From Pacific to Prairie and Pole to Pole

Today, like every day, I did X-plot again.  I took a video of the walk back from the Murre blind for y’all entertainment.

It’s too big to upload onto this blog directly, so here’s a link to it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OIL37fvZi0

It’s about 6.5 minutes long, which I know is eons in internet time, but I attempt to explain what’s going on so it might be interesting to get through the whole thing, and bear with the fumbling commentary, as I’m dodging swoops from WEGU’s the entire time I’m filming.

After lunch, Russ showed me how to do re-sighting of the elephant seals, or Mirounga (their genus name), as they are referred to in the study.  I basically go to three locations where they like to hang out and look with my binoculars to see if they have any tags, then try to figure out the tag number and record it only if im 100% confident I got it right, and which fin and between which digits it has the tag, and any other details, like if there are other tags (and their corresponding details), it’s age class, sex, and if there are major scarifcations to it, and whether its alive, dead, or the tag was found separate from the seal.

After that, Russ showed me how to do site-searching for the Ashy Storm Petrels (ASSP).  I carry around a boombox that plays a recording of their call, and play it on and off along the crevices where they like to hide (today I just did the stone wall that supports the trail up lighthouse hill from the bottom to the top) until I hear one call back, and then its a matter of hide-and-go-seek where I play the call and listen for it to call back and so forth until I figure out which crevice it’s hiding in, then mark the entrance with three dots of orange spray paint.  Later, Jessie will go over the site(s) I found and further confirm whether or not the bird is using the site to breed.

THEN I GOT TO SHOWER!!!  YAYYY!!! Right now, with 5 people on the island, we are on a 3 day rotation so 3 days of no shower, then on the 4th day shower, then another 3 days no shower, etc.   There’s hot water in the house reserved for showers so I don’t have to trek next door to the Coast Guard house in all my foul weather gear like Eleanor had to last year mwahhahahaha.  Still, we try to conserve water by taking “ship showers” which I do at half the time at school/home anyway.

If you have any questions regarding the video, please feel free to ask! Remember to refer to a time in the video because “what’s going on with that bird in your video?” is not going to be a very easy question to answer.

Jessie is cooking dinner and it smells DELICIOUS!

More pictures tomorrow I promise!

Love, Kristina

Today I did X-plot with the Common Murres (COMU) again today, but it was MUCH windier and colder.  When I had to go out of the blind and onto a nearby jutting rock to get a look at the murres hiding in crevices, I was afraid I was going to get blown off! But I didn’t.

Then in the afternoon all 5 of us looked at Cassin’s Auklets (CAAU) burrow boxes to check on the chicks.  We first wait for the recorder (Pete or Russ) tell us which box to go to (not every one is checked because they’re left alone for a while for incubation right after an egg is discovered), then check to see if Mom’s there, and if she’s not, then you take the lid off and grab the chick, like Annie’s doing in this picture.

Then we’d check to see what stage of development the chick is at by examining the wing feathers, and then weigh it like Annie is doing here. we weighed in buckets to prevent the strong winds from messing up the readings.

I asked for a pose – this is Annie holding a medium sized chick.

Next time I’ll try to get a picture of the wings to show different stages of development.

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After this, I did the Ashy Storm Petrel (ASSP) wing watch, where I basically went to several locations on the island and looked for the remains (usually wings) of dead ashy storm petrels, and try to determine when and how it was killed, and then collect what I find in little baggies.  Today I didn’t find any wings, which is a good thing, though I searched very thoroughly.  I was also concentrating on not getting attacked by the Western Gulls (WEGU), known commonly but incorrectly as seagulls, because they were trying very hard to scare me away from their omnipresent nests.

I had to check 5 main areas where the Ashy Storm Petrels usually nest and are thus usually gobbled by the WEGUs or the pair of Peregrine Falcons (PEFA) that started breeding here this year: Egger’s House (which is where the egging company from the mid 1800’s stored the murre eggs they collected before they shipped them to SF, now its a square-shaped stone rubble structure), Lighthouse Hill (the view from which is pictured here), the stone wall around the helo pad (where helicopters should land if one of us had a medical emergency), the stone pilings near Garbage Gulch (where people during the 1800’s would dump their garbage directly into the water), and the stone walls around the water catchment.

Pete made a delicious dinner that had lots of cheese and Annie made a raspberry and strawberry chocolate tart-pie – if the WEGU’s don’t kill me, the heart attack from tonight’s dinner will.

