Not only did Homer’s annual Shorebird Festival again live up to its goal of offering events for birders of all ages and abilities, but several of this year’s activities also reflected a shift in birding practices and technologies.
Ted Floyd, 2024 festival keynote speaker, held a workshop on documenting birds in the digital era on Friday, May 10 at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. Acknowledging that birders these days may use digital gear such as smartphones or online databases like eBird or iNaturalist just as often as they use field guides and binoculars, the event was advertised as “a totally friendly primer on ‘best practices’ for taking pictures, making audio recordings and sharing media with others with technology as simple as a smartphone or laptop.”
“I’m not a tech guy at all,” he said. “I am untechnical as they get. But this is pretty straightforward.”
Floyd began the workshop with a short introduction before leading the attendees outside, armed with cameras, binoculars and smartphones, to capture photos and audio of shorebirds present along the Beluga Slough Trail.
The workshoppers accumulated a decent list of bird species spotted on the grounds surrounding the trail and in Beluga Slough, including a pair of mallard ducks, a bald eagle, a pair of sandhill cranes, a female bufflehead duck, violet green swallows, long-billed dowitchers, and more.
The group also encountered a white-winged crossbill, which Floyd said was a rare find in the Lower 48.
In addition to photos, Floyd also captured audio specifically of a fox sparrow near the trail and an American crow that was perched in a tree above Two Sisters Bakery.
When the group returned to the AMNWR seminar room, Floyd uploaded his photos and audio recordings to his laptop in preparation for demonstrating how to create “biologically useful” media.
“My interest in photography is not getting paid to have images on a magazine cover. Rather, it’s creating images that can be of use for documenting bird populations. What I want to share with you is what, in my opinion, makes for good photo editing,” he said.
Using Preview, the default photo software on his Mac laptop, Floyd edited a photo of a green-winged teal using preset options in the software’s tool menu — sharpening the contrast, highlighting to darken glare in the background, and cropping the photo to more closely focus on the bird rather than the background. This minimal work helped to make the photo’s subject more visibly detailed, which would be useful when sharing with the wider community or posting to scientific databases such as eBird or iNaturalist.
“You can get into Photoshop, or (software) that is a lot fancier, but I want to show you the basics for making images as suitable for sharing to social media, as well as eBird and iNaturalist and other scientific databases,” he said.
Floyd also edited the audio recording he’d taken earlier of the fox sparrow using Audacity, which is a free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application software available for multiple operating systems. He clarified the recording by amplifying the fox sparrow’s sound and erasing background low-frequency sound using a high-pass filter through Audacity.
In addition to Floyd’s workshop on Friday, 2024 Festival Artist Torie Rhyan held a watercolor workshop at the AMNWR Visitor Center, where participants learned to draw and paint the 2024 featured festival bird, the red-necked phalarope. Following the painting session, AMNWR also hosted a craft session where registered festival participants learned to sew a felt-stuffed red-necked phalarope.
Lani Raymond, longtime birder and founding member of Kachemak Bay Birders, provided additional information on the 2024 festival’s success.
A total of 141 species were seen during the festival. According to Raymond, this is close to the highest number ever recorded — 143 species were seen in 2021.
“The large number of species found is due to so many excellent birders birding all over — all day and into the night for owls — for the five days (of the festival),” she wrote to Homer News on Monday, May 13.
“Rare and accidental” species sighted this year included the red knot, the blue-winged teal, the Caspian tern, the snow goose, the horned lark, and the Eurasian collared dove. Native to the Middle East, Raymond noted that the Eurasian collared dove is an introduced species to Alaska.
Raymond also wrote that the largest group of “peeps,” a term which refers to any of the small, almost identical-looking sandpiper species, was reported on May 9 in Mud Bay, with 7,000 birds, mainly western sandpipers and dunlins.
On the human side of the festival, approximately 800 people registered for the festival. According to festival coordinator Melanie Dufour, this year’s attendance was very close to pre-COVID numbers. Dufour also noted that teen birding events were well-attended.
Raymond and Dufour also recognized the community effort that it took to pull off yet another successful Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival.
“Nearly 50 volunteers helped for multiple events and many total hours. In addition, a handful of sixth- and seventh-year Junior Birders helped for at least one event,” Raymond wrote. “Community support was appreciated — Kraken Cafe, LaBaleine, Land’s End, Beluga Lodge, Grace Ridge and Homer Breweries hosted speakers’ stays and events.”
For more information about the 2024 Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival, including birds seen during the festival, visit kachemakshorebird.org/.
A pair of sandhill cranes was spotted across the Beluga Slough from the trail on Friday, May 10, 2024, in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)
A pair of mallard ducks rests on a log floating in the Beluga Slough on Friday, May 10, 2024 in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)
Participants in Ted Floyd’s birding workshop look for shorebird species in the Beluga Slough on Friday, May 10, 2024 in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)
Participants in Ted Floyd’s birding workshop take photos of shorebirds along the Beluga Slough Trail on Friday, May 10, 2024 in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)
