Temps in the 50s, partly cloudy, a few intermittent sprinkles first thing in the morning, Wind WNW 10-20 mph
Yes! Yes! Yessssss!
I’ll have what she’s having…
If I can’t see your pipit I’ll find my own!
During the above-mentioned sprinkles this morning, a nice rainbow formed.
There were a lot of shearwaters passing by Kuluk Bay this morning, but very far out.
There have been at least three different Brambling sightings so far. I saw one of them this morning (no photo op).
At the Marsh, I saw a ptarmigan flying hell-bent-for-election and soon saw why. A Gyrfalcon. The ptarmigan got away…
I added Snow Bunting to the trip list.
There has been a lone Cackling Goose hanging around and from the looks I got it appoeared to not have the white collar typical for the Aleutian subspecies. However, I finally got photos of it today and can see just a bit of a white collar. So it is the Aleutian type.
But the real excitement (for me, anyway) was a Siberian Pipit that I found on the east side of Clam Lagoon (not far from where I saw a Siberian Rubythroat many moons ago).!
These past few days, I have been driving very slowly, looking for lurking passerines along the edges of the road (a time-tested strategy out here).
I saw a small bird fly up from the road and into the grasses on the side of a bluff (it only flew up bout 10 feet). I didn’t see much white in the outer tail feathers, which is typical for the longspurs out here. But It still looked “different.”
I waited it out and it popped back out and flew up the road about 50 feet. I saw through my binos that it was a pipit and the bold eye-ring jumped out at me.
I got out of the car and started photographing it. It continued up the edge of the road until flying off into the grasses well off the road.
Note the following in these photos.
- Dark back-streaking
- Bold eyering,
- White wingbars (as opposed to buffy)
- Dark streaking underneath extending to as far back as the legs.
- Not in the photos, but little white on the outer tail feathers.
These are all hallmarks of Siberian Pipit (as opposed to American Pipit).
This was a lifer for me and number 171 for my Adak List!
What will I find tomorrow?
Vicky and Jen from Sitka arrived today for a week (well, 6 days because of the cancelled flight).
The trip list is 45.
Today’s list can be viewed at https://ebird.org/checklist/S275490145
The Trip Report can be viewed at https://ebird.org/tripreport/413629?welcome=true