Our flights were uneventful. We did our shopping and a little birding, got supper and turned in.

On Saturday morning, we headed down to Potters Marsh in hope that the Falcated Duck that had been there in May and June just might still be hanging around.

We spent a couple of hours to no avail. If it was still there, it wasn’t showing itself to us…

There were a lot of waterfowl (teal, gadwall, scaup, mallard, wigeon, shoveler, etc.), but no falcated. There also a lot of yellowlegs — far more than we had ever seen there before.

We also had several Rusty Blackbirds.

So we headed up to Arctic Valley and, although we were not the first vehicle up the road, we still managed to see two Spruce Grouse along the way.

The other bird of note was a Sharp-shinned Hawk — only the second that we had seen in Alaska.

The flight to Adak was a bit bumpy, but arrived on time. However, there was a contingent of naval personnel who had just completed a military exercise waiting to go home. Since the TSA inspectors arrive on Adak on the incoming flight, the outgoing luggage can’t be inspected until they arrive. So since there was such a large number of passengers (highly unusual for Adak), and they wanted to get the plane back as soon as possbile, the ground crew delayed delivering the incoming luggage to the baggage area until after they had loaded the outgoing luggage!

So we didn’t get our luggage for more than an hour (we went to out rental unit and unpacked our carry-on and stuff that we store there while we waited.

After finally getting our luggage and getting the food stowed away, we finally got out to do a little birding. The only bird of note was a Parasitic Jaeger on Clam Lagoon. They usually leave around mid-September.

It was late in the day, so many birds had already turned in for the night. Very few passerines were seen.

We are ready for a full day tomorrow!