I was lucky enough to work on the North Slope of Alaska from August 21 until October 02, 2006. My job involved flying in a small aircraft over the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas counting marine mammals, based out of Barrow and Deadhorse (aka Prudhoe Bay.)
On my downtime from work I was able to do quite a lot of birding (and mammal watching), and I present here a few snapshots from a North Slope Fall.
I plan to add more pages, including some showing the landscapes and some of the mammals, but for now here are a few bird pages:
I have removed the whale photos at the request of the supervising scientists.
Yellow-billed Loons: seven of the 212 that flew past me one morning!
Eiders: all four species in non breeding-male plumages.
Thayer's Gull: two of the three juveniles that briefly crossed my path.
Slaty-backed Gull: three of the five that I saw at Barrow during my stay.
Snowy Owl: how can you not photograph these impressive birds!
Short-eared Owl: not a North Slope specialty, but I had a spectacular encounter with them.
Northern Shrike: again not a North Slope specialty, but once more I had a most interesting encounter with it.
Misc. unusual birds: scarce/rare North Slope birds.