Any day you can add two birds to a year list up here this time of year is pretty amazing. Even more so when it is a species you've kind of given up on for the year, and another that is almost a total surprise.
Last night, when we got around to our drive, I left the camera at home. It was late, and overcast and I think I just wanted a bit of a break from it, actually. I should have know that that would portend something unusual. As we drove to Victor Bay I immediately regretted it.
Victor Bay was swathed in fog. In a manner I'd never seen here yet. As we started down from the saddle of the pass Dead Dog Lake swirled in the beginnings of it. It was most picturesque. The sort of scene that you'd imagine from a Gothic novel. One with fens, and moors, and highlands, and a misunderstood creature of the night, one who really just wants to be like the rest of us.
Then as we drove down further, the bay was like a bowl of cotton, with only the higher mountains poking their tops above it. Curses. Every few feet I saw something I'd like to try and photograph. The water was dead calm, pans of ice faded into the near background. Beautiful, mysterious, flat light. Fulmars rested on the mirror like water, with barely a ripple to betray their presence. It would all be gone if I returned with a camera. That is the way of these things.
So we next headed out to Uluksa, to see if we could hear whales breathing in the distance. Not having learned my lesson we could have stopped at the house on the way by, and picked up the gear, but took the high road and bypassed it all.
As we reached the point Travis pointed out some birds, as his sharp eyes always find them first. "Dad, look. Maybe they're redpolls?" I found one in the binoculars through the windshield, no Pipits I think. Then after the briefest of views it disappeared over the rock. Was that a white rump? Wheatear?
I bounded out of the truck and rounded the rocks, leaving kids in my wake. On the other side I found… nothing. As I scanned the point for the birds Travis, from behind me, again pointed out birds, this time down below at the rocks. As we tried to get a look they flushed, and called. Travis pointed me in the right direction and called "they fly like sandpipers". I found them in the binoculars and they indeed flew like shorebirds. But what shorebirds! Ruddy Turnstones, three of them. Birds I hadn't even considered up here, not really.
They flew up out over Arctic Bay, almost disappearing in the mists. Then turned, and turned, and turned again, and headed back our way. They landed out at the tip of the point, amongst the rocks. We stalked them, and saw them resting on the rocky shore. Indeed it was three beautiful Ruddy Turnstones. Skittish ones, they flushed again and again landed ashore near the truck.
I'd had enough, I returned home for the camera, beaten in my decision to leave it behind. As we drove back in, ahead on the road was the first small bird. And a much better look. It was indeed a Northern Wheatear. No doubt ready to embark on its epic journey to Greenland, Europe and down into Africa. Each time I tried to get closer if flew farther up the road, I failed at trying to get even much of a record shot of it. Finally it had enough and flew out of sight.
The Ruddy Turnstones were of course gone when we reached the point. That, too, is the way of these things. I wandered along the shore in the mist, my eyes searching for unexpected birds, my ears tuned to the sound of whale breath. Both senses were disappointed.
And yet I felt elated.