Oxymoron Bay

So it took me a week to come up with this post... As the days get closer, I get a little more nervous but excited too.  I will start work with WCS next week!  I will be helping to prepare for the field season by getting database sheets ready and printed, packing boxes with supplies, etc.  I feel doing this work with them will help ease my nerves a bit.  I can also barrage them with so many questions!

Either way, the area I will be in is Prudhoe Bay.  Whoever heard of a "prude hoe"?  Quite the oxymoron.  It is far north on the arctic coastal plain.  There is an oilfield which is where we will be doing all of our fieldwork.  I get a neat little security access badge so I can get to the study site!  The group I will be with will be staying in "camp" style housing outside of the oilfield.  By "camp" I mean summer camp, with buildings and a cafeteria.  I may also be sharing a room with one or more of the other women that they have hired for the season.   

Map of Alaska. Prudhoe Bay at the tippy top.
courtesy: Google Maps

Zoomed in map. The whole pink area under the tag is
Prudhoe Bay, including Deadhorse and the airport.
courtesy: Google Maps

That is really all the information I have on most of that for the time being.  Will know more as it gets closer, and when I start working with them too. In the meantime, there is a bird that I have been kind of obsessed with for a couple of years (there are a lot that I am obsessed with, but this one is relevant to being in Alaska).  The Bluethroat.  The name says it all!  They are a plain brown bird, but the males have a defining blue throat ("bib") that is edged by rufous and black colored feathers.  There are 10 known subspecies that all have a different coloration to the blue "bib."  Some have a rufous patch in the center, some a white patch and some that are just purely blue.  In the non-breeding seasons, the male's bib is obscured by the pale coloration of the feather tips.  Both sexes have a rufous color patch at the base of their tail feathers.

  

Male Bluethroat. Subspecies with rufous center in blue bib.
Flashing rufous color at base of tail feathers. 

It is a recent bird of Alaska, well it is there for the summer breeding season.  And by recent I mean, first sightings in 1900. Audubon Birds says it is 

one of the most recent arrivals among North American birds. As Siberian populations of this handsome songster have increased with the recent warming trend, the species has been able to spread across the Bering Strait into Alaska.

Looking at the map of where you can spot this little guy, it is just below where I will be!  Oh well, maybe I will get a couple of days off so that I can explore the area a little.  The map could be off though, since they are not well studied in Alaska and the range varies greatly since there really isn't a lot known about their breeding distribution (at least in North America).  

Bluethroat distribution in Alaska. Right below Prudhoe Bay.
courtesy: Audubon Birds


Male Bluethroat (white-spotted) singing. Video is long but can hear
some of the intricacies of  the song.
They also mimic other birds, so some of that may be in this as well.

From here on out, I will attempt to create a post every day (hopefully not once a week...), with information and pictures of each species of bird we will be studying and others that are in the area.