Then we had a really fun game of “Pull” – a variation of Scrabble that is a lot more fun than Scrabble.

Anyway, it’s REALLY late and I’m quite tired – yawn – so that’s it for tonight!

Love, Kristina

I thought I’d take a picture of the house! Here is where the biologists and interns live! The first floor has a living room, data room, phone room, kitchen, and bathroom.  Upstairs has several bedrooms and a bathroom.  Jessie and I share the “walk-through” room, Pete has the “wind” room, Russ and Annie have the “sun” room, and when Katrina and Michelle come back, they’ll have the “jane fonda” room.

This is the back of the house.  The stairs lead up to the walk-through room.  Jessie sleeps closer to the window.

Ok, so this morning Pete took me to the murre blind where I did X-plot.  Basically, we climbed up this rock face and went to the little structure at the top that is essentially a box with three windows and a back door.  It’s called a murre blind because it oversees the common murre (COMU) colony without disturbing them too much because we observe them through the windows.

This is X-plot.  The plot only focuses on Common Murres.  So my job this morning was to identify each breeding site in this area that is numbered on a diagram in my notebook (usually the same sites are used every year because the rocks form natural little crannies), and determine 1) if there was a bird there and 2) if there is a bird, whether or not there was an egg under the bird. I’ll be doing this every morning from about 8:30-11:30

The picture makes it look like a random jumble of black-and-white birds, but after watching them for 3 hours, it becomes pretty obvious each nest site is a territory that is clearly marked from the next.  Many of the birds present are with their mate, and they like to preen each other’s feathers, which looked much more careful and affectionate than poking another bird in the head with your beak may seem.  This picture was taken when I was on a rock slightly to the right of the blind, as you can see the window-side of the blind on the edge of the picture.

Also, I don’t think you can see any eggs in this picture, but their eggs are really pretty! They’re usually light-to-bright green or blue with black speckles, and are fairly large.  It reminded me of very large Easter Eggs.

Then, after lunch, Pete took me to do Pigeon Guillemot (PIGU) breeding checks.  This check happens once every 5 days.  First we checked boxes (I’ll explain the boxes a different day) and crevices around Garbage Gulch (I didn’t get a picture of this)  and then Lighthouse Hill, pictured right.  We checked boxes and mostly crevices along the rock face to the left.  It was mostly rock scrambling, but I’m thankful I’m a confident rock climber, as getting to some of the crevices took some tricky footwork and maneuvering! Also, the rock is pretty soft and crumbly so you got to be careful when doing this check because there are lots of gull nests around too and a dislodge rock could hurt somebody underneath or crush a gull nest.

In the Pigeon Guillemot breeding checks, we look at each labeled nest site and check to see if there are 1 or 2 eggs, and if there previously were eggs, then if there are any chicks.  If there are new chicks, we band them.  I got to band 3 chicks today! Here I am holding the third chick of the day at site 104A.  It was still a little damp from its egg, which means it probably hatched early today or yesterday. ADORABLE!

Also, a kind of relevant side note: a lot of the species here are referred to by the 4 letter short name, which is usually made up of the first two letters of their full name, like COMU for Common Murre, and PIGU  for Pigeon Guillemot.  I’ll try to use their full names for the blog but I might slip in the future and use their shortened name.  What’s kind of funny is “pigu” in Chinese means “butt” so I was a little confused at first when Pete and Annie were talking about “checking on the pigus” this afternoon, but got that figured out pretty quickly.

Pete and I finished around 3 and I’m done for the day! Since I have a bunch of time I’m going to go read up on some of the protocols for the other studies I’ll be doing soon.

Hope you enjoyed the post!

Love, Kristina

So much happened today, I don’t even know where to begin! I guess we can go chronologically.

So I got up at the bright and cheerful time of 5:20 am, met Jessie (the other intern) at PRBO hq, we loaded up the van with 7 action packers (waterproof boxes), a water sample case, and our personal gear. 

My mom got a little tearful as I got ready to leave, and insisted on taking this picture of me and the van (I’m a little disgruntled here because we were running late but I’m glad the picture is here!)

Then, Jessie drove us to the Golden Gate Yacht Club where we met Jim (the skipper of the sailboat) and his friend Matt, who helped with the trip and was learning how to sail from Jim. Our trip went very smoothly! None of the swells were too big, we didn’t get wet from the splash at all (though we were prepared for a very wet ride with lots of raingear, thanks Jim and Matt!).  We left around 8:30 am, so it was still REALLY foggy leaving San Francisco.  We couldn’t even see the Golden Gate until we were almost upon it and even when we were passing underneath, we couldn’t see the bridge much past the highway part of it.

