Headstarting is a collaborative effort between WWT, BirdsRussia and the RSPB, and occurs as part of the International Arctic Expedition mounted each year by BirdsRussia under the leadership of Dr. Evgeny Syroechkovskiy.
Harlequin duck (c) Christoph Zockler

Getting ready…

Karin writes: After moving house with the aid of the ‘go anywhere’ vestikhod, the unstoppable Russian Caterpillar, and a few good card games while waiting for it to arrive, the WWT team spent the afternoon cleaning and disinfecting what is to become the Incubation Facility. Set up in
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The cancelled flight, time to prepare with vodka – 18 May 2011

18 May 2011 Flight cancelled for today so no equipment to sort, I headed out with Simon to count birds locally and explore. The snow in the air and bright light made it extremely difficult to watch birds, we needed to keep sunglasses on and found it hard to see them clearly. I had sto
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Our first meal – 17 May 2011

17 May 2011 Both of us tried to stay awake until 2100 but as soon as we led down at 1800 we slept, I awoke at 0100 and got back to sleep at 0330, we both got up at 0530, hungry and thirsty, we went to see if we could get a drink from the airport but it was closed, we had been advised
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