We bid good-by to Walt and fly to Nome where we part company with Mark C., Mark O., Tim and David. Todd and I stay to bird Nome for the 36 hours. Check into the Nugget and have a beer at Airport Pizza.

August 8, 2009

I wake up and sneak downstairs for coffee and a short walk before rousing Todd. We breakfast at the Polar Café then rent a Toyota Forerunner at Stampede Rentals. We bird the Nome River Mouth and Nome River Bridge thoroughly but not much action – mew, glaucous, slaty-backed gulls and black-legged kittiwakes, arctic and Aleutian terns, whimbrels, bar-tailed godwits, western and Semipalmated sandpipers.

At point Nome we find wandering tattler and in the ponds leading up to Safety sound semi-palmated plovers and others. We have lunch at the picnic tables at the Safety Roadhouse – this is the first time I’ve ever seen it open – usually closed when I’m here in late May/early June. Bird as far as mile 29, finding a variety of ducks, black turnstone, common eider, pacific and red-throated loon, savannah sparrows and now drab Lapland longspurs. Our best birds are three juvenile plumaged rock sandpipers.