Chipmunks at Athabasca Falls (not a bird to be seen)
My husband and I are presently traveling from the north of the United States – Alaska – to the south of it – North Carolina. I have gotten some unbelievable photographs of wildlife, including a close encounter with a grizzly bear that was digging up roots alongside the Alaska Highway (you can see them here).
Jasper and Banff National Parks in Alberta, Canada were spectacular. Surrounded by sunlit mountains, we drove 
through the parks with our mouths agape, peaks above us and streams meandering through valleys below us. And though we saw barely a creature but tourist’s dogs in the parks, I did catch a few up close photos of scurrying chipmunks at Athabasca Falls in Jasper.
Canadians definitely have their national parks figured out, if these two are representations of them as a whole.
Athabasca Falls had wooden stairways interspersed between towering rocks – sometimes you have to duck to or go single-file to get through. Lots of concrete walkways
in different viewpoints of the falls, accessed by sun dappled paths with views of game trails through the moss. A peaceful and necessary stop, and in our case at least, not too crowded.
The only large wild mammal we saw in the parks was Bighorn Sheep. A group of 6 or 7 were nibbling something on the rocks (my husband says they were ingesting minerals from the rocks). The chipmunks were also nibbling, moving with rocket speed over the concrete and moss, not too scared of us big hulking humans except perhaps to be caught underfoot.
So, no birds this time. The only ones I’ve managed to capture with my camera are swans and ravens, back up in the Yukon Territory. But that’s a post for another day. Until then, best wishes to you all…
Don’t forget to click for larger images! 
Why did the Lesser Yellowlegs cross the road?
To lead me away from her nesting site most likely!
It’s not too hard to find Lesser 
Yellowlegs in interior Alaska during the summer months if you get a ways out of town near some water. And you’ll know you found one when you hear that mind-numbing “TU TU TU” alarm call. (You can hear it here.)
The Greater Yellowlegs – a larger version of this bird – also visits Alaska in the spring and summer, but doesn’t come this far north. In the winter, Yellowlegs sandpipers can be found in Mexico and the coastal and southern edge of the U.S.
They eat aquatic insects, snails, & small fish, nest in depressions in the ground in bogs and treeless tundra, and give birth to 4 eggs which when hatched are precocial which means they can fend for themselves as soon as their natal down is dry.
It’s hard to believe, but people used to hunt sandpipers like these! These skinny little birds were game species and apparently market hunters nearly wiped out many types of shorebirds before they were protected in the early 1900s. Thank goodness!!!
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Say’s Phoebe on Rosie Creek Trail
I spotted this sunbathing beauty near Rosie Creek Trail outside of Fairbanks in August 2009.
Maybe it was migrating south. Or maybe it was spending the last couple of days surveying its territory, waiting for a Crane Fly to wander by. Either way, doesn’t it look more majestic than its humble 4 or 5 inches?
The Say’s Phoebe is named after Thomas Say, a naturalist who named hundreds of new species at the beginning of the 1800s. He identified over 1,000 species of beetle alone, and over 400 other insects. He saw and described the Say’s Phoebe during an expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819.
But isn’t it kind of silly to associate this enigmatic little creature to a man from the 1800s? And what did Native Americans call the Say’s Phoebe? … What is in a name anyway?
… Alas, we must communicate.
You might have noticed that this spruce tree has a lot of cones. Apparently, the year after a conifer goes through a period of stress – such as drought – the tree produces a crop of cones that is much larger than normal. The dark ones are immature.
This is a Black Spruce (there are no naturally occurring pine trees in interior or northern Alaska though spruce trees are often mistaken for them). Black Spruce is looked at with disdain by a lot of Alaskans because it represents unbuildable wetlands fraught with frost lenses and mucky tundra.
But this mucky tundra is the Say’s Phoebe’s living room for the summer. It spends its years flying between an arctic paradise and a tropical paradise. To the Say’s Phoebe, this fair-sized Black Spruce (12-15 feet tall) is the perfect perch for hunting mosquitos, unbuildable wetlands and all.
Judy's Mostly Alaskan Bird Blog 