From Pacific to Prairie and Pole to Pole

As Amy just posted, she arrived in Glasgow on Saturday, and we’ve had quite a fun time introducing her to the sights, sounds, and folks out here! There’s some great people, and we really appreciate all of their kindness and hospitality.

Welcome to Glasgow!

On another note, this blog is headed “What would Grinnell do?” because Amy and I have been trying to follow the field techniques of the famous field biologists, notably Joseph Grinnell, one of the most famous biologists who was seminal to the concept of the species niche based on his observations of California thrashers (similar to our Brown thrashers in Montana but with a much more wicked looking curved beak and a dull brown coat).

Last week was the last day (at least for a while) that I had a chance to accompany Lauren, Marisa, and Matt on one of their habitat surveys at a Greater Sage-grouse lek. This lek had a particularly scenic view with a lake under the sky that looked like gray glass, and we nearly had a rainout scare! As you can see below, the winds started blowing pretty heavily, and we could hear it whistling in our ears! We had to finish our vegetation measurements in a hurry to get out before we’d get stuck in the mud.

Lake under the sky at a lek

Prairie wind (look at the grasses especially)

While we were finishing up our vegetation surveys, I saw several remarkable flowers. Among them was the sego lily–a first for me–and a really nice prickly pear cactus flower. Another interesting plant is salt bush, which, true to its name, tastes salty. Delicious.

Sego lily

Prickly pear flower

salt bush

This past week and a half I’ve been starting to set up the censusing protocol for our MAPS station. Amy and I went out to the field this morning and identified 20 species of birds, including American goldfinches, Brown thrashers, an Oriole (either Bullock’s or Baltimore), numerous house wrens and yellow warblers, Field sparrows (rare in the state, apparently), Horned larks, long-billed curlews, killdeer, and most exciting of all, two American kestrels. The American kestrels flew overhead above net 3 and then settled on a snag atop two trees behind a Western meadowlark nest that I found last week. Hopefully the meadowlark family is doing well! We also found another House wren nest today in addition to one we found last week behind net 2, which is in dense ash/cottonwood forest with many, many bugs (mosquitoes, no-see-ums, gnats–the whole gamut of charming pests).

One of the sites at which we will conduct our bird surveys is southeast of the MAPS station overlooking the canopy of trees surrounding nets 9 and 10. This has been a great site for seeing spotted towhees, blackbirds–Brewer’s and Red-winged, American goldfinches, Lark sparrows, Upland sandpipers, and even sharp-tailed grouse!

census site southeast of MAPS station

Fog overhead

At that site last week, I saw a proliferation of butterflies on various types of flowers. Recently in the past two weeks or so, at least 3 or 4 butterfly species have come out in full force (white ones, blue-winged ones, and these monarch-looking ones–I’ll get the species names soon), and it would be interesting to see if that corresponds to published dates on their life cycle.

Butterflies on unknown flower

Butterflies on milk vetch

My last bit of exciting news is that I was approved to drive vehicles belonging to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) last week. Amy is going to do her test soon too, so then it’ll be me and Amy rolling by in a government vehicle on a two-track near you soon!

Me driving!

Amy here. just arrived in montana two days ago. on the night I arrived, all of the other vaguely college age people in our trailer park were having a white trash party, which charlotte told me on the way in but i forgot. so i got out of the car and saw a bunch of people barbecuing in cutoffs with mullets (which were actually wigs, i noticed later). it was terrifying, until i remembered the party, and then it was fun.

anyway, on my second day we went out banding and got tons of birds in our nets, including two eastern kingbirds, a bunch of housewrens, field sparrows, a lark sparrow and a meadowlark. as i was untangling one of the kingbirds it pooped on me thrice, once hitting my chest from the end of my outstretched arm. they have impressive range. and when they get mad they puff up the feathers on their heads and expose a bright orange patch of feathers (their heads are black), which is something to see.

charlotte and i will make a more extensive post later with photos, but we both left our cameras at the MAPS station (which is an hour drive away), so no photos for now. edit: got our cameras, here are the photos!

this is my and benton, john carlson's son, banding an eastern kingbird at our maps station.

Me and the eastern kingbird again. the brown spot on my shirt is poop. im still delighted though! eastern kingbirds are especially cool because when you're holding them by their legs and they're flapping their wings and getting mad, they show a bright orange patch of feathers in their crest to warn you away.the first time i saw it i was alarmed.

this is charlotte and some rainclouds we saw on tuesday as we were leaving our study site. we got rained out by those clouds.

So, last night ended our four-night run of rhino netting.  Now, we have six nights off, and then the whole process starts again.  As I mentioned before, we rotate jobs when netting rhinos, and the available jobs are fish person, bird person, and processing person.  Last night, I was a processing person.

