Calling all birders

Are you a student, staff, or faculty member at UAA* or APU? Do you know your Alaskan birds? Here’s the chance to show off your birding skills!

As part of the Loren Taft retrospective exhibit at Archives & Special Collections, we’ve chosen 67 of his photographs that have Alaskan birds in them. We’ve numbered them and put them into a slideshow. Watch the video, identify each species, submit your numbered list to the Archives by April 12, and any entries with at least 45 of the birds correct will be entered into a drawing for a framed reprint of one of Loren Taft’s photographs (winner’s choice!)

The medium-sized print:

• Answers should identify the species, not just the family. Here’s a gimme: we’re looking for “Tufted Puffin,” not just Puffin. Please don’t give us the Latin names (Fratercula cirrhata), the common will do.
• Some of the birds are rare with small populations that only appear in limited areas of Alaska, but none are considered accidentals.
• The images are excerpted from a much longer slide-show of Loren Taft’s work playing on the big screen facing out from the Archives area on the third floor of the Library. The full slideshow is available for viewing during all Consortium Library hours. All of his photographs can be viewed by asking to see his collection during the Archives hours: 10-4, M-F.

The fine print:

• We don’t penalize for wrong answers, so guess away! (We know some are a little hard to see).
• Entries will be accepted from March 6 through April 12. The winner will be announced April 15.
• The contest is open to students, staff, and faculty of the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University. You can email your numbered lists to the Archives at archives@uaa.alaska.edu.
• Only one entry per person.
• Entries need to include your name, mailing address, university email address, and phone number. Or you can just use our entry form here!
• If you don’t want to use our form, make sure your IDs have numbers with each bird name. In numerical order, okay? Thanks.

*Follow-up: I just received a request from a student at the Kachemak Bay campus wanting to know if she could enter. Absolutely! Kachemak Bay, Kodiak, Kenai Peninsula, Mat-Su, PWSCC, all the branch campuses of UAA count!