Temp in the 40s, Partly Sunny, Wind SE 5-10 MPH

Our final day.

Nothing new. The Hawfinch has not been seen since early yesterday. The Godwit and Brant are still here.

However, we did have a Common Snipe pose for us this morning.

Common Snipe, Contractor’s Camp Marsh. June 8, 2019

Chris Feeney is staying until the 12th, so we hope he gets some new birds. And the Adak Pelagic birders will be around after their trip (depending on weather).

We ended up with 70 species (slightly better than average).

Our strategy of coming a week later this year paid off in what was certainly not a good year. We got several Asian birds after all of the earlier groups had left — Common Greenshank, Eye-browed Thrush, Brambling, Hawfinch, Wood Sandpiper, (Siberian) Whimbrel.

And we had some unusual birds for Adak — Snow Goose, Brant, Tundra Swan, Northern Shoveler, Herring Gull (American), Bank Swallow.

A Long-tailed Duck lingering well into June was interesting, as was the Horned Grebe (of which there were only 2!).

We had only two Bar-tailed Godwits, but the earlier groups only had one!

There were a lot of snipe around this year (both Common and Wilson’s) and no one had any trouble seeing both.

On the other hand, there were very few Rock Ptarmigans.

The spring Long-billed Dowitchers were new for our spring trips (and beautiful birds, to boot).

Two Wandering Tattlers and a Thick-billed Murre were nice finds.

Our best bird however was the Bank Swallow, as that was a new Adak bird for us.

Our trip home was uneventful and we will be planning our September trip shortly. However, the military is planning on running some exercises on Adak this September and have not yet settled on a date. So we can’t plan until we know — it would not be fun to be scanning seabirds at the Seawall and have a thousand marines storming ashore!

We will let you know…