Arctic Project Week 1

Arctic Project Week 2

Arctic Project Week 3

Arctic Project Week 4

Arctic Project Week 5

Background on Shorebirds

We found this female King Eider quite by accident sitting on a nest near one of our plots. Up close, she's hard to miss, but her camouflage works very well, and she's invisible from even a short distance away.

With the return of cold weather, we find ice on everything in the morning. It rarely snows or rains in this arctic desert, but the fog freezes on things during the chilly nights.

Many birds nest on our study plots, and Lapland Longspurs are the most common. These small songbirds hide their nests in the grasses on the downwind side of small tussocks, where they hide from predators, especially Parasitic Jaegers.

6/23/03 - 6/27/03: While our third week was characterized by harsh weather, stressed birds, and few nests, week four has finally brought true spring! After six days of below or just barely above freezing temperatures, the first half of this week the highs have been in the upper 30s with fog and overcast conditions. That five degree gain has made a big difference to the birds, and to our ability to endure 10-12 hour days in the field. We have seen many shorebirds and waterbirds starting their nesting activity this week, especially Red and Red-necked Phalaropes, and we have begun finding more nests, such as Pectoral Sandpipers and Stilt Sandpipers. In the past few days we've also found nests of Long-tailed Duck, King Eider, Pacific Loon, Canada Goose, and Tundra Swan, and the Red-throated Loons are looking about ready to start.

The past three days have been truly splendid. The first two days the high got up to 42 degrees, the winds have ranged from calm to about 15 mph and the skies cleared. With the full sun, it can feel 20-30 degrees warmer, so we have finally been able to shed a layer or two, which means we can hear and see the birds much better. It's still cold when standing still tracking birds, but at least one can really warm up when moving. Then yesterday the temperature got up to 52 degrees late in the day, so down jackets and thick hats could be replaced with windblocking fleece and headbands. Upon return to camp we moved the chairs outside for dinner and aired out the Arctic Oven (our 9 by 9 foot tent that serves as dining room, office, and storage area), a much needed event after two weeks of nightly drying socks!

One new activity we have been engaged in this week is rope dragging the plots. This technique is used to help find nests, particularly of birds that sit tightly on their nest and don't flush until you approach very closely. The rope is about 75 feet long, with tassels hanging down made of plastic sheets that dangle on the tundra. Two people walk along holding the ends of the rope, while a third walks behind watching for birds that flush as the rope passes over their nest. It's quite a bit of work pulling the rope as you attempt to walk a straight line across deep ponds, hummocky tundra, and tall mounds. The first day we did the two plots with the most upland habitat, which made for a grueling 8.5 hour day of rope dragging combined with 4 miles of walking to and from the plots. The plots we rope dragged on the second day had more ponds, so they took "only" five hours.

The skies began clearing during that same afternoon and finished about 5 p.m., so we took a lovely walk the long way back to camp along the ocean. During this walk we were treated to a beautiful adult male Snowy Owl, majestically keeping watch over this section of the coast. We also heard from the Refuge Pilots that a polar bear had been seen on Flaxman Island, a mere 5 miles to the north west of our camp, so we kept a sharp eye out on the ice pack beyond the lagoon and barrier beach as well. Two days before an adult male grizzly had passed along the coast where Susan saw him from her plot, but fortunately he did not detour to check out our camp.

Pectoral sandpipers are common on many of our study plots. This one was unusually tolerant as we approached her nest to check the status of her eggs.

The Brooks Range provides a stunning backdrop on the occasional clear day, when the wide range of habitats from coastal ponds and wetlands to foothills and mountains is visible.

Jon found this stilt sandpiper nest on one of his plots. This rare species builds nests that are quite exposed, and this one stayed very close while he was near the nest.

Jon and Susan, who have spent 13 field seasons in the arctic, have said this is one of the latest springs they have seen. Their work has been out of their camp far west of here in NPRA on the Colville River, and conditions are somewhat different this close to the coast. We are located on Brownlow Point, which extends out into the Arctic Ocean at the end of the Canning River Delta on the westernmost boundary of the Arctic Refuge. The northwest wind off the ocean hits us just as it comes off the ice, and has no land mass to warm it up before reaching our camp and plots. Last year we were camped about 10 miles inland on the Canning River, and although we had some difficult weather, conditions were not nearly as difficult as they have been here this year. When we return to Kavik on our way out next week we'll get a chance to compare whether spring is significantly further advanced inland. One nice side benefit of a late spring for us is that the mosquitoes have not yet hatched, and we have seen very few larvae swimming in the ponds. Just yesterday we saw our first moths, and the black tundra spiders that seem to be everywhere are thriving. We have a few flowers now, a small fuscia flower that grows on dryas mounds as soon as the snow melts, and some kind of a buttercup. Today the pussy willows are blooming, which is quite an amusing sight given that the willows are a mere two inches tall!

Yesterday, June 21st, was the summer solstice. Last year on the solstice we woke to fresh snow, high winds, and freezing fog. This year we woke to a spectacular view of the mountains to one side, and a full view of the ocean pack ice to the other side, under clear blue skies that lasted all day and temperatures in the 40s. On the 20th it was midnight before we had finished writing up our data, prepared for the next day, and completed our camp chores and could head for our tent. Since the solstice was dawning, we decided to take a short walk and enjoy the magical, enchanting atmosphere created by the midnight sun, especially when it casts long golden and rosy light on vistas as scenic as the Brooks Range to the south. The light and moment was so special that Metta stayed up until 4 a.m. photographing birds around camp and working on the book we plan to write this next year. We'll post several of these photos here on the website after we return to Manomet in July.

As we write this the sky is mostly clear with high thin clouds, temperature is 49 degrees, and winds are about 10-15 MPH. Today and tomorrow are our second set of rope dragging on the plots. The next day we take teams from the other bird camp, run by Steve Kendall who is the ornithologist for the Arctic Refuge, to our plots to show them the nests we have found so they can continue tracking their fate for the nesting success study. Then we begin the process of wrapping up our data and packing camp for return. If the weather holds, we'll have a three-leg trip back to Prudhoe Bay. First we go by helicopter to Steve Kendall's camp, where a refuge plane can land on a gravel bar along the Canning River to take us back to Kavik. From there Kermit, the bush pilot from Cape Smythe Air picks us up again and flies us to Prudhoe. In Prudhoe we'll have our first showers in four weeks, do some laundry, and pack our gear for trucking back to Anchorage. If all goes well we will be back in Boston at the beginning of July. We hope we don't have as much trouble getting out as we had getting in, as we plan to spend the Fourth of July with our children, enjoying the annual ritual of a cookout and bonfires on the beach, and having our first taste of summer.