Those Back-to-School Assignments

Remember when you were a kid and returned to school in the fall and the teacher told you to write an essay on what you did that summer?   So, you took your pencil, or pen if you were in the upper grades, and sat there chewing on the pencil, turning it over through your fingers, or trying not to bite the eraser.

 

You were wondering what you HAD dome that summer and thinking, “Did I really waste the whole summer doing nothing that I can remember?”

 

It is now the final days of September and I DO remember what I did this past summer because I just recently finished the chores.

 

MAY:   picked up litter over 17 miles of the Seward highway.   I would have kept going, but I was expecting friends from Canada and we, along with another friend, were going to fly to Nome on June 2 to photograph migrating birds and the local musk ox.   That meant I had to spend the last week cleaning house and getting my gear together.

The Arctic terns have returned to Alaska.

Getting the downed dead trees out of the forest.

A small part of litter I picked up.

 

A red breasted merganser on the stump.

It's spring.   Pussy willows are blooming.

Silhouette of an Arctic Tern that has returned to Tern Lake from Antarctica.

Cleaned up pieces of debris here.

Yellow-rumped warbler, a migrating bird.

Marg, Shelly and I visit the most famous red-necked loon in Alaska.   His name is either Romeo for Ivan the Impaler, depending on your experience with him.   He spends his days braying at floatplanes and terrorizing photographers.

JUNE:   Five days in Nome, a place I’d never been.  Driving up and down the only three roads out of town, as well as the town cemetery.

 

Wilson's Snipe

Long-tailed jaeger on the tundra.

Train to Nowhere

SCORE!!!    A Bluethroat, one of the main reasons I went to Nome.

                                    A lifer for me--first time I"ve seen one.

Pipit.   A lifer for me.

Rock Ptarmigan.   Another lifer.

White-crowned sparrow.

Long-tailed Jaeger

Musk ox

Another Bluethroat

American Golden Plover, a special lifer.

Lapland longspur male, a lifer.

Lapland longspur

There was a bit of snow in Nome.

Golden plover, a lifer

Wilson's Snipe

Godwit, a lifer

Safety Roadhouse, the last checkpoint on the Indiarof Trail race, 22 miles from Nome.

Marge, Shelly and I had a couple days to play tourist before they flew back to Canada.

Marg, Shelly and I on a day cruise out of Seward.

Sea otters in Resurrection Bay

Sea lions in Resurrection Bay

         Then, back from Nome, I had to get ready for my two cousins to arrive  from Montana and Wyoming.   

I had three sets of exterior stairs that were rotten and needed replacing.

The lumber is waiting.

Now the fun is over for the duration and the works begins. After recess, we'll revisit June.

The foxglove in blooming.