Between 31 May and 20 July, I visited Alaska together with Guy Kirwan, Jonathan Price and Rod McCann. Our itinerary, which followed a fairly typical birding tour, took us to Dutch Harbor in the central Aleutians (principally for Whiskered Auklet), Nome on the Seward Peninsula, and Deadhorse (= Prudhoe Bay) on the north slope coast. In addition we visited the Denali Highway, largely in an unsuccessful bid to find Smith’s Longspur, although the scenery and Northern Hawk and Great Grey Owls were significant compensations. We also took in a number of sites close to Anchorage, including the Kenai Fjords, where a small-boat trip proved to be very much one of the highlights of the trip. We were generally very fortunate with the weather, with very little time lost to rain, and we were fortunate to time our visit to Dutch Harbor well to coincide with relatively calm conditions at sea. This was my first dedicated birding trip to the USA.