Me and a Rhinocerous Auklet

Processing the birds pretty much just means taking a lot of data on them, and banding them if they are unbanded.  Annie and I processed last night, so we sat some distance away from the net, and waited for the bird people to bring us birds.

When someone brought us a bird, we would have to hold it in the right way, so that it remained relatively calm while we took a bunch of data.  In most of the pictures you’ve seen of me with birds, I’m using what’s called Bander’s Grip, where you essentially put your first finger and middle finger around the birds neck.  For the rhinos, we hold them up against our bodies in a modified banders grip that covers their eyes.  You can actually feel them blinking against your fingers the whole time you’re holding them, it’s kind of weird.

Rhino Cubby

Often, processing the birds is a slower procedure than catching the birds, and to fix that problem, we use what we call the Rhino Cubby.  Birds that are in line to be processed are simply placed in these tiny cubbies, and wait there until we can pull them out.  It’s amazing, because the cubbies are really small and the birds are pretty big, but often, when we put them in the cubby head first, they also come out head first, ready to bite you!  I don’t know how they maneuver around so much in that tiny box, but you have to be ready to grab them, with no hesitation, or you’ll get bit, like I did.

Rhino Bill

Rhinocerous Auklets are so named because of the horn they have on their bill, which places them in a group of birds called the Tubenoses (Ashy Storm Petrels are tubenoses as well).  When processing the birds, we meausre their bill depth and wing cord (sort of the length of the wing), and we also check for a brood patch, a patch of bare or downy skin beneath their breast feathers that indicates whether or not they are currently incubating an egg.  We also weigh the bird, by placing them in a bag, and finally band them if necessary.

Rhinos are alcids, a group of birds with a very recognizable style of flying.  They use their wings to swim underwater, but as a result, their wings are different from those of birds that fly all the time.  Because of this, they have to maintain a very fast-paced wing beat to even fly, and they have a really hard time getting off the ground and into the sky in the first place.  All this means that we can’t simply put the rhinos down, or hold them out in our arms and expect them to fly away when we’re done processing them.  To fix this problem, we have to throw them, literally.  When all the data has been collected on a rhino, you carry it to a high point, and throw it straight into the air, often squatting to get more leverage.  The higher you can throw a rhino, the better, and the better chance it will have of successfully starting to fly before it hits the ground.  Kind of nervewracking, I thought!

Rhino netting went fairly fast last night, and so did fish ID, and everyone collapsed because it’s been such an intense four days.  Today, Sunday, we got to have brunch!  Everyone met back at the house at 11 o’clock, and each person prepared a dish.  The main dish for today was crepes, both sweet and savory.  For the sweet crepes we had fried bananas and nutella (SO good), and for the savory crepes we had a spinach/mushroom/feta filling.  Yummy.  We also had scrambled eggs and a freshly-cut pineapple.

After brunch, I went out with Caitie to do the daily chick checks, and then, because it was such a beautiful, fairly warm, not too breezy day, we got to go up on the roof of the Power House and clean the solar panels.

Me scrubbing Panels

The power house is a building on the island where we literally keep all the power.  On its roof are the solar panels, and inside, you can find all of the batteries for storing the solar power, as well as all of the generators for the crane and other electrical equipment on the island.

On the roof, there are sixteen solar panels, and, as you can imagine, they get pretty dirty during seabird season, and it’s important for us to keep them clean so they run as efficiently as possible.

Here’s some before and after shots:

Before

After

I think we did a pretty good job, and it was actually pretty fun!

Finally, I’ll end with a note about what we do with dead things on the island, because I found quite a few dead birds while I was walking around today.  For the most part, we don’t worry about dead chicks, because they are incredibly numerous.  Gulls will often kill and eat other gull chicks, as well as the chicks of other species.

Caitie and two Dead Cassin's Auklets

If a bird is banded, even if it is a chick, we will take the band off (sometimes you have to cut the leg off to do this), and take the band back to the house.  All dead birds that are found have their primary feathers clipped or cut, to tell the other people on the island that that dead bird has already been found.

At night, during the journal (which I’ll write about later), we record all the dead birds found that day.

For the most part, dead birds on the island are either killed by gulls or Peregrine Falcons.  With gulls, however, it is increasingly common to find gulls that died from botulism, which they get from foraging in dumps, etc.  Bot gulls are literally dead right where they stood, there are no marks or injuries on their bodies.  Very sad.

Well, dinner’s almost ready, so I’m going to go.

Best,

Eleanor

Phew!  The last 24 hours have been so busy!  (You may be noticing a theme…we’re always busy out here.)

