a two syllable "baaahh"

Well…I’m out on the island…with not much to do. Don’t get me wrong…there’s fence posts to put in and I can always organize more in the house, it’s just that the terns aren’t settled yet. The day we arrived there were well over 70 terns or more in the air flying over the island. I was hoping to be able to get in the blind and do some resighting of bands and such…it’s kinda hard to do that when the birds aren’t landing yet. Yesterday the wind was terrible…very foggy and rainy. Today the sun is out, but the wind is still pretty strong. The island is pretty bare where the house is located and is directly in the path of the wind…burr!

Bird list so far on the island:
Black-bellied plover
Common tern
Arctic tern
Common yellowthroat
Song sparrow
Double-crested cormorant
Merlin
Ring-necked pheasant
Killdeer
Spotted sandpiper
Black guillemot
Bald eagle
Barn swallow
Common eider

My co-worker has seen more than me…he’s a sharp birder with sight and sound. I’m still shaking off the rust after being away from the field for two years. Oh, in regards to the fence posts…it’s to keep the sheep from trampling the tern nests. Yes…I did write sheep. This island has a lot of sheep on it…they live out here all year long. Let me tell you how weird it was climbing the embankment from the cove and the first things I see are two sheep. The sheep are everywhere…including their poop. Jeez, we have to rake the poop away from the front door just so we can minimize what we bring into the house. There’s one sheep that can make its “baaaaah’s” into a two syllable word…”baaaaah-waaaaaah”…
kinda strange sounding if you ask me.

Gotta love the courtship displays!

The terns have started landing and displaying courtship behaviors…even a little nest scraping going on. This is the first time I’ve come into a tern colony that WASN’T inhabited prior to my arrival. Granted, there might have been only a few terns hanging out at the other colonies…but at least there was that. The terns here only hang out until 11a.m. or so and then take off. If there not staying the night by next week…then it’s time for concern. It’s a lot colder up here and the terns are slower to settle in…from what I’ve been told.

Saw an odd thing today…I walked out the door and saw a sheep on its back with all four legs up in the air. I finally took a walk over to see what was up…hoping it’d get up and be on its merry way. Nope…the poor thing couldn’t even roll over on its side to right itself. The sheep was a mother…her lamb was trying to nurse and wouldn’t leave her side. So…I went and got alex and asked him to help me roll her over. Just a little heave ho was all it took…her and her lamb took off running…stopping to stand and stare at us from afar. Her wool on her back was smooshed down…it looked pretty funny. I don’t know how long she lay like that… could’ve been 2 or more hours. Ya know…sometimes us fat, fluffy gals just need a little heave ho to get them going!

We need to do a little night survey tonight…get out the ole night vision goggles and make sure that there aren’t any predators keeping the terns from staying overnight. It’s not going to be an all-nighter thing…just two hours each. Hopefully, I won’t see a darn thing…one predator like an owl or falcon…can wipe out an entire colony. At this stage in the game… a predator can keep the colony from nesting at all. I for one didn’t come out here solely for tipping sheep back over…I came for the terns.

Updated bird list:
Black and white warbler
Magnolia warbler
Yellow-billed cuckoo
Red-breasted nuthatch
Least sandpiper
Savannah sparrow
Baltimore oriole
Gray catbird
Blue Jay

Not much else is happening. I plan on calling the family tomorrow sometime. My niece Christi is having her baby tomorrow….caesarian… so she got to pick the date. My second great-nephew will be named Phoenix Nathaniel. I wish I could be there, but that would’ve meant passing up this job…and I just couldn’t do that. I’ll see him in august.
Keep in touch!!

Give me the terns!!

