What a weekend! I finally decided that an Emperor Goose was not going to come my way by serendipity so saved up to go to Kodiak, AK where the birds winter in Women's Bay. I contacted the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge which put me in touch with preeminent birder and author of the Kodiak NWR Checklist of Birds, Rich MacIntosh. He told me that the Kodiak Audubon Society, in cooperation with the NWR, conducts a Christmas Bird Count. This year it would be on December 20. As Count Compiler, he invited me to join them and assured me that "If you don't see the Emperor Goose, there's something wrong in the world."

My first plane of the day left from Cincinatti at 9:00 am.

The flight up was dicey. Seattle was caught in snow and ice. But, after a delay long enough to assure I would miss the connection in Anchorage to Kodiak, we got away.

It took some doing, but I arrived at my hotel in Kodiak about ten Thursday night. (With time zone changes, it was a body time of 2am Friday morning!) The Best Western had a stuffed Kodiak bear in the lobby, one of several in town.

At sunup (about 10am) Friday morning, in heavy rain and high wind, I took my rental car and headed for Women's Bay. There were hundreds of Emperor Geese near the Russian River bridge at the bay! Wow! Life Bird 762! The birds were pretty far out because It was low tide and the weather was

terrible. But I got satisfactory looks and still had the rest of the weekend!

I called Rich and bragged on my success. He offered to go out with me in the afternoon and see what we could find to add to my Alaska list. The weather did not abate much and the pickings were better at his feeders than anywhere else on the island.

Rich put me in touch with Jeff Lewis, the pilot of Ursa Major II, the refuge's boat that would be conducting the pelagic count for the CBC. Jeff said the weather did not look promising but that the go-nogo decision wouldn't be made until morning.

There are only about six hours of daylight on Kodiak at this time of year (10am-4pm), so it was back to the hotel for an early dinner and TV before bed.

Saturday dawned much the same - temperatures in the low thirties, windy and rain. But Jeff said it wasn't too bad to make the tour. So off we went. The lead counter was Denny Zwiefelhofer with Stephen Bodnar to do the tallies. Jeff and I contributed what we could. It was a really rough passage but the boat performed well and we had what Denny opined was not a bad count.

I was invited to join the Compilation Potluck that night and was pleased to be made so welcome. I brought a bag of potato chips as my contribution and joined the party.

Stephen introduced me to Stacy Studebaker who answered the question that is surely on everybody's mind much of the time, "What do you do with a gray whale that washes up on the beach in front of your house?" Her solution - You bury it for four years, dig it up, take another four years to reassemble the skeleton with silicon caulk, and donate it to the Kodiak NWR Visitor Center! By the way, her technique of putting the skeleton back together has since become a standard curatorial technique around the world.

At first light Sunday (9:45am) I went back to Women's Bay. The weather was sunny with no wind. High tide had been at 9am and was just beginning to ebb. Tthe Emperor Geese were approachable to within fifty feet! Great views!

Dick and I hooked up at eleven and went directly to the base. We toured the whole place, but didn't find the blackbirds. We did, however, find a flock of Emperor Geese in the cutter docking area; very close and in perfect light. Nice!

Dick and I parted company and I spent the rest of the afternoon looking for other potential birds to add to my Alaska list. No luck, but a beautiful day to be out.

When the sun started to set at about three that afternoon, I went to the Kodiak airport, caught an earlier flight to Anchorage and, after another full day of dodging weathered-in airports, arrived home.

My thanks to all the great folks in Kodiak who helped my with the Emperor Goose adventure. Most of them appear in the slide show below