Rhino netting last night took a little bit longer than the night before.  We were out until around 10:30 netting rhinos, and my job last night (as opposed to the night before, when I was the fish collector) was bird catcher, so my primary responsibility was removing birds from the net.  I still don’t have any pictures of Rhinocerous Auklets (hopefully tomorrow), but they are strong birds, and they like to bite, hard, if you don’t watch out.  So, because this is a learning process, I have plenty of scratches, and one bruised fingernail (I wasn’t kidding when I said they bite hard) to show for it, but it was super fun.

After we closed the net, we went in to ID all of the fish we got.  The majority of them were Greenling, again, but last night we also got a number of these clear, gelatinous flat fish–a mystery!

We ended up just calling them juvenile flatfish.  Juvenile fish are often clear like this, and several of the fish had the eyes on the same side, indicative of a flatfish, while others had eyes still undergoing the migrating process.  Regardless of what they really are, they don’t look very nutritious.

To answer a question my mom asked, yes, we are taking the fish away from the bird, and therefore the chick as well.  To minimize this, we mistnet in a different location each night, so the same bird is really unlikely to be caught twice in any ten-day period.  In addition, some rhinos may make second foraging trips after we’ve released them, but there’s no way to measure that.

After ID-ing the fish, circa midnight, we went to the Coastguard House for a demonstration of how to properly process the dead eggs that the fish and wildlife people came here to start working on yesterday.

Kevin and Cathy gave us a pretty neat demonstration of what they do with all the eggs, teaching us, since we will keep the project going once they leave (which they just did).  To process the egg, they cut a pretty small hole in the top, and then dump/scoop out all the contents (I have some pictures of this, but it’s pretty gross looking, and smelling, too).  As you can see, they ultimately collect the shells, and the whole process is very delicate and precise, so you can end up with such intact samples.

This morning, I got up early to get my Murre attendance done before the boat landing, which happened around 9:30.

Murre attendance is exactly what it sounds like.  Here’s a picture of the data sheets I fill out each day–total there are four or five sheets like this, and each day I fill out one row.  I monitor whether birds are present at their sites, whether they have chicks/eggs, and whether or not banded birds are breeding/hanging out in my plot.

The boat landing today was for the Quest film crew, a PBS show, and a contingent of radio people from NPR member station KQED, which has a special science-oriented program they do every week, or something like that.  Apparently, these two groups have been waiting almost 3 years to get permission to come out here–permits to get on to the island are pretty hard to get, and there is definitely a waiting list.

In total, the radio and film people brought six more people on to the island, by far the most that have been here since I got here.  They spent the day with Russ, walking around the island and filming.  The focus of their show was the science that is going on here, so they spent a lot of time filming us doing our daily activities.  Jordan and I got filmed pretty extensively working with Cassin’s Auklet chicks, and we also got interviewed for the radio show, so we’ll have to see if anything with us makes it into the final cut!

The Fish and Wildlife people, the internet guy, and the film/radio crew all left this afternoon, on a boat, so we’re just back to the six of us on the island.

Today, in addition to murre attendance and daily chick checks, I had to my Pigeon Guillemot breeding survey.  In order to mix things up a little bit, Caitie came around with me on that, and then she took me on her regular afternoon stuff, the Rhino Cam.

We had quite a few PIGU chicks to process today, meaning weigh and spraypaint (we spraypaint them to identify chick 1 versus chick 2 in a clutch), so it took kind of a while.

Some of the chicks are getting very large–they increased in weight by over 100 grams since my last check five days ago, which is quite a lot of weight gain, considering they only weigh about 250 grams now anyway.

Now, on to the Rhino Cam, which is something I have never done before.

The Rhino Cam is used to examine rhinocerous auklet chicks in natural burrows and crevices, rather than the artifical boxes that we’ve built for them.  This is important, because not only does it give us more information about the population size and breeding success off the rhinos on the island, but it also lets us examine breeding success of birds that are never touched or handled.

As you can see in the picture, step one of working the rhino cam is to put on this cool eye cover thing, which is as neat as it looks!  Inside the eye piece is a small screen, so once you put it on, you can see whatever the small camera is pointed at, right in front of your face.

Step two of working the camera is to put this pillowcase (hood) over your head, to block out all excess light, so you can see a better piccture.  Then, you snake the camera down the burrow, looking for birds.

Getting the camera into the right spot can be really difficult.  Many of these burrows branch multiple times, have rocks blocking part of them, or simply twist at very odd angles.  The camera rope is really long, and it can be frustrating to twist and jerk the rope in exactly the right way to get the camera to go down the correct burrow.