Then, we had a few hours of sailing with no land in sight.  I got a little sunburnt (oops) so my face is a little roasty toasty, but I didn’t get seasick! (thanks, Bonine!)

Jessie took a picture of me, with Jim’s back and Matt’s profile, and I took a picture of Jessie! It was kind of chilly but around 10-11 it warmed up.

Then, out of the fog, the Farallons appeared! We arrived at about 1pm.

Getting things and people on and off the island is not a simple task.  I don’t think you can see it in this picture, but there is a crane on the island that is the island’s means of transport of items/people.

The sailboat tied up to a buoy nearby the crane, then Russ (one of the biologists on the island) came out on a transport boat to get some of the stuff and me.  Then, the transport boat goes back to the island where the crane lifted the entire transport boat with people and contents out of the water and onto a landing platform on the island.  Pretty neat, huh?

It took two trips to get all the supplies/trash on/off.  Then Jim and Matt took a tour and then went back to SF with interns Alex, Katrina, and Michelle.  Katrina and Michelle are taking a 2 week break and then coming back.  Right now, Jessie, Russ, Pete, Annie, and I are the human residents of the island.  Jessie and I will spend the next two weeks getting all trained up.

This picture is of Russ, Jim, Matt, Katrina, Michelle, and Alex getting lowered onto the water.

We spent the afternoon putting away the groceries, getting settled in, getting a tour of the house, then doing rhinocerous auklet and cassin’s auklet nest checks.  I’ll describe these later because it’s superdy duperty cool and deserves its own post.  Then, we ate a delicious dinner cooked by Annie and got a semi-detailed run-down of what the details of our jobs might look like.

All in all, a VERY exciting and eventful day, despite being kind of groggy and grumpy since I didn’t get my big cup morning coffee 🙁 (caffeine tends to exacerbate seasickness)

Later tonight we might help/watch Russ, Pete, and Annie with mist-netting the ashy storm-petrels (which will happen if the weather permits, and if it does, will be around 10:30 – 1:30).

Fantastic day!

Since this is my first time posting to this blog, I guess I’ll start with a little introduction…

I’m Kristina McOmber, Pomona College ’12, and I am working on a major in Biology.  My academic adviser and mentor, Professor Karnovsky, helped me find an amazing internship for this summer – volunteering for PRBO Conservation Science on the Southeast Farallon Island (SEFI).  Eleanor Caves, who also contributes to this blog, did the same internship for PRBO last year.  Like Eleanor, I’ll be doing seabird research on the island, which I will be describing in detail over the next 8 weeks while I’m on the island, so hold your horses on the details.

So…. AFTER I told a bajillion people to follow the blog to stay updated with me, I realized I’m not a very great blog writer… uh oh…  so bear with me this summer while I try my best to let you know what’s going on at the SEFI, and don’t refer to Eleanor’s past posts, because it’ll probably make me look bad.

First mistake: I didn’t take any pictures today. Whoops!

Anyway, the Cheyenne, a 34′ sailboat, captained by (is that the right term???) skipper Jim Fryer, is a volunteer boat that is part of the fleet of volunteers that take interns/biologists/supplies/trash to and from the island known as the Farallon Patrol. Yay for volunteers! The Cheyenne will be taking us out to SEFI tomorrow morning at 7:30 am from the Golden Gate Yacht Club.  It’ll be a 3-5 hour trip, so I’m definitely taking some Bonine! It’s great for preventing seasickness. Much better than those lame patches that never work (equals barf barf vom, which is never pleasant).

So today, my family drove me from our home in Foster City to Petaluma, where PRBO’s headquarters are, and we got a room at the Sheraton so that I’ll be able to get to the headquarters at 6 tomorrow.

I met Jessie today, who is one of the other interns that I will be living and working with this summer.  She’s really cool! She’s 23, graduated from UCSC, and already has some seabird research under her belt.

Jessie and I got to PRBO hq today around noon, did the paperwork, then got keys to the van so we could go SHOPPING!!!!! no…. not any retail therapy in union square.  We went to Shell to get some propane and Safeway to get food for the 6 people that will be on the island for the next two weeks.

Ok, so, food shopping was, in one word, ridiculously hilarious. Ok, I cheated and used two words, it’s ok. ok? ok.

