To start off, Saturday night our crew went to Point Barrow. I had a non-Glaucous Gull fly over, and my buddy here got a look at it too. It was a first-year bird with brown secondary bar, a few brown primaries and the rest of the bird was very pale, especially the underside of the bird. It was smaller than the Glaucous Gulls, but not too small. It was obviously a Herring Gull, and we thought it was a Vega.

Yesterday was my day off. Of course, I slept in. I planned on birding a lot, but it was raining, so our crew decided to go to the heritage museum instead. It was really cool seeing how the Inupiat people have survived here for a very long time. Here is a picture of some of the stuff inside the museum.

The rain stopped and I went around town birding for a while. There were three tour groups around this weekend and they turned up some interesting stuff, including Horned Grebe and Bank Swallow. I even met a lady from Michigan on one of the tours! One of the leaders is friends with one of the employees and he called to say he had a first-year Vega Gull earlier in the morning. Sound familiar? Well when I was out around town, I found the biggest gull flock yet, and scanned them. I had another Herring Gull, this time it looked like a 3rd-year bird, with a mantle around the same color as the Glaucous Gulls around. I thought American Herring Gull and then one of the tour groups came and agreed. Hopefully something crazy shows up in the flock soon.

Today I nest searched again. Found 2 Dunlin nests and a Pectoral Sandpiper nest, and also got harassed by these Pomarine Jaegers again... not the worst thing in the world.

The next few days will be filled with nest searching, nothing too exciting. I will probably update in a few days, unless something exciting happens.

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