From here on out, each time I see a Spoon-billed Sandpiper, I wonder if it will be my last. Most of the adults who failed to breed have departed and the few that remain are quietly leading hungry, growing chicks through a landscape under constant aerial surveillance by predatory gulls, jaegers and ravens. One male [...]

Last night the winds were relatively calm and the sun was shining for the first time in at least a week.   The tundra, which was brown when we arrived, has now greened up. Sedges, grasses and the leaves of small willows and other plants have emerged from the crusty carpet of mosses and lichens.  [...]

After seeing the state of life in Anadyr and being warned by the Russian security services people who interrogated us (a story that will have to wait until later) that we were traveling to a lawless region full of criminals we were all anxious about what lie ahead at our final destination, Meynypil’gyno. For [...]

After travelling through 18 time zones I am now in Anadyr, Chukotka in the far north east of Russia.   I have traveled around most of the northern hemisphere and am now back to a 6 hour time difference from my home in Seattle.  I am finally emerging from the fog my head drifted into [...]