The list was 4 pages long.  Jessie and I filled two shopping carts till they were almost overflowing, and about half of a third cart.  Some of the stuff was very particular, like gluten-free soy sauce, unsweetened and semi-sweet baking chocolate, and agave syrup (which I couldn’t find…. sorry!), and others were just kind of silly in that the amount we collected seemed comical.  Like, we got 6 bunches of bananas, 20 pounds of flour, 3 BAGS of bell peppers, 5 pounds of ground beef, etc.

We got some funny looks and one lady even told me that I had the most organized cart she had ever seen (at that point I had only gotten through half of the first page, I doubt she would have maintained that opinion at the end).  The receipt was probably 4 feet long.  The total cost was around $770, but PRBO’s club card and coupons brought it down to about $690.

The cashier thanked us for helping her keep her job.

We packed all the groceries, mail, and packages into “action packers” which are good for boat travel because they are large secure bins that are waterproof.

Afterwords, my parents, sister, and I went out to dinner in downtown Petaluma at “Graffiti” which was super fancy and nice and DELICIOUS. yummmmm!

And that was today in a nutshell!

Love, Kristina

written by Ali Corley

This semester I joined Professor Karnovsky’s lab with the hope of being able to study birds and do field work in beautiful places.  I had just gotten really interested in bird ecology after a semester abroad in Costa Rica where I studied bird song in the sloping trails of the cloud forest.  So, when Prof K said we would be undertaking trips to the Channel Islands to study Xantus’s Murrelets, I was thrilled.  I had never been on a boat for more than a quick trip and I thought that sailing the high seas to collect data sounded adventurous.  However, moments after our first vessel, the Shearwater, left the harbor, I realized that I am very susceptible to sea sickness. 

From left to right, Prof. K., Laurie, Nik, Ali (me), and Darrell on the observation deck.

         Despite this realization, I really enjoyed the cruises to Santa Barbara Island.  Bird observations were actually very relaxing and it was cool to be able to see so many sea birds, especially murrelets (which are adorable).  Also, after many net tows, I became oddly obsessed with spraying down the net and I found it very rewarding to make the net completely clean.  For me, the nighttime bird captures were the most fun.  Sitting in a swerving zodiac in between Laurie at the wheel and Darrell leaning halfway over the water to catch a murrelet felt like some kind of crazy video game that should be called “The Adventures of the Field Biologist.”   I am still hugely impressed with Laurie and Darryl’s murrelet catching abilities. 

Me and Prof K banding Xantus' murrelets.

The best part of the trips is all the animals we get to see while we are there.  Never before in my life have I seen so many marine animals.  We saw a lot of dolphins, whales, sea lions, and of course, seabirds.  SBI itself is spectacular.  The sheer cliffs rising over the crashing surf, the thousands of birds that swarm the hills, and the many sea lions patrolling the waters around it all make the little island seem millions of miles away from cities and people and civilization.  And when I am on the upper deck, with the sun at my back and wind in my face while the boat is cruising around the island, I think to myself, that it is definitely worth it. 

Santa Barbara Island home of the Xantus' murrelet.

After our winter hibernation (not filled with sleep but with plankton-counting and thesis writing), the Channel Islands crew returned to Santa Barbara Island. We’ve already completed two cruises—one over Spring Break in mid-March and one in the beginning of April. Both expeditions were great successes. Ali Corley (PO ’11) and Nick Tyack (PO ’11) got their first taste of the sea and will use the data we collected in their senior thesis during the coming school year.

Details on the cruises will come soon! But they were both filled with high adventure,  whale sightings, and, of course, Xantus’s Murrelets.  

Nell Baldwin (PO '10) and Ali Corley (PO '11) prepare to deploy the CTD off the back deck of the R/V Shearwater . The plankton net sits on the side!

Darrell drives the three Pomona students to SBI for an evening hike.

At the end of our time in the Karnovsky lab this summer, Kristen and I created Posters displaying some of the preliminary data we analyzed since our trip to the Channel Islands. Kristen’s beautiful poster, titled “Murrelets on the Move: Seasonal Density of Xantus’s Murrelets near Santa Barbara Island,” discussed how the distribution of XAMU around SBI was affected by surface water temperature, and how both distribution and temperature changed between April and May. Kristen found that surface temperature was significantly cooler in April than in May. She also found that XAMU prefer the colder water to the west of SBI, possibly because of the higher abundance of prey (something we hope to confirm this semester).

