An evening departure on June 25th from the port in Petropovlovsk-Kamchatskiy had us steaming north along the Kamchatka peninsula after a pleasant sunset cruise out of the bay. 

Our home for two weeks

Susan awaits departure - "Bring on the birds!"

The Three Brothers guard the entrance to the bay

Orcas! Right out of the gate!

This was our intended route for the trip, and mostly we stuck to it. Some minor modifications were made for weather and better landing or zodiac cruising conditions.

Our first full day had us zodiac cruising the Zhupanova River. The key bird to get here is Steller's Sea Eagle. There were several individual birds and an occupied nest that gave us great views. The haul-out of Largha (Spotted) Seals on a shallow sandbar was pretty cool too. Apparently there were numerous excellent bear sightings by some of the five zodiacs in the water but we didn't see any of them other than dots on a far away hillside. Our zodiac driver was new and apparently inadequately trained as he was far too hesitant and didn't keep up with the other boats.

Zodiak cruising the river

Largha (Spotted) Seals

Black-headed Gull

After lunch we started the long overnight cruise out to the Commander Islands, named for Commander Vitus Bering, whose ship, the St. Peter, wrecked on Bering Island in 1741. It was returning from a discovery voyage to Alaska. If you want to read a fantastic book on Bering, Steller, and the voyages of the St. Peter and St. Paul, check out "Where the Sea Breaks it's Back", by Corey Ford.

Our first landing was at Medny Island. A decent number of passerines and sea birds call this island home. 

Landing site at Medny Island

Lapland Longspur

Pechora Pipit

Arctic Fox

Red-legged Kittiwakes

From Medny we steamed over to the the larger Bering Island. We visited the small village of Nikolskoye, the only permanently inhabited location on the islands. A visit to the tiny museum got us a look at the only complete skeleton of the extinct Steller's Sea Cow. 

Walking Nikolskoye

Steller's Sea Cow

Vitus Bering

Lesser Sand Plover

Another long ocean ride got us back to the mainland and to the tiny island of Verkhoturova for a walk along the seabird cliffs. It was great and the time here was all too short. 

Sperm Whale seen on the way there

And an immature Short-tailed Albatross was seen while cruising back to the mainland!

Walking the cliff top for puffins

The cliff we climbed and walked along is in the center

Steller's Sea Lions

Black-legged Kittiwakes

Harlequin Ducks

Tufted Puffin

Pelagic Cormorant

Checking out the gulls

Back along the coast the next day we started our search for Spoon-billed Sandpiper nesting areas. Spoon-billed Sandpiper is one of the most endangered birds on the planet with perhaps just over 200 breeding pairs in existence. They breed only within a limited area on the Russia far east coast in very specific tundra habitat. This trip was advertised as partly a search for Spoon-billed which is one of the reasons why I wanted to go. Our first search area was a bit of a "pig in a poke," as it had never been searched before but "looked good on the satellite map." We spend all morning in multiple teams walking in spaced lines about 15 meters apart. Not only did we not find any sign of spoonies, but the overall bird life in this tundra habitat was pretty sparse. This was the start of a trend, and very disappointing.

Walking the tundra

The afternoon zodiac cruise was much better. We entered a protected bay near a river mouth and had a fantastic bear encounter - as good as it gets. The Kamchatka Brown Bear (a subspecies closely related to the North American Grizzly) has been highly persecuted in Russia and generally runs away at the sight of humans. To get a couple of bears to allow 5 zodiacs of tourists up close and personal was fantastic. Had our zodiac driver and primary bird guide for the expedition not been so determined to make sure the HE got the best angles for photos with the zodiac position, it might have been even better. We've been all over the world and with many guides. A paid guide should be first and foremost taking care of his clients, and not focused on taking personal photographs. Oh well...

Kamchatka Brown Bear

Along with the bears we checked out an old shipwrecked fishing trawler that the gulls found quite convenient.

Bear beach

The next morning, July 1, had the ship cruising up the deep but narrow fjord of Yuzhnaya Glubokaya with supposed amazing views, but the weather didn't cooperate as the cloud ceiling was nearly down on the deck. 

A quick motor up the coast brought us to Laguna Tintikun, another small fjord that we could zodiac to and hit the beach. There wasn't much happening here with few birds and limited scenery.

And finally a little farther up the coast we landed briefly at a former mink farm on Bukhta (Bay) Lavrova. It must have been quite the operation at one time. None of our trip leaders knew any of the history of the place (really?), so we just wandered around a little. We heard that a bear got between two groups of our party for a few minutes that made for some excitement. On leaving in the zodiacs we had another bear along the shore that lingered for a few photos.

On July 2 we departed early from the ship for another Spoon-billed Sandpiper survey. This one turned out like the last but at least the habitat looked a little better for them. There were virtually no other nesting shorebirds or passerines on this vast tundra which made for a disappointing 4.5 mile walk. 

Surveying the tundra

A fly by immature White-tailed Eagle

While waiting to start our survey I managed to grab this sequence of a feeding kittiwake

In the afternoon we spent a couple hours walking around the shore at Expedition Bay. It was a lovely afternoon with beautiful weather. But again there were virtually no birds present. 

The flowers here, and most everywhere we went, were
spectacular. Susan will do an entire post dedicated to flowers.

Red-throated Pipit

The following day was full of activities with three landings and zodiac cruises at Buktha Glubokaya, Ostrov (Isle) Bogoslova, and Bukhta Pavla. Buktha Glubokaya was a short landing near a tumbling stream. The birding was poor at best. 

