Diario de rwcannon57

The Tagus River is the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. It arises in mid-eastern Spain and flows 626 miles (445 in Spain, 29 along the shared border of Spain and Portugal and 171 in Portugal) where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean, on the south side of Lisbon. The Tagus Estuary is its mouth and covers 131 square miles and is the largest estuary in western Europe. The water in the estuary has a maximum depth of 33 feet. The Tagus Estuary Natural Reserve was established in 1976 and covers 35,070 acres. Most of it is in the upstream (northern) area of the estuary, but with a small portion in the vicinity (both north and south) of the eastern end of the Vasco de Gama Bridge. We had a guide that picked us up from our hotel in Lisbon at 7:30 a.m.. We crossed the Vasco da Gama Bridge, the second longest bridge in Europe. We basically drove counter-clockwise around the upper end of the estuary, crossing the Tagus River at Vila Franca de Xira, and returned to Lisbon on the east side of the estuary. I counted 38 species of bird, including 20 I'd never seen before. Birds I saw included the crested myna, Eurasian jay, European greenfinch, great cormorant, little grebe, European honey buzzard, pallid and common swifts, black-winged stilts (nesting and with chicks and juveniles), nesting Kentish plovers, a nesting booted eagle, a common shelduck, many greater flamingos, glossy ibis, black kite, Iberian magpies, yellow-crowned bishops, mallards, black-crowned night herons, Eurasian collard doves, gull-billed terns, a little bittern, little terns, western yellow wagtails, a couple of Eurasian hoopoe, European bee-eaters, a European serin, white-bellied barn swallows, a red-rumped swallow, carrion crows, cattle egrets, Eurasian spoonbills, European stonechats, grey herons, purple herons, little egrets, white storks and a Eurasian kestrel.

We met a guide in Setubal, 29 miles south of Lisbon, on the edge of the Sado Estuary, very near where the Sado River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The Sado Estuary is the second largest estuary in Portugal, just southeast of the Tagus Estuary which is the largest. The Sado River is the only major river in Portugal that flows north. It flows 109 miles from springs in the Ourique Hills and enters the estuary shortly after passing through Alcacer do Sal, at the southeast end. Most of the western side of the estuary is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by the 13 miles long Troia Peninsula, a narrow strip of sand less than a mile wide. From near the end of the Troia Peninsula to Setubal there is a ferry that crosses the Sado (Estuary) which is 1.5 miles wide at that point. We got in our guide's car and drove to the Sado Estuary Natural Reserve east of Setubal. We drove around some pools and found little terns nesting in the middle of a dirt road and a European goldfinch. We also found marbled crabs and a Eurasian nuthatch. During the day we drove clockwise around the estuary and had lunch in Alcacer do Sal, right next to the Sado River. Then ultimately we drove to the end of the Troia Peninsula and took the ferry across the Sado to Setubal, back to our car. We saw a black-tailed godwit; many black-winged stilts, including many that were immature; carrion crows, a common buzzard, a colony of nesting common house martins, Eurasian spoonbills in multiple locations; glossy ibis; many greater flamingos; Iberian magpies in the cork oak forests; lesser black-backed gulls; little egrets; a beautiful Mediterranean gull; a sandwich tern; lots of white storks, both nesting and feeding in the fields; yellow legged gulls; and a zitting cisticola. The bird life we saw was not as diverse or plentiful as what we saw earlier in the Tagus Estuary, a little north, but we did see a few new species and some spectacular country.

Homer, Alaska is on the southwest side of the Kenai Peninsula and has a 4.5 mile long spit, known as Homer Spit, a narrow gravel bar which extend out into Kachemak Bay. Gull island is about 3 miles out into Kachemak beyond the end of the spit. Gull Island is about 633 feet long and 93 feet high. It is a rookery for about 8,000 to 10,000 black-legged kittiwakes, 5,000 to 8,000 common murres and smaller numbers of glaucous-winged gulls, pelagic cormorants, red-faced cormorants, puffins and pigeon guillemots. Mako's Water Taxi took us out for a one hour private excursion. We followed a hump-back whale for awhile and saw it breach several times, then circled around the island. We saw a lot of horned puffins, mostly in the water, a few tufted puffins, some sea otters floating near the island, black-winged kittiwakes, common murres, cormorants and at least one pigeon guillemot.

Denali NP encompasses 9,466 square miles, an area larger than five states (Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire and Vermont is just 150 square miles larger). Despite that vastness, it has only one road that goes into it: 15 miles paved to Savage River, the limit for private vehicles; and an additional 77 miles of unpaved road accessible only by buses operated by outfitters, such as Denali Backcountry Adventure or the National Park Service. Mount Denali, the tallest mountain in North America is within it. We took the bus of Denali Backcountry Adventure to the end of the 92 mile road at Kantishna, and back out again. We left our cabin at 6:00 a.m. and did not return until 7:00 p.m. Denali is huge, wild and green, but I was surprised at how little wildlife we saw. We saw a few moose, several bulls and a cow; we saw quite a few porcupine caribou, including a couple with huge racks; we saw several grizzly bears, including one with two cubs; and some dall sheep way up on the side of a mountain that were no more than specks of white. But we went great distances where we saw nothing.

The Anan Wildlife Observatory is run by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Tongass National Forest on mainland Alaska just across the bay from the south end of Wrangell Island. It is only reachable by boat or float plane and involves a half-mile walk inland from Anan Bay. The observatory is surrounded by a gated fence with an observation platform and photo blind right next to the falls on Anan Creek which has the largest salmon run in southeast Alaska. We got there by a float plane from Ketchikan which is about a 30 or 40 minute flight each way. The observatory is limited to 60 people each day. We saw lots of black bears, including several with cubs. We saw salmon jumping in the creek and the bears trying to catch them, sometimes successfully. We were there two hours and saw bears much of the time we were there. We also saw bald eagles, mature and immature, at the observatory and on the walk out. By far my best photos of black bears and a great way to see how the live in a relatively natural state.