“Chicken”…by Brad Marks

Well hi there! Brad has a special treat for you today and comes courtesy of a trip he and Jan took to the upper northwest of the US – as in very north, very west and definitely very upper! I had been holding on to this out of jealousy…I mean as a safety net, yeah, that’s it (almost ended that with a reference to Morgan Fairchild, but that would have dated me big time ha). With the travels coming up I wanted to make sure I had at least one story ready in case there was a gap in connectivity. Great news as we just received Brad’s latest batch of adventures, so we are absolutely good to go. Now, I may not have been kidding on the jealousy front. I do have a list of nemesis birds that haunt me daily. For some reason I either failed to get them in the tin or worse, never managed to get eyes on one. These are all affectionately called “Effin” birds. I’ve had the distinct pleasure of going after this particular Effin family over 5 times now, which have all consisted of long hikes above 10,000 feet. Have not even seen one of them for my efforts! Whenever our staff goes out in the field I tell them to bring back one of the Effins off my list. Going to cut Brad and Jan some slack as they are still relatively new around here, but when I tell them to “bring one back” I literally mean to bring a live specimen back for me!

Time for me to shed a few shades of green hue and get you to Brad’s adventure. Take it away Brad…

As Brian noted in previous posts, Jan and I survived our August photo assignment to the wilds of Alaska.  This was one of those places we’ve always wanted to visit, but didn’t want to do half-way.  I think our 17-day Alaska trip (land and sea) gave us a good intro to this truly wondrous and wild place.  We both recommend a trip to Alaska.  Go ahead and book it, I’ll let you catch up later.

Only about 2% of the state is accessible by roads.  The rest must be visited by some other mode of transportation including:  boat, plane, horse, dog sled, four-wheeler, SUV/Truck, tour bus, or on foot.  Thankfully for Jan and I, most of the places we visited were by road, only a few were on foot.  We did see and hold a very cute sled dog puppy (maybe a future post).

Thirty-five years ago, when Jan’s dad retired from a major manufacturer based in Illinois (BTW, he just celebrated the same thirty-five years of retirement and is still going strong), her parents took a 6-week driving trip to Alaska.  Yes, that’s right.  They chose to drive to Alaska from Illinois.  As Jan’s dad is fond of telling us, “When you’ve driven from Illinois to Seattle, you are about halfway to Alaska.”  (Now to be completely fair on the length of the driving trip, Jan’s dad did have to order and replace the hydraulic lifters in the car’s V-8 engine somewhere inside Alaska, but that only added 2-3 days to the whole adventure.  Yes, he had tools in the trunk of the car.)  We experienced similar travel times.  No, not six weeks, but it did take us nearly 9 hours of flying, via fairly circuitous route, to reach Fairbanks from Illinois.  Fairbanks is only about 100 miles from the Arctic Circle, or 64 degrees, 56 minutes north latitude.  That means the sun sets for only a couple of hours each night during summer months, leaving us with a twilight-y sort of sky for sleeping.  For those keeping score at home, I think this is a latitude record for Wildlife Intrigued.

As Jan’s parents discovered on their trip, there are many colorful people and stories along the way.  One of those stories is about the town called Chicken in Alaska.  The good people of the town wanted to name it after a local bird from the tundra, but no one could spell the bird’s name.   They ended up calling the town “Chicken.”  Stay tuned for the real bird’s name in just a bit.

If it looks like one, acts like one and easier to spell, then it must be one – hit the jump to read more about this Chicken!

On one of our many adventures throughout this photo assignment, we endured a 5-hour Tundra Tour through Denali National Park in an old school bus.  That’s right, I said school bus.  Denali National Park is trying to preserve the remaining wilderness.  Tourists of years past have accelerated the damage to the tundra, so the park is trying to limit future damage by requiring anyone that wants to go very far beyond the visitor center to use one of their tour buses.  Don’t worry, permits are issued for foot traffic and for very limited vehicle use.  At one point, my six-year-old self would have been thrilled to ride in a school bus for hours.  My sixty-year-old self was a bit less thrilled, having been packed in like anchovies into this old bus with 51 other adults.  The seats were NOT typical school bus spacing, but a few inches closer together than normal.  I really felt bad for a man named Norris who was sitting in the row behind me.  Norris is 6’ 6” tall.  Despite his best origami efforts, his legs stuck out in the aisle past the seat back in front of me, which was less than 9” from my face.  Our tour driver didn’t promise that we would see any animals because the land is so vast.  I remember hearing one statistic that where food is plentiful in Alaska, you may only find one brown bear, on average, for each square mile of territory.  Alaska’s human population is only slightly more dense with 1.3 people (average) per square mile.  Typically, there is only one brown bear per 16-25 square miles of the state. 

