Things on Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge are going super well! We are typically in blinds conducting feeding studies on the common and arctic terns by 0830. For three hours, we monitor what food chicks are being fed by their parents. This includes the prey type (fish or invertebrate species), prey size (relative to the parent’s bill length), who ate the food item, which parent brought the item, and when the parent came to & left the nest. So, a line of our data might be read like this: “At 11:22, the banded adult brought a 2.25 bill-length hake and fed it to the first-born chick. The banded adult left the nest at 12:04.” This is a lot of information to gather in only a few seconds when the birds come in and the chicks are hungry. However, I am figuring it out and getting better at it each day! In the afternoons we take measurements of tern chick weight and wing growth (wing cord). This can take up to three hours. The work is exhausting but I utterly love it here!
banded tern chick
Jacob’s summer home