Ann’s stuck on St. George… again. With an extra week on the island, we’ve been able to do a couple of good hikes with the kids, more red-legged kittiwake resighting, and we’ve also caught some red-legged kittiwakes.
The kittiwakes are still not showing much sign of breeding, and we weren’t sure how easy it would be to catch birds on cliffs that don’t have established nests. After watching the cliffs for a while, we identified birds that were spending a good amount of time at cliff sites that would likely make a good nest. There was usually some good guano (seabird poop) under these spots.
The easiest way to catch kittiwakes is to use a long extendable fibreglass pole with a fishing line noose attached to the end. A caught bird is slowly lowered to the ground where someone is waiting to quickly remove from the noose.
We were able to catch 7 birds and deploy new geolocators for the on-going red-legged kittiwake tagging project. Birds were weighed and measured, and a few small feathers were taken for stable isotope analysis. The bird was then banded with a metal band (unique number), and a geolocator attached to a plastic color band was placed on the other leg.
It was a privilege to see these beautiful birds up close. Their faces are so different to the black-legged kittiwakes, with larger eyes and a much rounder head. And, the deep color of their red legs is amazing.
We’ve seen a couple of couple of these newly banded birds back at the spots where they were caught, so hopefully they’ll be in the same place next summer for recapture.
We’re looking forward to finding out where these birds have spent their winters.
