The week started like we were going to have a early breakup with the river starting to run spring flood waters. A few white-fronted geese and glaucous gulls arrived to start checking out areas for nesting sites, both were early but that seemed to be the way spring was going.
But from the looks of the snow blowing past the window today, winter wasn’t quite ready to release it’s grip here in the Arctic. The open shore leads that had waves rippling on the surface two days ago are frozen once again, and snow horses are playing over the surface creating small snow drifts on the smooth ice.
The geese and gulls have moved off, perhaps around the gravel road system to the east where they might find some melt water. The snow buntings haven’t slowed down as they are busy chasing each other defending their territories. The forecast holds more cold and snow so the geese may have rough going for a while.
Here is a picture of one of the Black Oystercatcher I saw in Adak earlier in the Month, a first for me. It took several tries to locate a pair of oystercatchers and for a while I thought I wasn’t going to to see one. Then after watching a distant pair in Finger Bay, another pair found me the next day while I was bird watching from the town breakwater. They circled around me calling, then landed to feed not far away in the seaweed and barnacle rocks at the edge of the breakwater. I spent over a hour filming and watching them feed before they flew off on across the bay.
