Birding in the Arctic

Arctic Tern

This evening after dinner Jake, the man at Toolik who knows everything about birds, took a few of us out to see what species we could spot. Of the 78 species he's seen up here this year, we spied a dozen in the 45 minutes we were out. The most exciting sight is a tossup between the long-tailed jaeger that flew past with a vole in its mouth, and a mew gull that we're pretty sure was eating a slice of deli ham (certainly not something I expected to see in this remote area!). Here's a list of what we saw, and a few pictures.

glaucous gull
lapland longspur
greater scaup
northern pintail
red-necked phalarope
long-tailed jaeger
arctic tern
mew gull
cliff swallow (under a bridge)
lesser yellowlegs
western sandpiper
red-throated loon

Jennifer Weiss and the rest of the crew.

Lesser yellowlegs

Red-necked phalarope