Anyway, I successfully found on rhino chick, and he was really cute sitting all the way back in his burrow all by himself.

On a final note, look how big the gull chicks are getting!  Most of them are up and walking, or running, around by themselves, and they stand to about shoulder-high on an adult.

More rhino netting tonight, and then hopefully some sleep!  Having all of these boats and extra people on the island has been exhausting, since we have to work extra hard to make sure no one walks off the path or into a restricted area.

It has been fun, however, getting some variety in our routine.

More later!

Best,

Eleanor

Xantus’s murrelets do not make nests of their own. Instead, they seek out the darkest, most protected areas they can find to lay their eggs. On Anacapa Island, this usually means they nest among the cracks and crags in one of the many caves around the perimeter of the island. In May, Kristen and I (Augie) were invited to help survey murrelet nests on Anacapa alongside Daryl and Harry. This is no simple task, considering the number of great murrelet nesting sites on the island, and the fact that murrelets are able to fly to high places on the cliffs and squeeze their way deep into very small paces. To conduct these surveys, the four of us would venture out on a zodiac from our new home base, the Retriever, and leap onto the island near various caves that have potential to accommodate breeding murrelets.

The Retreiver

When we were in a cave, Kristen and i would check to see is any new, unmarked spots had evidence of a murrelet nest, which included egg shell fragments, eggs, and even nesting birds! we even found a few caves with nesting Pigeon guillemots.

The shells of a couple hatched murrelet eggs

A nesting Pigeon guillemot

Daryl would check known nests, which were cleverly marked, and record his observations and Harry would wait in the zodiac for us to return (sometimes with a surprise waiting for us).

Augie with a dead molamola that harry picked up after mistaking it for a balloon.

Sometimes we searched for nests on the cliffs around the island, and near the end of our journey, we searched near a big group of nesting Western Gulls on the cliffs above the dock on Anacapa. We got to winess fist hand the aggressive behavior of nesting Western gulls who would scream and dive at the back of our heads! luckily, they never got near enough to hurt us. At this site we spotted a pair of gull chicks and many gull eggs.

Harry, Kristen, and Augie on the cliffs below nesting western gulls, searching for new murrelet nests

A couple of cleverly hidden western gull chicks

At night, we went out on the zodiac, as we had before, hoping to net and band as many murrelets as possible. We were successful, and managed to catch over 20, including 2 with hypoleucus plumage, which was very exciting! This short trip was a great way to end our time in the feild. We had a great time and hopefully helped collect some useful XAMU data.

So, as you might have guessed by the title of this entry, I just had a twenty-hour workday.  More about that in a moment.  The last two days have been foggy and a little cold.  Things were damp and overcast, and in the mornings it was hard to get out of bed.  Today, however, was a different story.  After a foggy early morning, the sun broke through, and the entire sky cleared to an incredible blue.  The color of the ocean was absolutely brilliant, the breeze was just right, and everything looked amazing.  Today was the kind of day that, if everyone could experience, would make everyone want to move to the Farallones (thank goodness they don’t).  This island really is beautiful, and every day is different!

So, back to the twenty-hour day.  We are reaching pretty much the peak of the seabird season right now.  Cassin’s Auklets are starting to fledge, but we still check their boxes every day.  Murre chicks are growing slowly, though Murres are having a tough year in general, and we perform attendance on them every day (a procedure that, for my plot, called Upper Upper, takes at least 3 hours a day).  Common Murre diet watches are still happening every day for two hours, and two days ago was our second all-day diet watch, so I spent four hours in the blind.  Pigeon Guillemot chicks are hatching in large numbers, and so we have begun Pigeon Guillemot diet watches, a four-hour process every three days.  These diet watches began yesterday, and the first shift was from 7 to 9am.

Yesterday, we were all up around 6:30am so that we could get down to the diet watch site by 7 am.  I spent from 7am to 9am gazing through the fog trying to identify the tiny fish brought in by the tiny Pigeon Guillemots as they zoomed into their crevices.  Then from 9 to 12:30, I did Murre attendance.  After a quick lunch, I did my daily Cassin’s Auklet Chick Checks, and then had a short break.  After dinner, we started another project, mist netting Rhinocerous Auklets.  This mist-netting project is another way of monitoring diet, this time for a large tubenose called a Rhinocerous Auklet (I will try to have pictures of them tomorrow).

Putting Out the Mistnet

For Rhinos, we will mistnet four nights in a row, opening the net around 9:30 each night.  In this picture, you can see the mistnet strung up, but it hasn’t been opened (if it had been opened, you wouldn’t be able to see it!).  We mistnet rhinos until we have caught five Cassin’s Auklets, which we are trying NOT to catch (the cap of five cassin’s is for us to try to minimize disturbance).

