The target of the trip. We probably saw about 20 Ross's Gulls this afternoon in the 2.5 hours of light we had after we arrived. Most were flying very high and quite far away but we have high hopes for closer and better images tomorrow. Several images will be posted here. I was surprised that many of the birds still showed rather pink plumage even at this time of year.

Barrow!? What am I doing in Barrow, Alaska, you ask. Well…it’s like this. I have a friend in Austin named Isaac who is a crazy bird photographer like I am. A couple of months ago he sent me an email saying he wanted to go to Barrow for a long weekend to try to photograph Ross’s Gull, one of the rarest gulls in North America. Apparently the species migrates from Siberia across parts of the Arctic Ocean in early October and sometimes can be seen in numbers in Barrow. I had seen the species once before, in Canada in 1988:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/151409
but I thought, what the heck. Sounds like an adventure. Very few birds will be around in Barrow, but we might see some Ross’s Gulls which is a super fine bird. So, to make a long story short, we left Austin at 7 PM October 8 and 18 hours of airplanes and airports later found ourselves in Barrow, Alaska where it was 24 degrees F., with a 20 mph north wind. Just balmy conditions. We will have two and a half days here before heading home. Yeah, I know…totally insane!