Early in the morning, the village of Gambell sleeps. The rhythms of the Native people appear nocturnal; at three in the morning the ATVs are zipping by outside our window. Our window is the Sivuqaq Inn (Sivuqaq is Yupik for St. Lawrence Island and Gambell), a structure that was built to house the builders working on the new schoolhouse (which is a wonderful structure). I wonder if this night activity relates to the movement of animals and when it is best to hunt. It may have to do with the sun. Whatever the reason, mornings are wonderfully quiet. Even the dogs are asleep, draped across wooden doorsteps.
As we passed the park behind the school, we saw two little girls playing. Children wander freely through the town, often without older siblings or parents. The girls came over and asked if they could come with us.
"We're going to look for birds," one of our members explained.
"Why would you do that?" the little girl asked.
"Because they are beautiful."
That was the perfect response and just enough to convince the girls they didn't want to join us. They went back to their contented play.
At the edge of town an enormous generator churns day and night, giving power to this village of 160. So never is Gambell completely quiet, but this was as good as it was going to get; the constant roar of ATVs was momentarily silenced.
We walked toward the mountain, trudging across fields of gravel, which ground under our boots. That created a certain clatter. But soon, over that grinding noise came a distant squawking, chirping, barking. It was is if the side of the mountain were singing. I looked up to see the mountainside speckled with birds, and many more flying about like little missiles. There were thousands of birds, flying, preening, courting. Least Auklets, Crested Auklets and Parakeet Auklets dominated. They nest in cracks and fissures. Every now and then we'd spot a Horned Puffin. But what we were there to see were Dovekies. We set up scopes and picked through the birds, one by one.
It could have been a tedious task but what I saw with the scope to my eye was rather magical. The birds appeared to kiss. They swirled around each other, hopped from one rock to another. The Parakeet Auklet has a marvelous luminescent eye and a bulbous bill. The Crested Auklets a terrific white eyeline and a tuft that emerges from their bill. The Least Auklet dominated, charming and small (photo above by Peter Schoenberger).
I kept wondering in all of this if I would recognize our bird. "You will," the guide promised, "it's so distinctive, with almost no bill."
The noise of the birds was punctuated from time to time by the crack of a gun. A group of five boys stood at the end of the mountain and shot at the birds. I wondered if they managed to kill a bird to two. Perhaps more. This was their right, but it felt odd to have at one end of the mountain those delighting in the color, shape, life stories of the birds and at the other, those who wanted them for food.
When my eyes tired of looking through a scope, I would turn and scan the horizon. The sun made its way over the mountain; it was a brilliant, cloudless day--our first. In the distance, 47 miles off the coast we could see mountains in Russia! (photo above; squint, you can see the outline of mountains in the distance).
We scanned for what seemed hours until we had to give in to fate. We may not have seen a Dovekie, but we did see Russia. And we heard that magical mess of bird calls in the early morning quiet.