Hi all -- I know that northern Alaska is rather outside of the normal
tweeters range, but I thought some of you might be interested in hearing
what's going on up here. I'm telnetting to my u.washington account from a
little field station, Toolik, which is on the tundra, about 140 miles
south of Prudhoe Bay. This is the place where I have studied Lapland
longspurs for the past 5 years.

The snow is almost all melted off and the first tiny, foot-high willows
and alders are starting to leaf out. Pretty much all the birds are here
now, and are on eggs. Abundant Lapland longspurs, of course, and
white-crowned & savannah & tree sparrows, and redpolls, and yellow
wagtails, and golden plover. (That covers most of the commonly heard
songs & calls.) Saw one yellow wag today doing a wonderful display flight
-- flying up singing, then cocking his tail vertically, flaring his wings
down, and plummeting down into the willows, still singing. The sun was
out briefly yesterday, and the Laplands went nuts doing display flights,
too. The male Laplands fly very high up till they are tiny specks, and
circle around and around giving short call notes, and finally they set
their wings out like tiny paper airplanes and glide all the way back down,
singing their bubbly tweedle-eedle song.

There seems to be an unusually high density of Asian migrants this year.
Lots of bluethroats and northern wheatears. The male bluethroats sound
crazy when they sing. They're wonderful mimics, so what you hear is an
enormous chattering cacophony of longspur alarm calls, golden plover
flight calls, redpoll trills, tree sparrow song...you name it...all coming
from one little black speck that is zooming around a willow clump in
circles. Then the speck lands, and if you're lucky enough to get a view
of it in the sun, you see it's a tiny bird with an *iridescent* bull's-eye
on its throat, of concentric circles of chestnut, blue, and black. What
a bird!

Very few falconiformes so far -- haven't seen any rough-legged hawks or
peregrines. Did spot one northern harrier today, and the gyrfalcon nest
near the pipeline at Mile 94 is active (dark-phase female on eggs, and
light-phase male perched above). The common aerial predators here are
long-tailed jaeger and short-eared owl. I found nests of both on the same
hillside, near four of my precious Lapland longspur nests. The jaegers
are amazingly stupid about leading people straight to their nests -- they
yell and carry on, more and more, the closer you get. The short-eared owl
nest was complete luck, though. I was just walking along the tundra (=
stumbling through the tussocks) when two meters in front of me, a great
apparition unfolded out of the tussocks and wheeled away in the wind. The
nest has 4 eggs. I'm terribly afraid I may have caused her to abandon her
nest, though -- I have stayed away from it as much as I can, but I haven't
seen her come back.

What else? There's the regular American Robin who is always at camp --
we've told him he's not supposed to be here, but he comes every year
anyway. Saw a few Northern Shrikes; jaegers mobbing a golden eagle;
jaegers mobbing a raven; jaegers mobbing a short-eared owl (one of my
friends calls the long-tailed jaegers "Schnauzers of the Tundra") arctic
warbler; arctic tern; the usual waterfowl (= pintail, oldsquaw, scaup,
white-fronted & Canada geese); 2 yellow-billed loons; glaucous gulls;
ravens; spotted sandpiper putting on quite the display; beautiful golden
plovers calling all around.

And today, I got to work with a beautiful bird that I've never studied
before -- Smith's longspurs. The males are *beautiful*, with rich
cinnamon bellies, black-and-white striped heads, and in flight they flash
white wing patches and white tail bars. They turn out to be a lot more
common than I had thought, in the right kind of habitat (flat mossy areas
*without* high tussocks, by big rivers). The males stand up straight like
little soldiers and sing a short warbly song, reminiscent of a tree
sparrow song. To my astonishment the males only arrived a week ago, and
females arrived only a few days ago! June 8! In the Arctic! That's
pushing it VERY late. (Lapland longspurs will be hatching babies in 3
days, and the Smith's are just now laying eggs.) So, no surprise, they
have flung themselves into breeding at top speed. I watched one female
solicit from two different males, and be escorted by a third, within a few
minutes, all while eating as fast as she could. The males have enormous
cloacal protuberances. The Smith's that have been studied in Churchill
are polygynandrous, and it looks plausible that the Alaskan ones are too.

So that's the news from Toolik. I know this is long, but I wanted to
write down some notes about what I have seen, and thought some tweets
might be interested.

Oh, and an 11x8 testis on a white-crown is definitely full breeding size.
(I learned to lap on white-crowned sparrows)

Back to counting Lapland songs, and happy birding to all,
Kathleen Hunt