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