Saqul’aat – Ducks Saqul’aarsurciqukut. – We are going to go duck hunting. More than fifty-two species of loons, grebes, swans, geese, and ducks winter along the gulf coast of Alaska. Waterfowl begin arriving in September, flocking to protected bays and estuaries to feed on shellfish, vegetation, and insects. About two hundred thousand birds winter in […]
Photo: A brood of ruddy ducks in Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in summer 2018. Photo by Michelle Lake, USFWS. Every spring, millions of ducks touch down on Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, a spread of muskeg and dark water the size of Maryland. These days, more ruddy ducks seem to be among them. Recent […]
About 1,000 years ago, Norse explorer Leif Ericson bumped into the New World at Newfoundland. The old world was filling up, with 300,000 people living in the Roman capital of Constantinople. Up here in Alaska, the ancestors of today’s coastal Natives were quietly having one of the more successful runs in human history. The Thule […]
(Statewide) — Alaska’s subsistence waterfowl hunting seasons opened on April 2 and with spring migration under way hunters are reminded to practice routine hygiene when handling, cleaning and cooking the ducks, geese and other migratory birds they harvest. Two strains of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), or “bird flu,” were found in wild birds late […]