When the rhinos are caught, one person leaps up to get them out of the net, and the other person searches the ground nearby to collect any fish the rhino might have been carrying, which can fly great distances when the bird collides with the net.

The bird and the fish are processed together (meaning we take information on them both at the same time before letting the bird go), and ultimately, all of the fish are identified down to the species level.

Rhino Fish Samples

There’s a lot of variety in the Rhinocerous Auklet diet, and it took a little while to ID all of the fish.

Squid

We did catch some pretty cool stuff though!

Here you can see a squid (the bird that brought this in actually had two squid) being measured.

We take several measurements on each fish before we freeze it, immersed in water, in a bag.

Myctophid

The coolest fish we caught was definitely this juvenile Myctophid, a deep-sea species of fish.  In this picture, you can see its large, blue, lantern-like eyes; however, you can also see the rows of photophores along its belly.  The photophores, the little gold spots all along the underside of the fish, are light-producing cells, useful in a dark environment like the one where this fish lives.

We finished rhino netting fairly quickly last night, by around 10:00, and, because conditions were right, we decided to go and mistnet for Ashy Storm Petrels as well.  Conditions were great when we started, dark and calm, but after about an hour of sitting there, the wind picked up and a very dense bank of fog rolled in.  Everything got really wet–the net was dripping, the birds were dripping, and all of the people were dripping.  The ground was even slippery.  But, having started the netting process, we decided to just push through and finish it, wrapping up the net around 2:00am.

Thus concluded the twenty-hour work day, and the next day (today!) began a little later than usual, around 8:45 am.  I got up then to help Russ and Caitie do a boat landing, because we have three guests tonight!  One of them, Matt, is from the California Academy of the Sciences, and is here to work on our internet connection as well as the web-cam up at the lighthouse.  The other two, Cathy and Kevin, are from the Fish and Wildlife Service.  The study they are performing is a follow-up to a study that was performed recently, which analyzed soil samples from around the island for contaminants.  The results of the soil study are shocking–there are places on the island where lead is found in concentrations as high as 11,000 parts per million (according to the study, healthy rates are less than 100 parts per million).  As follow up, Cathy and Kevin are collecting dead (unhatched) eggs, as well as feather samples from chicks, from around the island, and testing them for contaminants.

The visitors were nice enough to bring out some frozen pizzas and fresh produce for a salad, so they’re cooking dinner for us tonight, a treat!  It is also my shower day, so I’m pretty excited for that.  Tonight, we will go out mistnetting again, at a different location, but it will probably be done (for real this time) by 11:00.

Tomorrow we have another boat landing, this time another film crew, who will only be here for a day.

Busy stuff, and it never stops!!

Best,

Eleanor

So, it’s been a few days since I last posted.  This is partly because our internet connection was fairly sketchy during all of the really high winds, and partly because the last couple of days have been so busy I haven’t had any time!  Yesterday and today, I started working around 7:00 am, and didn’t get back to the house for anything except lunch until around 6:30 at night.  Crazy, but it makes the time fly!  I can’t believe I’m already into my third week of life here.

Speaking of third week of life, every two weeks, on Saturdays, we’re supposed to have a boat arrive at the island, bringing people back from breaks on the mainland, as well as our food resupply.  Weather prevented the boat from coming on Saturday, but the wind finally settled down today, so the boat came.  On boat day, everyone goes about their usual activities for as long as possible, but when the boat is about an hour away, we all gather at the house to get everything ready.  (Surprisingly enough, Boat Day is the only day we all wear radios with us on our duties, so we can all be recalled to the house when the boat is close.  I guess I figured I would be wearing a radio more often, but nope!)

Cart on the Cart Path

There is a LOT of stuff that has to be moved around on boat day–all of our trash and recycling, as well as the luggage of whoever is leaving the island, has to be taken down to the landing, and all of the food resupply has to come back up to the house.  In this regard, we are fortunate enough to still have the cart path, used since the lighthouse keepers’ time, and cart.  The cart path goes straight from the landing to the house, and ends there.  In addition to the cart, we also have a “Dumper Jet” now (I have NO idea why it’s called that) to help carry extra stuff.  In this picture, you can see the cart, loaded with our empty action packers, as well as those filled with trash and recycle.  Farther back on the path is the Dumper Jet.

Today, I drove the cart down to the landing, a trickier procedure than it may sound.  The cart is heavy and sort of hard to stop once it gets going.  In addition, the gull chicks here have started to reach a stage that we call “runners,” meaning they’re big enough to get up and run around in response to a perceived threat.  Because of this, we have to be extra careful walking around, since they can run into the open and get eaten, or onto the cart path, and get squashed.  On top of it all, the adult gulls are as vicious as ever, and my jacket is starting to…well…smell pretty bad.

