Nome: birds
We saw 68 species of birds on this trip, many of which I have only seen once or twice before or certainly not regularly. 7-10 life birds, depending on whether one juvenile was actually a bluethroat (I did not see it very well) and the vagaries of my life list which I have been terrible at keeping up the last few years. Loons (pacific and red-throated) were everywhere in the water, as were glaucous gulls, mew gulls, black-legged kittiwakes, and arctic and Aleutian terns. Long-tailed jaegers were so abundant as to be almost commonplace, and short-eared owls were everywhere, flapping along or perched on wires or posts.
Out in the brushy areas you could almost always hear a gray-cheeked thrush or American tree sparrow singing, and perhaps an arctic warbler, though we never really saw the latter. Small groups or flocks of birds were almost always Lapland longspurs or redpolls. (The redpolls are coming! The redpolls are coming! Seeing redpolls on the beach was WEIRD.) Lots of roadside ptarmigan and quite a few semipalmated and golden plovers (both species.) Flocks of western sandpipers also liked to forage on the road and we'd herd them down the road as we drove. Several new-to-me species were seen more than one, obvious and loud, like yellow wagtails. Others were fortuitous sightings like the bar-tailed godwit seen once, by itself, in a creek, and the white wagtails seen only at the base of the sandspit in Teller and blending in so well with the rocks that they were hard to see if standing still, and one lone parasitic jaeger along the coastal road (though perhaps we saw more).
We took a strenuous, joint-killing hike in search of bristle-thighed curlew but found only whimbrels. I was joking that I don't think the curlew actually exists, that someone just photo-shopped a whimbrel to convince people to drive 72 miles out of town and hike uphill through tussocks and mosquitoes to find a bird that isn't actually there. In reality we might have just been a bit late, after the birds starting spreading out more with their chicks. We looked hard for bluethroats but they are hard to see unless singing, and we very possibly saw a juvenile but as mentioned above I did not get a very good look at it.
As for chicks we saw ducklings and loonlets galore, baby plovers, fledgling sandpipers mostly grown but still with fuzzy heads and short tails, gulls on nests and terns flying fish back to their chicks. On several short tundra walks we had American golden plovers or semipalmated plovers "helpfully" escorting us away from their (sometimes unseen) chicks. Toot-toot, they'd say, over here! Right this way! At one point we'd followed a four-wheeler track and on the way back a semipalmated plover trotted ahead of use for several hundred feet as if cheerfully escorting us back to our car before peeling off to the side, satisfied at a job well done, even though we were going that way anyway.
We saw a huge grouping of swans (and had a long discussion of what the collective noun for swans should be--we liked "senate" or "society" but apparently those are not on the list, though "bevy", "herd", and "drift" are, or more poetically "lamentation." Did you know a group of sandpipers is called a "fling"?)
One particularly spectacular bird sighting was in a small roadside pond. It contained a female scaup and female longtailed duck, each with a brood of 8 or so ducklings in tow. It was a charming sight so we pulled over and walked around one side of the pond to get a better photo angle. The longtailed ducklings were bobbing up and down, diving for food, and the scaups just mostly hanging out, when suddenly there was a short, harsh squawk from one of the adults and both groups, young and old, disappeared underwater instantly. Seconds later the peregrine falcon the alert adult had seen flashed into view, pulling up a few feet from the water. I only saw it in a flash, but was able to get my bins up and on it long enough to verify it was a peregrine, as Dad was saying "What was that?" Just as he was saying "A peregrine" there was another flurry of motion back towards the road as another bird came in to harass the peregrine and Dad said "What was THAT?" A jaeger, or two, quickly drove off the falcon. Aside from the always-impressive stoop of a peregrine, I was impressed at the speed in which approximately 18 ducks, most of which were still fuzzy babies, could disappear underwater and so completely. Obviously they have to to survive, but it was extremely impressive.
Full bird list reproduced below, under the cut. * means a life bird, (*) either a life bird or a failure to add to list. I also made a note of where we saw them, best as I can remember: N = Nome area, T = Teller Highway, K = Kougarok Rd, C = Nome-Council Highway.)
White-fronted Goose (C)
Canada Goose (T)
Tundra Swan (T,K,C)
American Wigeon (K)
Mallard (N)
Northern Shoveler (C)
Northern Pintail (C)
Greater Scaup (T,C,K)
*Common Eider (C)
Harlequin Duck (K)
Long-tailed Duck (K,C)
Red-breasted Merganser (T,K,C)
Willow Ptarmigan (T,K,C)
Rock Ptarmigan (T)
Red-throated Loon (N,T,C)
Pacific Loon (N)
Red-necked Grebe (K)
Pelagic Cormorant (N,C)
Northern Harrier (T,K)
(*)Rough-legged Hawk (T)
Golden Eagle (K)
Peregrine Falcon (K)
Sandhill Crane (T,C)
American Golden-Plover (T,K,C)
*Pacific Golden-Plover (T)
Semipalmated Plover (K,C)
Spotted Sandpiper (C)
Whimbrel (K)
*Bar-tailed Godwit (T)
Surfbird (N)
Semipalmated Sandpiper (C)
Western Sandpiper (C)
Least Sandpiper (C)
Wilson's Snipe (T,K)
Red-necked Phalarope (N,C)
Black-legged Kittiwake (N,C)
Mew Gull (N,C)
Glaucous-winged Gull (N)
(*)Glaucous Gull (T)
*Aleutian Tern (N,C)
Arctic Tern (N,C)
*Parasitic Jaeger (C)
Long-tailed Jaeger (N,T,K,C)
Short-eared Owl (T,K,C)
Northern Shrike (T)
Common Raven (N,T,K,C)
Tree Swallow (N)
Bank Swallow (K)
Cliff Swallow (T,K,C)
Arctic Warbler (K)
*Bluethroat? (K)
Northern Wheatear (C)
Gray-cheeked Thrush (T,K,C)
American Robin (N,T,K,C)
*Eastern Yellow Wagtail (T,K,C)
*White Wagtail (T)
American Pipit (C)
Orange-crowned Warbler (K)
Yellow Warbler (T,K,C)
Northern Waterthrush (T,K)
Wilson's Warbler (T,K,C)
American Tree Sparrow (T,K,C)
Savannah Sparrow (K)
Fox Sparrow (T)
Lincoln's Sparrow (T)
White-crowned Sparrow (T,K,C)
Golden-crowned Sparrow (T,K,C)
Lapland Longspur (N,T,K,C)
Rusty Blackbird (T)
Common Redpoll (N,T,K,C)
House Sparrow (N)