Ostrov Bogoslova had a good assortment of seabirds.

Bukhta Glubohaya with Ostrov Bogoslova on the right

Black-legged Kittiwakes

Common Murre

Harlequin Ducks

Parakeet Auklets

Parakeet Auklet

Pigeon Guillemot

Pigeon Guillemot

Pigeon Guillemot

Tufted Puffin

Tufted Puffins

Horned Puffin

Our final landing of the day at Buktha Glubokaya was another disappointment where we were pretty much left on our own for an hour spent searching for passerines with very little success. 

July 4 was a bust. We were scheduled to go ashore early at a location where Spoon-billed Sandpiper nests had been located in years past to look for them again. A large swell from a storm somewhere in the Bering Sea apparently made landing conditions impossible. We spend the day cruising north in a big gray ocean with mostly just fulmars for company.

Northern Fulmar

The fifth of July was the day I had been waiting for since we booked the trip almost a year ago. We were to go ashore at Meinypil'gyno, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper capital. Here there are over 25 nests scattered about the tundra monitored all season by a team of researchers. We were to go ashore and meet up with the research team, and be led to view a nest. Christmas had come in July for me.

While we waited for the expedition team to make final arrangements with the immigration officials on land, we watched our first walruses of the trip (and a life mammal for Susan and me) frolicking in the ocean. And in the waves along shore a pod of Beluga Whales competed for our attention. 

Walrus

Going ashore was exciting as we zodiaced through a wild surf into the river mouth and on to the village. There we were split into two groups, each with a researcher to continue on to a nest site up river a few miles

I didn't get the cameras out of the dry bag until after we were through the wild surf

Landing near the nest location

We walked about half a mile through the tundra until getting near the site. The researcher and our ship guide left us behind while they went ahead and refound the exact location. They then split our group into two teams for a slow and low, quiet  approach to the nest. The tundra here is flat and disturbing the nest substantially to view a critically endangered species isn't an option. Susan and I were in team 2 so had to wait some more.

Walking the tundra to the site

Spoon-billed Sandpiper nesting habitat

Team 2 waiting their turn to approach the nest site

Some of team 1 lay mostly prone to view the nest with binoculars and scopes, another 50 yards beyond

After what seemed like an eternity it was finally our turn. We crawled up the the positioned scopes and had a look. The bird was sitting on the nest, well down in the tundra cover. We watched for a good while and only saw the bird's head moving occasionally. Our guide eventually walked toward the nest just far enough to get the bird to stand up briefly, then it ducked back into the tundra. It was terribly disappointing for me, like losing the World Series and Superbowl both on the same day. My Christmas stocking that day had a lump of coal in it... This was even more so when we heard the other group a few miles away had a very good look at their bird.

We've been to Thailand twice to see wintering spoonies, my favorite bird on earth. This was a rare chance to see one on the breeding grounds and in summer plumage. Even now, a couple of weeks later it is still hard to wrap my head around this experience. I do feel fortunate to be one of only a handful of people who have been there and had to opportunity to see such a magnificent bird.

When we returned to the village a special treat awaited. Meinypil'gyno doesn't get many visitors and only once a year does a boat with 50 visitors show up. We were honored to watch a production by the local school children of native song and dance. It was a lot of fun.

July 6 was another rough day, with sea and weather conditions continuing to prevent intended activities. The captain and expedition leader conferred and checked the reports. They decided the best chance for a good end to the voyage was a very long cruise across the Gulf of Anadyr to Presbrazhenya Bay. It took all day and night to get there but it was an excellent decision. 

The coffee machine

Our final full day of the voyage broke clear with reasonable swell. We had time to zodiak the cliffs of Presbrazhenya Bay for several hours before we had to leave for the long trip back to our final port at Anadyr. It was a great ending to the voyage with lots of birds and a few walruses. 

Crested Auklets

Crested Auklet

Walruses

On the final morning we were transferred to the Anadyr airport for our charter flight to Nome, greatly shortening the travel distance home if we had to take commercial flights back through Asia. 

If you've made it this far and are still with me, you're probably thinking that we didn't enjoy this trip much. The truth is that it's mixed. We made some great new friends with some really fantastic people, friendships that mean a lot to us. Overall the scenery in the Russian Far East was spectacular. The flowers (a separate post by Susan) were outstanding throughout the trip. And at times there were many birds to see, especially at nesting colonies. But the truth is that those nesting colonies are in serious trouble. There has been colony collapse in parts of the arctic for the past few years. There hasn't been much published (link to one of a handful of articles from the Atlantic Ocean) and probably little research yet on the cause. We saw very few seabirds sitting on eggs and even fewer chicks at nests when there should be hundreds or thousands. In places that we should have seen thousands of auklets we saw a few hundred. I could count the number of one-year-old kittiwakes I saw on the entire trip on two hands (maybe a slight exaggeration, but there weren't many). This situation is present on the North American side of the Bering Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean as well. Is it climate change, lack of food sources, ocean temperature, all of the above? 

When you pay a very large sum of money for an expedition voyage there are certain levels of behavior, competence, and professionalism you come to expect. This is our third expedition voyage so we are experienced in what a good trip should be. Paid leaders should be well trained, skilled, dedicated to their clients. There were times when this trip was well run and other times not so much. That's all I'm going to say about this subject in my public blog.

We're glad we went and will treasure many fond memories from this trip. The Russian Far East is a special place with lots of special birds and animals. I hope there are still some left when the next generation goes there.