Once the boat arrives, we have to use the crane to send our little dinghy out.

The Crane

I’ve put up a picture of the crane before, but here’s what it looks like from on the island.  Cranes, of which there are two (one at East Landing and one at North Landing) on the island, are really the only way for stuff/people to get on or off the Farallones.  A crane system like this one has been in place since at least the 1870’s, though this particular crane is slightly newer.

It usually takes four or fives trips out and back in the dinghy to get all of the people and stuff shuffled into the correct places, be it heading back to the mainland or staying here.  In addition, boat skippers who resupply us are allowed on to the island to tour it, and most of them do, since stepping on to the Farallones is a rare opportunity that usually requires a permit.

The Crane Controls

Everyone has different jobs on Boat Day, to help it run more smoothly.  My job today was crane operator.  As you can see in the picture, there are only five buttons that one even need worry about in order to operate the crane, so it’s not too hard, but I felt very official nonetheless.  As crane operator, I got to yell a lot, letting people know constantly where the crane was moving to/from, and what I planned to do with it next.

It was a lot of fun!

Today, Pete, Gerry, and Claudia left the island, and Caitlin and Hannah joined us.  Claudia left for good, but Pete is only on break and will be back in two weeks.  Gerry comes back every so often in his capacity as Refuge Manager, and will probably be back this September.  Caitlin and Hannah are returning from their break, so they pretty much know the ropes around here already.

The Crew from my First Two Weeks: Jordan, Me, Pete, Claudia, Gerry, Russ, and Annie

Before everyone left, we took the pretty traditional picture of the whole group (for the last two weeks anyway) in front of the Farallon National Refuge sign.  It has been a great two weeks, and I will miss Claudia, even though I knew her for only a short time.

The food resupply was much needed, and today was great.  For lunch, we ate ALL the blackberries and raspberries that were sent to us, a pretty hefty quantity of grapes, and almost a whole loaf of french bread (used for sandwiches).  It’s funny how much you start to miss certain things, but don’t realize it until they’re sitting right in front of you again.  Our produce had been starting to run dangerously low, but I never felt desperate or anything like that.  There is QUITE a bit of food out here, stored in the pantry, so even though we might run out of fruits/veggies, we’ll never actually run out of food entirely.

Luckily, today wasn’t a very busy day as far as my schedule, which is good, because a boat landing can be pretty disruptive.  Because of the landing, though, i had to spent almost my whole day out finishing up even my small amount of work.  Everyone’s getting to sleep early tonight, because in two nights, we will start mistnetting rhinocerous auklets, which we will do for four nights in a row!

To end, I saw Molly, the Brant Goose, again, and got to take a picture!

Molly, and a Gull

Molly has quite a history out here.  She and her flock of Brant’s Geese appeared here sometime around 1993-1994.  While her (or his??) whole flock was slowly picked off, she survived, and now hobbles around the island with somewhat of a limp.  Apparently she will sometimes disappear for months at a time, and will then reappear.  Either she’s very good at hiding in one of the restricted areas of the island, or she actually returns to closer to the mainland periodically, only to come back here eventually.  Who knows where she goes!  It’s a mystery.  She is starting to look pretty haggard and old now, which is understandable, but is still a fun bird to watch every time I do see her.

Well, that’s all for now!

Thanks to everyone who wrote me letters/sent me stuff!  I will hopefully have a chance to write back soon.

Best,

Eleanor

Last Friday, Lauren, Marisa, Matt, and I all went out to do some maintenance work on our MAPS station. We straightened, and in some cases, re-staked net poles, and Matt bravely used the cantankerous weed whacker to clear out vegetation beneath the nets. It is important to keep the area under a net free of any obstructions (including vegetation), because they can get caught in the net and therefore render it visible to birds in the area, or even damage the nets.

Our MAPS station has some really fascinating habitat surrounding it; although the station is sited at a small creek (Canyon Creek), the surrounding area is native shortgrass prairie used for cattle grazing. The dichotomy between the birds present at the MAPS station and the birds of the grasslands is actually quite pronounced, despite the small physical distance. Passing by the shortgrass & sage brush pastures, we saw a Long-billed curlew mate pair with a fledgling, a killdeer fledgling, sharp-tailed grouse, and even a sage grouse (of Cecil Sagehen fame). I approached the killdeer fledgling to take a better picture, and as it scampered away, its mother flew down on my right-hand side, pretending that she was seriously injured by shuffling awkwardly in the grass and holding one wing out awkwardly to the side. This act is known as a broken-wing display and its purpose is to distract predators from eating young by a parent feigning injury (therefore presenting him- or herself as an easy kill). Additionally, when I tried to approach the long-billed curlew fledgling, the parents started circling overhead calling very loudly and aggressively.

