After a very long, overnight flight, I arrived in Barrow, Alaska. Because I was the only field tech here in the beginning (I took the early flight), I helped the crew leaders transport our field gear, set up the station and buy a massive amount of food for the 10 researchers! Here is what the outside the building, the Polar Bear Theatre, that I will be staying at for the next few months.

The outside is pretty rough, but it really is a nice place inside. Also, here is a picture of some orange juice at the local store, on sale!

After picking up the rest of the crew and eating dinner, we went out and birded the town and airport area. Snow Buntings and Lapland Longspurs are everywhere. There are a lot of small open swales where shorebirds are poking around. Semipalmated Sandpipers are everywhere and Pectoral Sandpipers are pretty common too. We managed to find 2 Baird's Sandpipers with the male displaying! Just a little past those we found a White-rumped Sandpiper right off the dirt road! He was moving a lot, and it was cloudy and around 10pm here, but here is a poor picture.

A Pomarine Jaeger was flying past the airport, my second for the day, both adults. Other interesting birds for the day included 2 Red Phalaropes, 2 Red-necked Phalaropes, 2 different flocks of Common Eiders, 3 Greater White-fronted Geese, 1 Dunlin, Semipalmated Plover (a good bird here), a Varied Thrush (a very good bird here!) and a few large loons and a few small, but all too far to identify. Glaucous Gulls are everywhere.

It looks like this week will be getting everything together, paperwork and exploring the area. We should hit the actual tundra on June 5th.

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