4 June 2011
A wet day, I headed out and checked what we call the corrall area (old Reindeer handling station) with Simon, a couple of very wolf-like feral dogs were busy digging out Ground Squirrels from a burrow system, many of these dogs roam the area and predate eggs and young. We bumped into Gerrit and Jochen who had left the hills in a hurry as a bear was approaching, we changed our plans too!
We headed for the second river to see if any shoreline was exposed and found a variety of now familiar duck species sitting on the water. I scoped through and discovered a female bufflehead, maybe a third record for the area. A long walk back along shingle that moves with every step and into rain and strong wind was pretty tiring. Very hard to see or hear anything and the rest of the day was spent writing, editing and recharging batteries-camera and ours.
Jochen visited us late afternoon and much later at 2100 Jochen knocked on the door with news of Ross’s gulls in the river mouth, a villager had seen the pink, dainty and somewhat dove-like birds earlier and passed it on. Here they are a sign of good luck and even to the harshest of gull critic must melt any hardened feeling toward this group of birds. They are simply gorgeous, five breeding plumaged Sabine’s Gulls were also present in the tern roost. We headed back at 2230, great end to the day. Nige had a throbbing hand, he cut his thumb to the bone earlier when working on incubators…nice…we gave him first aid and left him to it.
So glad you can keep us up to date on all that has happened to you since you started your trip.
It sounds like such an incredible place with the most amazing birds.You’ll have to write another book ,soon.
Good luck in your search . Keep up the brilliant blog.
Did a wader walk with James on Sunday,not many around,they’re all up there!