Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival

Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival

33rd Annual, May 7-11, 2025

Support Surfbird Research

Donations are needed now to support a crowd sourcing fundraiser to help put satellite transmitters on surfbirds in the Kachemak Bay area (Homer/Anchor Point). Kachemak Bay Birders and the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival are teaming up with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, and others to understand the local and range wide movements of the surfbird. By tracking the surfbirds, scientists will identify the most important areas used by birds during their breeding, staging and wintering periods, and in so doing determine local and regional threats and areas to focus conservation.

Surfbirds are a shorebird that spend their summers breeding in the higher altitudes of Alaska and the Yukon, and their winters along the rocky shores of the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Chile. During the winter, surfbirds feed along the rocky shores eating small bivalves (mussels), barnacles, gastropods, and other intertidal prey often along the splash of the “surf”. In Homer, you can spot them along the rocky entrance to the harbor in the spring and in July along the beaches in Anchor Point.

Surfbirds stop by Kachemak Bay during their northward travels – but where exactly do “our” birds go to breed? The experts don’t exactly know! They do know they breed in the dry, frequently stony, alpine tundra at elevations of 2,600-5,900 feet throughout the state! Could they be on top of some of the mountains nearby? Maybe. Or perhaps farther north in the Brooks Range of Alaska or even the Yukon Territory? Maybe. So, this project is to place transmitters on the birds to help us learn where OUR birds are going!

 

Unlike regular metal or even color bands, these transmitters send signals to orbiting satellites indicating where the birds are year around, providing accurate locations that can even detect nest sites on the top of mountains hundreds of miles away!  Birds do not have to be recaptured; biologists simply log online to get the data! The transmitters are light weight (less than 2 pennies or 0.14 ounce) and do not affect how the bird flies, walks, or nests! Tags are powered by solar panels, allowing individual birds to be tracked for several years.  

By supporting this project, the collaborators hope to start tagging the birds in the spring 2025. The goal is to tag 10 birds, and 2 tags are already on hand. Each tag costs $2100, so our goal is to raise $16,800. Your donation goes directly to the cost of the transmitters (*if paying with a credit card, there are often fees about 1-3% from the credit card company that will be subtracted). People that donate will receive biweekly reports showing the movements and current locations of all the tagged birds (if you want to receive such information).  If you fund the purchase of an entire tag, you can even name your bird!

Donations are tax-deductable and Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival is 501c3 non profit.

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You can also donate via check to Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival, PO Box 3695, Homer, AK 99603 to avoid credit card processing fees. Please note on the check that the donation is for surfbird research!

Movements of 4 Surfbirds tagged near Kodiak, Alaska and in Chugach Mountains above Anchorage.