05/15/2026
Our third — and favorite — visit yet to the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival in Homer!
This past week we packed our scopes, binoculars, and Alaska gear and road-tripped south from Anchorage to experience one of the greatest wildlife spectacles of the year. Every May, the Kenai Peninsula comes alive with an incredible surge of migrating shorebirds, and getting to share it with friends — both new and old — made it even more special. With more than 1,100 participants registered for the festival, the energy around birding was contagious all week long!
We led walks for birders of all experience levels at hotspots like Anchor Point, the Homer Spit, and nearby forest trails. Some of the very best birding on the Kenai. We met so many fantastic people, helped connect birders with plenty of lifers, and learned that apparently everyone is into Wingspan now… we may need to catch up with the times!
The birds absolutely delivered: massive swirling flocks of Western Sandpipers in murmuration, three species of godwit, rare Red Knots, elegant Aleutian Terns, waterfowl, raptors — and, in dramatic last-second fashion, an ultra-rare mega: the near-mythical Ivory Gull! Even an unseasonable snowstorm one day couldn’t slow things down. Watching these migrants pause here before continuing north to breed on the Arctic tundra was a reminder of just how extraordinary Alaska is in spring.
Now we’re already looking ahead to the next adventures as our June tours take us farther west to Adak Island in the Aleutians, north to Nome and Utqiaġvik, and back again to the Kenai. Can’t wait to do it all over again!
