Temps in the 50s, partly cloudy, Wind SW 15-20 mph

My flights to Anchorage were on time.

After doing my shopping, I drove up to Arctic Valley, as I had never been up there in the afternoon. I will be pressed for time on Saturday morning, so I thought I would try something different (I usually go up there on Saturday morning).

Just the usual suspects, and few of them. The occasional drizzle didn’t help.

The flight to Adak left a little early, and arrived early, but it took an hour to get our luggage! With minimum staffing, the same crew that unloads the incoming luggage is the same that loads the outgoing luggage. And, since getting the plane back in the air is the priority, the incoming luggage sits in a baggage cart until the outgoing luggage is loaded.

This flight had a lot of hunters and fishermen on it (in addition to about twenty birders), so there was a lot of luggage to offload. And the area where it is offloaded is small, so they had to do it in two batches. Of course, one of my bag was in the second batch!

So I finally got to my house, stored the perishable foods and started assembling the bird feeders.

By the time I had put two of them together, it was already after 4 pm, so I decided to just put those two out this afternoon and the others tomorrow morning. I wanted to get some birding in before I collapsed…

Birds of note included a flock of Sanderlings. Sanderling flocks often attract other shorebirds, so that was encouraging. A lone Cackling Goose on the Seawall and a couple of Thick-billed Murres were also noted.

There was no activity at the various willow/spruce areas, but it was late in the day and windy.

Today’s brief eBird list can be seen at https://ebird.org/checklist/S274576376

The Trip Report can be seen at https://ebird.org/tripreport/413629?welcome=true