Killdeer fledgling in the middle of the two track (barely visible in the grass).

Curlew parent circling overhead (note how HUGE the clouds in Montana are!)

We subsequently did another waterfowl survey at a reservoir across from a local park (Faraason park), and I had another lifetime first—tree swallows! They have the most gorgeous bright turquoise back that is iridescent in the right light. We also saw willets, Northern shovelers with a shy duckling, American coots (2 of which were swimming together, potentially a mate pair), and many red-winged blackbirds. There was even a pelican, and from the sight of it, she had laid eggs in a shallow scrape on an embankment in the middle of the reservoir.

One really funny thing was that a bunch of cattle approached our truck, and we guessed that they were used to being fed from trucks. They were all pretty young, probably yearlings.

Cows surrounding the truck. Note the cow rubbing its face on the rim.

Yesterday (Saturday, 6/20), Lauren, Marisa, and I went to the “Red-Bottom Days”, a celebration and gathering of many Native American ethnic groups. The hosts were the Red Bottom clan of Fort Peck, and among the festivities were traditional dance competitions. All of the performers (okay, well, most of the performers—there were a few kids who were too young to dance all that well) did an excellent job, and perhaps the most exciting event was the first competition to be the traveling princess. A group of nearly 20 young women competed in traditional dance forms, and ultimately, the princess for 2009-2010 was crowned. The category of fancy dances for men included dance styles and clothing accessories highly reminiscent of sage grouse, particularly their tail feathers. Pictures will be coming soon!

Finally, I want to give a huge shoutout for Father’s Day! Happy Father’s Day! Or alternatively, Happy Parents’ Day! (this is for those of us who aren’t good about remembering both parent holidays, or just want to combine them into one more convenient event.)

Well, even though it might start sounding repetitive, it is REALLY windy here.  Gusts of 40 knots today literally knocked me off my feet.  Sitting in the Corm blind this morning doing my daily murre attendance was pretty frightening, with the blind vibrating and shaking the entire time.

Rough Seas

Rough seas have pretty much guaranteed that Pete and Claudia won’t be leaving the island tomorrow (Pete on his break, Claudia for good), and that no food resupply will arrive either.  Gerry, the refuge manager, is also stuck with us for the time being, but he’s using the time to get extra work done.

The wind is both exhilirating and exhausting.  Because the sun is shining, it’s not overly cold, as long as you’re not sitting in a blind for hours (which is what I do all morning).  Once you’re walking around, it’s kind of fun, and it keeps you thinking, since you have to be on your guard all the time to keep from falling off the path, or onto an unsuspecting nest/gull.  The wind is also helping to keep the gulls from attacking us–they’re hunkering down just like we are, trying to keep from getting blown away.

Me, Battling the Wind

Daily Chick Checks today were brutal, and so Claudia went around with me on them to help hold down box shades, data notebooks, my hardhat, etc.  Although in this picture it might not seem like it’s very windy…it is.  I’ve learned a few tricks to streamline myself while I attempt to walk, so that it’s not as much effort.

I have had quite a few birds fledge though, more and more each time, which is good.

Speaking of birds in boxes, we went out last night to attempt to retrieve the TDR’s we deployed a few nights ago.  The attempt did not go that well.  We retrieved five TDR’s, two of which did not record data correctly.  A sixth TDR was “found” when we retrieved the banded bird, but without the TDR attached to it.  We assume it is somewhere out at sea, recording data for about another twenty-four hours, and we will never see it again.  To top it off, most of the birds barfed on us.

The other four TDR birds have been AWOL so far, so we will go out again tonight and try to find them.  Last night, searching for the birds lasted until about 1 am.  Tonight, however, will be another story, because we MUST get these devices back before the glue wears off, and they ALL get lost at sea.  So, the plan of attack tonight is to head out at 10:30 and look.  Birds that aren’t found at 10:30 will be searched for at 12:00.  If we don’t find them then, we’ll go out again at 2:00, then 4:00, and finally 6:00, taking shifts for sleeping/searching.  Could be pretty exhausting, so cross your fingers we retrieve the devices quickly.

I saw my very first bull elephant seal today!  I have seen quite a few large males, but a bull is something else entirely–he dwarfs everything around.

