The lure of the unseen bird is drawing tourists to remote parts of Alaska, and the Pribilof Islands are benefitting from that draw. During the last week in May nearly every guest at St. Paul's King Eider Hotel was there for birding.
"I'd say about 70 percent of the tourists who come to the island are birders," said Amy Grainger, a tourism and marketing consultant working for TDX Corp. Grainger reports birders come to St. Paul Island from all corners of the globe, probably 250 of them a year.
"So it's a small program that we're trying to build," said Grainger. "We market to birding groups, to the associations, and to birding magazines."
There are an estimated 75 million bird watchers in the world, according to birding sources. Their income is well above average. While birds can be observed in a birder's own neighborhood, serious birders with the time and the funds spend a lot of money travelling to major world birding locations. Alaska is a big draw because of the bird diversity. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game reports 500 bird species populate or pass through the state seeking breeding, overwintering, resting, and refueling sites.
According to Grainger, St. Paul Island offers 300 different species.
"We have a check list of all of the birds we have seen on the island since we have been doing the scouting for 15 or 20 years at least," said Grainger. "Our guides are really good about scouting the entire island so that we keep up with everything that comes through here. You never know what you're going to get."
Juanita and Bob Strunk are birders from St. Louis, Mo., who spent four days on St. Paul Island at the end of May. They saw around 50 different birds a day.
"Get outside and be divorced from all other worldly interests," answered Bob Strunk in response to a question about the appeal of bird watching.
"Birding gets us to places that we wouldn't normally go," added Juanita, his wife.
In the past 12 years of birding, the Strunks have been to seven continents in search of the winged creatures. On a recent Friday they left St. Paul for two days in Anchorage where they hoped to see a three-toed woodpecker. Others in the group were going on to four days in Nome followed by three more on St. Lawrence Island.
Costs of birding
A TDX tour costs $2,029 for three days and two nights. The price includes round trip airfare from Anchorage and lodging, but does not include meals. The bird watchers dine in the Trident Seafoods cafeteria. Though the accommodations are Spartan compared to a tourist destination such as Las Vegas or Hawaii, the bird watchers at the King Eider seemed pleased with the facility. At one stop as the tour group returned to their van, one birder stooped to pick up two crumpled beer cans that lay on the tundra. She placed them on the floor of the truck so she could toss them properly on return to the hotel.
Grainer, the TDX tour promoter, would like to see better connections.
"We'd like to see more flights, maybe some additional flights between the islands," said Grainger. "We were talking about marketing with St. George a bit. A flight back and forth to Dutch Harbor would help us a lot. A lot of these birders are here, then they'll go to Gamble, then to Dutch."
With Anchorage as the hub, travelling to good birding locations means lots of time in the air for the bird watchers.
This story is posted with permission from Alaska Newspapers Inc., which publishes six weekly community newspapers, a statewide shopper, a statewide magazine and slate of special publications that supplement its products year-round.