As the tour moved along up the mountain and away from civilization, the road turned into well maintained gravel, or dirt, or a combination of both.  Not long after the gravel started, the bus driver slammed on the breaks.  She uttered an expletive on the open microphone, and announced, “We have Ptarmigans.”

Of course, everyone contorted themselves to try to see through the dusty windows to see where the birds might be.  They were immediately in front of the bus.  Apparently, Willow Ptarmigans (Lagopus lagopus) are not the sharpest feathers in the bird world.  We stumbled into 5 or 6 of them milling about in the road, oblivious to the bus bearing down on them.  Most of our first photos were through dusty windows, so I won’t publish those here.  Jan was right next to the windows with the moderate 18-200mm zoom.  I had the “Bazooka”, as a friend calls it, and had zero chance of taking a photo out the windows of the right-hand side of the bus.  I did catch several other photos out the left-hand side and between other tourists out the front of the bus.  Here I feel I need to apologize to my fellow bus rider wearing the Auburn hat, I really didn’t mean to whack you with the lens hood.  He took it well, and helped point out animals he could spot through the dusty windows.  I would show he and his wife what I was able to capture on the camera display in exchange for animal sightings.  He, and a fellow named Nick in the back of the bus, had an uncanny ability to spot animals hundreds of yards away.

I forgot to mention earlier, this is a +1 for Jan and I, and for Wildlife Intrigued as well.  I’ve only tried one other time, rather casually, to find a ptarmigan at the top of Rocky Mountain National Park.  I know Brian has tried to find ptarmigans a few other times, with no success.  The word “ptarmigan” is thought to be derived from the Scottish Gaelic word “tarmachan”, a much older name for Willow Ptarmigan in the northern British Isles.  Early anthropologists thought the word was originally Greek in origin and added the “p” to the beginning of it.  Either way, the “p” is silent, kind of like in psychology, psychiatrist, or pterodactyl.  But if you like to pronounce the “p”, please go right ahead.

By the end of the tour, we had had enough of dusty windows.  The next time we stopped for ptarmigans, I was again trying to get photos out the front of the bus, along with everyone else.  What I didn’t realize was that Jan had lowered the school bus window and had contorted herself out as far as she could through the small bus window frame.  She was able to capture some very nice photos, hanging halfway outside the bus, of these crow-sized birds.  Not to worry readers, she did this in a very safe manner.  No cameras, photographers, or ptarmigans were harmed in taking these photos.  Dust is an inevitable part of the roads through Denali.  This is why the windows are typically dusty on the park tour buses.  Normal temperatures in Denali National Park at altitude can be rather chilly.  Not to worry though my cold friends, the bus heater was working overtime the day we were there.  Did I mention we were there in August?

There are two types of ptarmigans that frequent this portion of Denali National Park:  Rock and Willow Ptarmigans.  There are a few ways to tell a Willow Ptarmigan from a Rock Ptarmigan.  Rocks tend to be a bit darker than a Willow, the latter being more cinnamon colored.  The habitat where you find them is a good indicator as well.  Rock Ptarmigans prefer, well, rocky areas.  Willow Ptarmigans prefer, are you ready for this, scrubby willow and alder thickets below the tree line on the tundra.  All of the birds we saw were still sporting their summer plumage.

Males in both Rock and Willow have a red comb over their eyes.  Both turn snow white during the winter.  Since “Speaking Ptarmigan”, and its varying dialects, is a 600-level course at Wildlife Intrigued, I’ve not been able use their vocalizations to tell them apart.  Though hearing them over the tour guide and the bus engine would have been difficult at best.  Another identifier is that Willow Ptarmigans have a sturdier bill than their Rock cousins; think Swiss Army Knife can opener type of sturdy.  Unless they are side by side, this may not help very much.  Both types of ptarmigans have feathers on their legs and feet and look to be ready for an Alaskan winter.  Another interesting thing is that their eyes are almost perfectly centered on the sides of their heads, giving them nearly a 360-degree view of their surroundings.

Ptarmigan eat primarily plant matter like leaves, berries, flower buds, and an occasional insect.

Females select the nest sites on the ground, usually near overhanging vegetation.  She will lay 4-14 eggs in a nest about 7 inches across and a little over half that deep.  Incubation takes 21-23 days.  Hatchlings are born with their eyes open and covered in dense down.  They usually leave the nest within 12 hours, but hang around mom and dad for the next few months.  Willow Ptarmigan are the only members of the grouse family where the males help raise the young.

The bus just lurched forward again, I guess we have reached the end of this Alaskan adventure.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more Willow Ptarmigan photos, please visit here.

Credits Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for most of the photos in this article.