Bull Elephant Seal (and friends)

Although it’s hard to capture his size from the angle where I was standing, you can see his characteristic “elephant” nose, and you can also see a little bit of his chest shield, the pink scarred area on his chest.  The nose and chest shield are the defining characteristics of a bull male; without a fully developed version of either, the individuals are still classified as Sub-adult.

This particular bull arrived a few days ago, and though I haven’t seen him until today, I have heard him.  When he makes his call, you can pretty much hear it everywhere on the island.  In fact, the first time I heard it, I was up at the lighthouse, pretty far away, and it took me by surprise.

I have a pretty light day of work today, in fact I’m pretty much done already.  So, I’m going to make a dessert, using up some of the rhubarb we still have, and some frozen blueberries I found.  After battling the wind all day, it’s always nice to have a fresh dessert 🙂

Finally, I’ll end with a picture, since I haven’t put up many pictures of people since I got here.  Here are all of the ladies currently on SEFI, and we are thinking of sending this picture to Carhartt and asking for sponsorship, haha.

The SEFFI Ladies (Jordan, Annie, Claudia, and Me!). Notice the elephant seal in the background.

Best,

Eleanor

These past three days, I’ve been accompanying Lauren Smith and Marisa Lipsey, two interns at the BLM, on various surveys. Matt Tribby has been our field advisor, and the man knows how to drive off-road! Marisa, Lauren, and Matt have been studying the vegetation at various sage grouse leks to identify key habitat factors. A lek is a courtship site used concurretly by several males to attract females, and the leks that we are currently investigating were active as of this spring (unfortunately, I missed the spectacular sage grouse courtship displays). However, at our first site, we saw a Sprague’s pipit nest with nestlings, which was extremely exciting because Sprague’s pipit is a species of special concern. And at the second site, we saw a green-winged teal nest with eggs.

Sprague's pipit nestlings!

scarlet globemallow

Silver sage--note the pointy, single undivided leaves.

The vegetation surveys go something like this: we set up a large 50 x 20m rectangle and a smaller rectangle within it. We then identify *all* of the plants present at smaller plots at the perimeters of these rectangles. Thanks to the expertise of these three, I’ve learned quite a few plants including: scarlet globemallow (quite a pretty little red flower), greasewood, foxtail barley (I’m fairly certain we have this in California too), and prickly pears! The sites we studied were in South Valley County, and there are several different sagebrush plants that grow here. John explained that this is a result of the fact that south of the Milk River (a river that divides Valley County into North and South Valley Counties), Artemesia frigida, Wyoming big sage (also genus Artemesia), and Silver sage can all grow. North of the Milk River–our MAPS site is located here–silver sage dominates.

Lauren and Matt surveying the veg (foreground), Marisa taking height measurements (background).

The next day we went on a waterfowl survey at three sites. The first was near the town of St. Marie, a former Army base that closed in the late 1960s, and since then, has had a very small population size. We saw killdeer, spotted sandpipers, upland sandpipers, marbled godwits, willets, Wilson’s phalarope, Red-winged blackbirds, Yellow-headed backbirds, and Brewer’s blackbird. This was the first time that I have ever seen and identified Wilson’s phalarope, which is a small wading bird with a black streak on its neck. We also observed painted turtles basking on the sides of the pond, and a killdeer nest with precocial nestlings.

We subsequently went to Base Pond, which was immediately adjacent to that first pond, and saw Green-winged teals (a type of duck), more killdeers, blackbirds, and godwits, and Eastern Kingbirds. I’d been to this site before with my neighbor, a Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks intern named Josh, and while he was fly-fishing, I went a-birding. I saw two barn swallows and a small mud nest they made in a gazebo near the pond, and I was pleased to see them again, flycatching over the water for their nestlings. We also saw Common Nighthawks lazing on fenceposts on the drive to St. Marie and flying overhead at the pond. In the trees nearby, there were yellow warblers and potentially a Common yellowthroat.

En route to our final site, we passed by a Swainson’s hawk with a large messy nest. This was another first for me, and Swainson’s hawks are buteos, a genus of birds characterized by their broad wings. Our last site was Saskeview Reservoir, which is just 0.5 mi south of Canada, and we saw an immense amount of eared grebes (~50), and a large amount of ducks (teals, buffleheads, pintails). There were more phalaropes and blackbirds, but what was especially exciting is that I saw a Sprague’s pipit, a small bird that is a species of special concern in Montana, and a Chestnut-collared Longspur. The Chestnut-collared longspur has a boldly patterned face, a black belly, and a chestnut patch on the back of its neck.

Two Wilson's phalaropes in the Saskeview reservoir.

Tomorrow I’ll be learning how to drive the pickup truck to the MAPS site, and hopefully I’ll see some more cool birds on the way.