It looks like I’ll have a “photo journal” article about my experiences in Barrow last October in an upcoming issue of North American Birds.  It got me to finally write a trip report, which follows.  By the way, there’s a new Barrow photo gallery on my Photos page, and my trip to Barrow this year is all but confirmed.  OK, here’s the report:

I arrived at Barrow, Alaska on the evening of October 5. Denny Hodsdon picked me up at the airport and said he had seen about 25 Ross’s Gulls earlier that day, a relief to hear. While I was mostly confident our timing was good—the Ross’s Gull migration here usually begins in the latter half of September—I had a nagging worry that maybe they’d be late this year.

The next morning, we started birding at the old runway beyond the old U. S. Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (the main building is now Ilisagvik College). Several whales had been harvested and then butchered at this site. The carcasses were stored in dumpsters here before transport to Point Barrow. We figured this was the most likely location for an Ivory Gull to appear. As we started birding, we began to notice several flocks of Ross’s Gulls flying fairly high, coming in from the Chukchi Sea and then flying east-northeastward across some of the inland lakes, presumably taking a shortcut to the Beaufort Sea. Most flocks had from 20 to 40 individuals, but one had about 100. By the end of the day, we had seen about 250.

This following day, we saw similar flocks overhead, though some Ross’s Gulls were seen flying over the sea and following the coastline as well, some fairly far offshore. One such flock, flying fairly quickly and low over the water, contained an adult Ivory Gull. A few Ross’s also stopped briefly on the frozen lake next to the runway. Though the passage had not yet approached the mega-flights recorded in some years, we saw about 300 Ross’s on October 7.

During my discussions with some of the local biologists, I learned that high winds bring the gulls close to shore, as these winds create breakers at the coast, and the gulls feed in the turbulent water. (The direction of the wind is apparently not critical, as wind from several directions can create breakers.)  Up to this point, the weather had been mild.

As luck would have it, we awoke to howling easterly winds and relatively large breakers on the morning of October 8. A few other birders had joined us this day, and as we were getting gas, a few flocks of Ross’s Gulls could be seen flying along the shoreline in the predawn light. We raced down the road to get ahead of a flock so the new arrivals could get their lifer looks at the gulls, then proceeded back to our usual spot at the old runway. Some other birders and biologists also soon arrived.

Ross’s Gulls began to pour by, flying right along the shoreline and feeding in the surf. Many were rocketing by in the high winds, making photography difficult. Some passed by no more than five feet above our heads. Over the next hour or so, my companions made three one-minute counts that indicated the gulls were passing at a rate over 7000 per hour. Of course, a more rigorous protocol should have been followed to obtain a more reliable estimate, but there were obviously thousands of Ross’s Gulls. For several hours, they flew by us at seemingly the same rate.

Later in the morning, there seemed to be fewer gulls, but they may have just been more spread out. We made a trip to the point in the afternoon, and Ross’s Gulls were still flying by the point in a continuous stream, though the point appeared to be a bottleneck. A group of about 500 were continuously in view, with apparently equal numbers flying into the west end and out of the east end of the flock. Given our counting methodology, we were not able to arrive at a reliable estimate of the number of gulls we saw that day, but it may well have been over 10,000, with a higher proportion of first-cycle Ross’s than we had seen in the previous two days.

The next day, winds had calmed again, and the gulls had resumed the behavior we witnessed during the earlier days of our visit, flying by at higher elevations in discrete flocks. Numbers may have been higher though, with about 200 seen in 20 minutes, but we departed that morning, so we don’t know if that rate continued throughout the day. It had been a spectacular experience.