May 19, 2022 - First Full Day on Adak

 

Continuing the Alaska birding adventure with Shep Thorp.  On our first full day on Adak we made another round of yesterday’s route, checking the feeder sites in town, and working our way north.

We found four Bramblings in with the ubiquitous Lapland Longspurs and Rosy Finches at the “Seal Street Feeder”, which is where people have put down bird seed on the driveway of an abandoned modular home that has a Sitka Spruce tree growing in the yard.

The "Sandy Bluff Feeder"is a chunk of basalt/andesite that came off the cliff behind, and people scatter bird seed on it.

Note the reddish-coloured seed - this is Red Milo.  Red milo is a crappy bird seed anywhere in the world.  Even the rats here on Adak won't touch the stuff. 

Birding around the town is somewhat surreal.  Many (most? all?) of the residences were originally US Navy housing, and when the Navy left the island in 1997, only a portion of the buildings were purchased (or otherwise acquired) by locals.  The remainder of homes, duplexes, and buildings were just abandoned, and the winds from the past 25 years have blown many of them completely apart.  Others are merely vacant with the siding in various stages of disappearing.  When the siding goes, the rest of the wall is not far behind.  This would be an excellent place to film an “Apocalypse” movie.

Pine Siskin!  We found one, then two, then four of these birds at a few feeding sites and locations around town.  These are common species for us in the Pacific Northwest, but the eBird checklist demanded descriptions of the birds as a "rare" species on Adak.  We later learned that they commonly winter on the island, but are usually gone by the time the birders arrive in the spring.

Shep coming down from a vantage point in town.  We saw a lot of a few species of birds in town, and kept hoping that we might discover something “new and exciting”.  Keeping in mind that the entire island was exotic to our senses.

Besides birders and hunters, the main 'visitors' to Adak are contractors cleaning up the mess left behind by the Navy. Piles of asbestos-laden waste are overlain by gravel. Thank Goodness the wind rarely blows on the Aleutians to get the asbestos airborne . . . Oh, wait . . .

 We heard the cackling of geese and looked up to see a skein of Aleutian Cacklers flying over.  This species/subspecies was thought extinct until a population was found on Buldir Island in 1962. The taxon was among the first birds listed under the Endangered Species Act.  Considerable effort went into the recovery of these birds, and they were de-listed in 2001.

Aleutian Cackling Geese flying over Adak. One of the great conservation stories of the 20th century is the restoration of the Aleutian cackling goose from no more than a few hundred birds in 1967 to a healthy population estimated at 168,500 birds in 2017.  Removal of the introduced, and predatory, Arctic Foxes from nesting islands was key to the recovery effort.

Stopping at the mouth of Sweeper Creek, Shep's sharp eye picked out a Thick-billed Murre in the Cove.  An abandoned US Navy building near Sweeper Creek makes a good hunting perch for a Bald Eagle.

We worked our way past the old high school and Naval buildings toward the Contractors’ Marsh and Clam Lagoon, where we hoped to find some of Adak's ‘specialty’ birds.

A Female Rock Ptarmigan. These were "Life Birds" for Shep and me yesterday, but quickly became a commonplace sighting. Never boring, though!  The subspecies Lagopus muta chamberlaini is restricted to Adak Island. 

We stopped at the "High School Willows" which are supposed to be a birding 'hot spot', but I presume the shrubs need to be a bit more leafed-out before they become attractive to migrating song birds. I think these are Salix barclayi.

A female Lapland Longspur perched in the "high school willows".  There is always something of interest though, even if the birding is slow.

Purple Mountain Saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia) forms a tundra community with moss and a single anemone (A. narcissiflora)

Everything on the tundra is short - the willows here are a 'decumbent' species - Salix arctica, with a Dandelion and a Buttercup (Ranunculus acris)

We'd had reports of a White Wagtail near the Airport Creek Beach Entrance, and heard it fly over without getting a view.  Ah well, we should be able to get eyes on the bird before too long.  We stopped at the “Adak National Forest” and Elfin Forest to see if any migrants had come in, to no avail.  The "Adak National Forest" is a birding hotspot. Not quite an "official" National Forest, despite the signage.

