After a day and a half of forgettable birding around
Anchorage and the Glenn Highway – the highlight being a couple of Gray (Canada)
Jays – we boarded the flight to Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow). This was to be the
first and only time we would reach the true Arctic on our trip. Utqiagvik has a
limited road system that enables access to the arctic tundra, where breeding
shorebirds and waterfowl abound. More specific targets for visiting birders are
the three breeding eider species – King, Spectacled and Steller’s – and Snowy
Owl.
In addition to the breeding species, Utqiagvik has proven to
be a fairly productive location for vagrants and a check of the RBA for the
area revealed that a Temminck’s Stint has been present for two days.
While Paul and Andy waited for our bags to unload from the
flight, I went off to the vehicle rental location. The interior of the vehicle
was by far the dirtiest I had ever rented, with mud all over the floor mats.
Although I was not at all bothered by this, I did find it amusing that the
rental office had a sign warning customers of a $300 fee for returning a
vehicle excessively dirty! I would love to see what their definition of excessively
dirty is.
After dumping our bags in our hotel room, we decided to
first try for the Temminck’s Stint. This proved to be a monumental error as the
ebird hotspot was located in the wrong spot, a different gravel pit to the one
the bird was actually in. The wrong location proved to be horribly muddy and
virtually birdless, invoking comparisons with the notorious Passchendaele
battlefield in the First World War. Ironically, almost the only two birds we
saw there were a pair Eurasian Wigeon, which proved to be our only ‘rarity’
find in Barrow, as the rest of the trip was spent looking at birds already
found by others.
In recent years, there has been a series of very late
springs here and we had heard on the flight that there were unprecedented
viewing opportunities for the eiders along the road out to the new landfill as
most of the open water was right by the road. My previous experience with the
eiders here was that they were out in large melt ponds and that a telescope was
required for good views. We headed out towards the new landfill turnoff,
passing by dozens of Greater White-fronted Geese, Long-tailed Ducks and Red
Phalaropes scattered everywhere. The first good pond we reached held a nice
pair of Steller’s Eiders, although they were a little too far for good
photographs. Proceeding further, we soon found a pair of Spectacled Eiders,
only about 30 yards from the car. This is a real specialty of the area and it
was amazing to have such close prolonged views.
A little further on, a male King Eider was floating around in a pool only 10 yards from the car, creating an almost zoo-like experience! Arriving at the landfill, we found a pool there with more pairs of King and Spectacled Eiders.
Another new shorebird for the trip was a spiffy breeding plumaged Stilt Sandpiper, which reaches the edge of its breeding range around Utqiagvik.
Heading back towards the hotel, we ran into the VENT group and Brian Gibbons, the leader, was kind enough to give us directions to the correct gravel pit for the Temminck’s Stint, which they had seen a couple of hours before. We headed over there only to run into another group that had failed to find it despite an apparently thorough search. Typically, the stint was the first bird Andy looked at once we got out of the car!
We eventually got very good looks and complimented these with another new shorebird for the trip – two White-rumped Sandpipers. Four Sabine’s Gulls competed with the shorebirds to give outrageously good views and photo opportunities.
Considering that we had not even started birding until after
5 PM and had wasted the best part of an hour by going to the wrong location to
start with, it had been an incredible evening. The “Opening Night” at Utqiagvik
had more than lived up to expectations.
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