I just joined this group and am excited to find out more about the
birds I've been seeing in my area, Nikiski.

First let me tell introduce myself. I'm Dorey Harman, I've lived in
Alaska for 40 years and moved to Nikiski from Anchorage about 2 years
ago. I was content with just watching and photographing the birds
that came to my feeders last winter, but then my husband and I decided
to do some hiking and walking in our area for exercise. We started
doing this in July. On one of these walks we noticed a hawk that we
had never seen before, just over a mile from our house. We couldn't
identify him even after going on line and I couldn't find my bird
book, so we called the Fish & Game people. We didn't have a camera
with us, so we had to use just visual memory. The lady at FWS said it
sounded like a dark phase red tailed hawk. Needless to say, the
camera has gone with us on all hikes since that day. We have seen
that hawk, along with its mate, plus another one that we aren't sure
about. We have also expanded our woodpecker sightings, and the areas
that we are hiking. On a recent hike we located two, maybe three,
hawk/eagle nests on the tops of power line poles.

As luck would have it, the weather recently hasn't always been
conducive to hiking, but I'm still determined to get a good picture of
the hawks and learn more about them.

Thanks,

Dorey Harman
Nikiski, AK