Mike and I made it to Anchorage with all our belongings today and will be flying to Sitka, in southeast Alaska, early tomorrow morning. From there we’ll be meeting up with a boat captain who will deliver us to Saint Lazaria Island, part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. We’ll be recording the zenith [...]

With our time running out in Barrow, Mike and I had pretty much lost hope of collecting any useable audio here. We knew from the start of this expedition that we’d miss some of our target species due to unfavorable weather. It’s just hard to take when we’ve come so far to be here, the [...]

At some point last night I thought I was in a dream. White bears were drifting in and out of sight as they walked through blowing ice fog over a frozen, crumpled sea. It wasn’t a dream, but the experience we had last night still seems clouded and impossible.

With the wind still whipping and the [...]

Another day of high winds and a dismal forecast dampened our spirits a bit today. After scouting, Mike and I decided to take a break and visit with an Inupiat family that was preparing a bowhead whale taken in May. It was a good diversion, and though the muktuk was not top quality, it felt [...]

Constant 25-30 M.P.H. east winds, with a wind-chill factor of about 10 degrees, made it impossible to do any recording today. We continued scouting the area, trying to pinpoint good locations for our target species, but most birds were hunkered down and inconspicuous. We were successful in locating our White-rumped Sandpipers in the same spot [...]

Late this evening we arrived in Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States. After a long day of plane delays and two lost bags it was nice to be on the ground again with a new mission. As we approached Barrow, the limitless expanse of tundra looked like it was still in a deep [...]

Rain and wind dashed our hopes of doing any recording today. Instead we did some laundry, packed, and caught up on computer work—backing up files, emailing, and entering data. We also got together with Ben Clock and Larry Arbanas, just arrived in Nome to collect high-definition video footage for the Macaulay Library collection. [...]

With only a few days ahead of us in Nome, Mike and I made a short list of the vocalizations we were still after and identified those that we felt were still obtainable. We decided to spend additional time working on Bristle-thighed Curlew to round out our coverage of its repertoire, to try for calls [...]

We woke yesterday at midday and found that Nome was socked in by low clouds and a light misty rain. We debated our options and decided to get away from the coast and try our luck on the Kougarok Road. Inland, though the clouds persisted and an occasional drizzle interrupted our recording, we found pretty [...]

We worked through the night again last night near the small community of Council, east of Nome. We returned to a spot that we located on our first day in the area with the hope of recording the display flights of Whimbrel. Instead, we ended up focusing our attention on a pair of Red-throated Loons.

Red-throated [...]