Thought some people might be interested in these reports from the
Aleutians. There are five of them (so far) and if I don't get a lot of
complaints I'll forward any more that I get. Apparently they are having a
great year this year. I can't vouch for the accuracy but I'm not sure why
someone would go to the trouble of sending me falsified reports. Wish I
was there.

Jim Elder (jime at eskimo.com)
SEA, Inc.
7030 220th St SW
Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 16:35:45 PDT
From: Mark O'Brien <mark1137 at hotmail.com>
Subject: 8 May Report of Advance Party

Due to technical difficulties personalized email from Attu is not
possible. You will receive regular updates (the same as the world wide
web postings) by email. Please do not reply to these postings unless it
is an emergency. In an emergency you can reply but it would be faster
to call the Attour emergency number. These email messages are also
posted at http://www.attu.com/attu98.htm.

8 May Report of Advance Party

Oh, by the way, in my last report I forgot to mention the 18 Emperor
Geese with all the birds on the runway.

Sorry for the delay in posting these reports. We have not been able to
connect to the internet or send/receive mail due to a rare
incompatibility between our particular modem and the analog terminal
adapter needed to connect to the phone line at the Coast Guard station.
If you're reading this, we have a work-around in place.

The concentrations of Snow Buntings that we see our vehicles flushing
from the runway edges and Casco Road are amazing-certainly in the low
thousands. More tantalizing are the few other birds with them which also
fly away. If we were not so busy getting ready for the arrival of our
May 10 group, we would certainly check things out more closely. As it
is, we see only what catches our eyes as we work around the buildings,
what we flush driving the ATV, and the Rustic Bunting we keep scaring
out of the Casco Road near base. At least he never flies very far.

The nice thing is that the birds are coming to us, instead of us going
out to find them. Consequently, our total of Asian species has already
reached 11! The 6 Whooper Swans, the Smews, Pochards, Tufted Ducks, and
Eurasian Wigeon are all on the nearest lake. In the previous report, I
mentioned Yellow Wagtails, which are now flying over our quarters, and
the Rustic Bunting, which continues to hang around here. Yesterday, a
Hawfinch flew over the yard. In the late afternoon, in glorious sunshine
that let me go out coatless, we were all treated to close scope views of
a pair of Black-backed Wagtails foraging on the beach in front of the
lower building. Last night, we had a party for the Coast Guard at our
upper building, and Ed Borowik, one of our two engineering and
maintenance persons, had to leave it briefly to get his lifer Sky Lark,
three of which were not far from the lower building.

The eleventh species? A Common Snipe of the Asian form, which the Dutch
have already split from ours. One more interesting sighting, formerly a
regular resident but seen only once in the last five years, was a Snowy
Owl by our storage buildings.

This is Attu as we have never seen it. Some of these sightings are early
records for Alaska. It is strange not to have many Lapland Longspurs
around, since it is usually our most abundant bird. And the weather is
different. Wednesday was a dreary day, with spitting snow most of the
time, and heavy overcast. It stopped soon after midnight, and we had
howling winds for a while during the night Thursday morning and this
morning, we awoke to soft snowfall. That came and went yesterday, and
the afternoon was glorious once the sun broke through. Our corner of
Attu is extraordinarily beautiful now, with rugged, completely
snow-covered mountains ringing the bay.

In past years, we had had an occasional snowfall, never amounting to
more than a light dusting. But snow every day is something new. At least
it is not enough to cover the ground for long, and actually, the total
cover continues to melt away. Clearly, the frequent snowfall is because
the temperature overnight and in the morning is around 32 degrees, 4 or
5 degrees below what we usually experience at the beginning of our
trips. Such cold is freezing our lower building water supply line ever
morning, so that we don't have water there until late in the morning.
Hopefully, that will stop soon as daily minimum temperature continues to
rise.

Camp is taking shape nicely, however. The lower building sleeping rooms
are cleaned and largely dried out, all the outhouses are ready for use
(the roof blew off one last winter), and our provisions are moved and
stored. Our second vehicle's carburetor is repaired, so we now are at
full transportation strength. We finished installing a new diesel
generator at the upper building last night. It's much quieter than the
gasoline model it replaced, and gives us twice the capacity. Now we have
a bigger coffee urn and electric heat here. Unfortunately, we still have
a waterfall in the corner of the dining room where the roof went out. At
least our temporary cover has slowed the flow. We anxiously await our
May 10 plane with the material we need for a permanent repair. We are
even more anxious to see the plane because it will have the missing
teeny little quarter-inch fitting that is keeping us from taking warm
showers at the moment. Meanwhile, we'll be putting a new, quieter, more
reliable diesel generator in our lower building. Not only will it power
new oil-fired high-capacity water heaters, thus almost freeing us from
propane dependency, but it will also double our clothes drying capacity.
Two more days of that and other miscellaneous chores, and we'll all be
out birding! (Except for the guys who have to fix the roof right away
after the plane arrives.)


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