A beautiful figure from Kristen's poster

My poster was titled “Changes in At Sea Distribution of Xantus’s Murrelets Since 1976,” and it focused on the differences in XAMU counts and distribution between our data collected this year, and data collected in the same months in 1976. I found that XAMU numbers were much higher in 1976 than in 2009, and that XAMU were found in larger numbers along western transects in both months and in both years.

A figure from Augie's poster

This semester, we will continue to look deeper into how the physical traits of the water around SBI affect the XAMU distribution during breeding months. We will also soon begin to analyze the distribution of zooplankton around the island and how it affects XAMU distribution. There is still a lot of analysis to be done!

The MAPS (Monitoring Avian Survival and Productivity) protocol has a set range of dates for bird banding. As I stated before, in the last few banding periods (periods 8-10 to be specific), juvenile birds should predominate. MAPS has the overall goal of assessing survivorship and breeding rates of resident birds, and as such, its protocol asks mist net operators to note birds that are potentally transitory migrants (lest they skew our survivorship estimates). Therefore, we should catch a larger proportion of young birds near the end of the season because they are beginning to be active, and the vast majority are preparing to migrate.

Our last banding day was Friday, 8/7, and we caught a total of 32 birds which was quite remarkable. In addition, most of the birds we caught were juveniles, with two exciting new catches—our first clay-colored sparrow (which was incidentally a juvenile), and a just-feathered hatchling yellow warbler that looked as though it had fallen out of its nest and into the net!

Amy holding a Yellow Warbler.

Lee Cornwell, one of the owners of this beautiful grassland ranch, graciously allowed us to ask him a few questions. In college, his major introduced to him a rotational grazing system that he and his brothers believed would be better for the land. Currently, all of his pastures are on a rest/graze system, where they are rested for months or even years between grazings to allow the plant community to recover.

He and his family have a deep commitment to sustainable use of their land, and he hopes that future generations of Cornwells will continue to graze their land wisely so that the flora and fauna associated with their ranch can continue to florish. He has taken remarkably good care of his ranch and holds a deep knowledge of the local landscape. We thank Lee for his hospitality, for allowing us to use this land, and  forthe wonderful care he has paid to this landscape.

Lee Cornwell standing outside his home. Thank you Lee!

Last Wednesday, Charlotte and I finally got to go out with range management. These guys do a lot of habitat surveys and such, and the day we went out was no exception. First were some riparian habitat assessments, where we walked in and around dry stream beds to determine if the waterways were in “pfc”, proper functioning condition. The first part of the pfc assessment is taking a photo from a stake that somebody put at the site a long time ago– the idea is to be able to compare these photos, taken from the same location, to see how the site is changing over time. Then we would walk around and look at things like sinuosity (i believe this is a measure of how meandering the stream is, but i think its a little more complicated than that), evidence of downcutting, bank stability, riparian plant communities, and flow capacity. If they decide a waterway isnt in pfc, they have to make recommendations about how to fix it, so they also have to take into account its potential– for example, one of the sites we visited wasnt in great shape, but there wasnt a whole lot that could be done about it because its flow had been restricted by upstream dams. It was concluded that this site had reached its potential and was therefore in pfc.

Riparian habitat assessment. This is a good-lookin stream bed.

After we finished with the riparian assessments, we drove to another site to do an upland habitat assessment. We surveyed a vegetation plot that nobody had looked at since 1989, dug a hole to look at the soil, and compared the plant communities present to the ones that “should” be present according to the big binder of range management stuff. Turns out this spot was not in great shape; after being homesteaded and farmed in the 1930s (and later vacated), club moss and three awn grass grew back in. The club moss is particularly problematic, because it covers the ground, hinders percolation and blocks other grasses from growing in. The result is that the land isnt as productive as it could be in terms of livestock, because cows dont eat club moss. The two ways of getting around this “dead end” succession pattern are fire and tilling (with a plow or a herd of buffalo, but since there are no buffalo…), neither of which can be enacted easily by the BLM, so for now the club moss reigns supreme.

Steve, Ray and Tom. They are amazed at the amount of three awn we found in this plot.

Tom digging a hole to see the soil layers. The topsoil here is very deep. Part of the assessment asks the soil type, which you decide by taking a handful of dirt and getting it wet. If you can make a long ribbon of mud between your thumb and forefinger, the soil has a high clay content. This soil was just silty, but we still got to play with mud, which was cool.