We still don’t have any terns staying for the evening. However, there were 7 or so terns around 7:30p.m. which is pathetic but encouraging. So far, this job is incredibly boring. We do a morning bird survey and if I’m in the northeast blind…I usually stay a couple extra hours
re-sighting bands on the terns’ legs. The band is only a quarter of an inch tall or so with numbers stamped on them…I use a scope of course…quite difficult but I like the challenge. Our afternoons are free for the most part ending with an evening bird survey. Yesterday we ran electrical fencing wire around the northeast colony site to keep the sheep out. The day before we went around and poked holes in the gulls’ eggs that happened to be too close for comfort…that was actually fun. The best one was a nest tucked away down below in the rocks. Alex (island intern) and I took turns to see who could hit the nest with rocks. I hit the nest with a big flat rock…you should’ve seen the yolk spat and fly…it was cool…he-he…way cool…yah…cool man. Considering gulls…worldwide…are overpopulated with no predators…I don’t have any problem whatsoever destroying a few eggs.

We’ve spent a couple of afternoons looking for petrel and guillemot (seabirds) burrows with no luck…very frustrating. They’re supposed to be nesting by now, but we’ve seen no evidence. The common eiders aren’t nesting either. At this time of year when you look out on the water you should only see male eiders…a very pretty duck by the way…all the hens should be on their nests. This year however…it’s 50/50…just as many hens on the water as males…they aren’t nesting. The eiders down off of the coast of Massachusetts are dying from some parasite…I have no idea why they aren’t nesting up here. It’s going to be a bad year for birds and I don’t see it getting any better.

I didn’t find out until moving out to the island that last year’s tern chicks all starved to death…no food. I personally feel that that is the main reason why the terns are late to nest here…no fish. I should be seeing a lot of fishing coming in…courtship displays, etc. So far…I’ve seen 6 fish the entire time I’ve been here. I would’ve thought twice about taking this job if the summer is going to be spent watching chicks starve to death. The world is falling apart…things are changing in my lifetime…for the worse. I wish more people could see the damage from over-fishing, global warming, etc. first-hand. Maybe more people would think twice about what they’re doing and eating when they see hundreds of chicks starving
…not good, not good at all.

Updated Bird List
Red-winged blackbird
Semipalmated plover
Ruddy turnstone
Red knot
Yellow warbler
Lincoln’s sparrow
Surf scoter
Purple sandpiper
Laughing gull

the new girl...

the new girl has arrived…and I’m not happy about it. Right now things are going okay…not great, but at least okay. She’s a strange egg for sure…no pun intended. Within the first 24 hours she asked alex and I not to swear around her, wipe off our dishes before we put them in the sink, asked me not to listen to my mp3 player at night, commented that the protocol is stupid (the bird protocol is over 8 years old), told us to conserve energy and not play movies on the computer AND keeps turning off the radio while we’re listening to it because she can’t concentrate.

Don’t worry there folks…any of you that know me really well should know that this little princess has been stopped in her tracks. I have put my foot down and I’m rather proud of myself that I did it in a professional manner. I’m close to asking the island manager to have a talk with her. I talked to brian (manager) today and he said that he “was rather worried about her here because she was rather strange.” At least we don’t have the problem the other island has…their new intern was told to grocery shop for 3 weeks and she brought out a jar of peanut butter and a package of noodles. The real kicker is that the girl is allergic to eggs and birds…she’s working in a seabird colony surrounded by hundreds of eggs and chicks…and she’s allergic. WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE THINKING ??!! anywho…I still play my mp3 player at night, watch movies and keep turning the radio on…if she wants quiet she can go upstairs or for a walk.

We still don’t have any nests with eggs but I’m hoping for something within the next week or so. The birds are staying overnight even with the bad weather for the past few days. This morning we did a passerine survey…here’s my updated list:

Cedar waxwing
Nashville warbler
Parula warbler
Blackburnian warbler
Black-throated green warbler
Blackpoll warbler
Warbling vireo
Red-eyed vireo
American redstart
Yellow warbler
Eastern wood pewee
Osprey

i’m getting off the island for a day this Wednesday…I keep thinking of everything I want to do but I’m mostly looking forward to taking a nice hot shower. Keep in touch.