Above shows the view from the room of our hotel at Anadyr,Siberia. Well I am finally here. Sunday was spent meeting the other members of the expedition team and this consists of 3 Brit's including myself (both great guys from the WWT) 3 Russians (from birds Russia) 1 German and 1 American and all seem ok. We had a hectic time sorting out all the kit at Moscow airport before boarding our 9 hour flight with Transareo. A rather dull flight with poor food and no back seat TV nor even any other TV or entertainment, luckily I slept for over 4 hours. When we arrived in to Anadyr and the ground was covered in snow and fresh sleet / snow was falling upon out exit from the air port. The wind chill factor makes the temperature feel around -5 and so you can guess it is cold here.
Above shows the hotel where we are to "hunker down and settle in" whilst waiting for our equipment shipment to arrive on the cargo plane and for the helicopter to take us out on to the Tundra but at present there is a low pressure system sitting right over the top of us and could last for up to 10 days and so the Helicopter won't go until the weather and visibility improves.
Above shows the road in which I walked 3 KM's along this afternoon to reach the area's of the port and lagoon. Whilst taking this route I managed to see 2 Rough Legged Buzzards & a Raven in the distance.
Above shows the area of pools that are just starting to melt but still quite heavily covered by the snow and below the first signs of the break up of the ice on the lagoon. This lagoon held 6 Pintail and several Bean Geese flew over, also at this location 47 Sandhill Cranes flew over calling.
Above is a terrible / poor quality photo of the Grey Phalarope which is infact the first one I have seen in this plumage. The bird is still some what in moult but still looked rather smart. This Grey Phalarope loosely associated with a flock of 17 Western Sandpiper's that were feeding on the the frozen edges of the islands of the lagoon and these were the only Waders present today. Most of the Wader's are not expected to arrive til the end of the month when we hope to be in position on the Tundra ready to start locating males holding territories but especially that of Spoon Billed Sandpiper's. Gull'sresent today included several Vega and Glaucous (photo below) that quite often hung around near to the airport.
