Lance Lekander

Pulitzer Prize-nominated author and bird expert Scott Weidensaul wears glasses and hearing aids, but that does not affect his ability to correctly identify anything that flies.

Where I see a flicker of movement in a tussock- covered meadow, he sees a long-tailed jaeger feasting on its prey.When I hear a faint rattle—like a cricket on helium—Weidensaul knows there is a Smith’s longspur nearby.

I discovered this while tagging along with Weidensaul and a flock of guests during a four-day workshop on bird migration and conservation at Camp Denali Lodge, in the heart of Denali National Park and Preserve.

The lodge, at the end of the park’s 92- mile road, is a bumpy, six-hour bus ride from the park entrance.We stopped on the drive to look at a great horned owl nest with two fluffy heads bobbing in it—owlets being sized up for lunch by a hungry hawk nearby.Our lunch was canceled when we discovered a brown bear and red fox bickering over the fox’s food stash within feet of our picnic stop.

Before boarding the bus to Camp Denali, I was concerned I would be the only avian neophyte, surrounded by experienced ornithologists clad in multipocketed vests who started conversations by saying, “This one time, at bird camp …” To my relief, our 30-person group was a mix of bird experts, real-estate experts, travel experts, environmental-planning experts and medical experts.There was an expert in theoretical physics and one on military combat vehicles.I quickly figured out that I didn’t need to know birds—I just needed to be an expert in something.

We were the first group to arrive at Camp Denali for the season. Weidensaul’s visit and his session on birds ofWittwer, a 17-year veteran of Camp Denali, knows his animal poop. He also knows his flowers, mushrooms, birds, and, of course, bears, moose, lynx, foxes and wolves. Lodge guests and staff clamored for seats at Weidensaul’s evening lectures, where we learned that of Denali’s 167 documented bird species, 119 nest and breed in the park. More than three-quarters of those breeding species migrate to Alaska, and their journeys— to and from six continents—are fraught with peril.Habitat is disappearing to development and overuse, and predators such as house cats are terrorizing travelweary birds.

Weidensaul brightened the mood by telling us about the bar-tailed godwit, a wading shorebird with a long, pencilthin bill that migrates southward from western Alaska and Siberia to New Zealand— a 7,000-mile journey—in one hop.The birds, fattened up to twice their normal size, accomplish the feat by riding storm winds, covering the impressive distance in a bit more than a week.

Just as we were all feeling high and mighty for coming to this beautiful and remote location to see exotic and remarkable birds, Weidensaul pointed out that birding is one of the most accessible pastimes and that some of the best places to look for birds are roadside pullouts, landfills and sewage lagoons.

“There’s nothing like a good whiff of primary effluent to clear the sinuses on a cold morning,” he said.

To be sure, a good birding trip and a spectacular Denali National Park and Preserve experience can be had without the hefty price tag of Camp Denali.But there is a difference between experiencing the park and experiencing Camp Denali.With grandfathered rights that make it the only private business authorized to provide hiking, natural history interpretation and wildlife observation anywhere along the park road, this place has something special to offer.

I sat on the porch on my last night, imagining the view of Denali that would be there had the clouds lifted.It was the perfect time of summer: endless daylight had arrived, but the mosquitoes hadn’t. I had a feeling I was going to be talking about this adventure for a while.

And most of those conversations will probably start with me saying, “This one time, at bird camp …”