There's also a pet cemetery at the "Adak National Forest". RIP, Charlie . . .  

The pet cemetery at the "Adak National Forest" seems to have even had an Orthodox burial . . .   

The pet cemetery at the Adak Forest had a lot of burials.  Fritz was A Pretty Good Dog!

Up the hill from the "Elfin Forest" is a monument to Service Members who lost their lives in the WWII Aleutian campaign.

To have a good chance at “Asian Rarities”, one hopes for strong west winds to blow migrants from Russia into the Aleutians.  We’ve been having nothing but northeast breezes, which is counter-productive for those flights. 

We did have a flight of bumble-bees at the National Forest today, where there was a bloom of salmon berry bushes.

The Chocolate Lillies (Fritillaria camschatcensis) were just beginning to bloom on Adak.

We were also fortunate to spend time with another group of birders, Conner and Matt Goff and family, who came in on our plane and were also birding Adak.  

We met Birder Matt Goff coming in from searching for rarities at Clam Lagoon.  Matt hosts a radio program at Sitka Nature.  

Most of the Parasitic Jaegers (known in the UK & Europe as "Arctic Skua") we saw here were dark-phase morphs like this pair at the Lagoon.  These birds are the pirates of the tundra, stealing food from gulls & terns, hunting small rodents and birds, and raiding bird nests for eggs & young.

The “Candlestick Bridge” is at the mouth of Clam Lagoon. The road approaches are blocked off at either side; good thing, as the bridge supports have pretty well rotted away . . .  To access the far side of the bridge requires a long drive around the lagoon.  We saw a number of Aleutian Terns here (sorry, no photos), which were “Lifers” for both Shep and me.

Walking north along Clam Bay, we got a radio call from Sam that he’d found a Wood Sandpiper at Constructor’s Marsh.  We drove back and immediately had a Common Snipe land near the car, a “Lifer” for Shep.  We met Sam Brayshaw and Steve Noseworthy at the Contractors' Marsh and they were of great help in relocating the Wood Sandpiper, which was a “Life Bird” for Shep.  We spent an hour walking through the marsh, and finally re-found the Sandpiper, which flew high but gave distinguishing vocalizations; yet another Lifer for Shep.

Sam Brayshaw worked the wetlands at the Contractors' Marsh, searching for the Wood Sandpiper and Common Snipe (different species to the North American Wilson's Snipe). The buildings behind hime are deserted and falling apart . . .  

Contractors’ Marsh is an interesting wetland, which is renowned for some pretty good birds, but also has a number of wetland plans.  The Mare's tail (Hippuris vulgaris) is a fairly common pan-boreal wetland plant

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris) is another fairly common wetland flowering plant

The Red-necked Phalarope were paired up in many of the island's wetlands and puddles. This species is polyandrous, with the more brightly-plumaged female mating with the duller male, then leaving him to brood the eggs and rear the chicks while she goes off to mate with another male and repeat the process.

A drake Common Teal.  Our American Ornithological Society considers this a subspecies with the Green-winged Teal, whereas the Brits and other ornithological institutions consider it a separate species (Anas crecca) to the American Green-wings (A. carolinensis). We never saw an American Green-wing on Adak.

We drove up toward Shotgun Lake toward evening and ended our birding with a nice view of a Short-eared Owl.

Sam invited us to supper at their place at 6:30, where he cooked spaghetti and sauce, and had boxed wine.  They had brought in a third “bag” as luggage with food they’d purchased in Anchorage, and had a much better larder than we did.  The flight from Seattle charged $70 for 2 bags, but flying inside Alaska, the airline gives you 3 bags free!  We collapsed in bed around 11:00, even though it’s still plenty light in the sky.