Seabird Camp Day 3
Nesting niches. Today we explored how seabirds share space on the cliff and dove into some serious craft projects. First, a huge thank you to the Bird Guides who made today possible by lending us their van (and a driver) to shuttle our groups back and forth. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Mariah showed up right at 1 pm for the first group of field trippers who loaded up and headed out to Ridgewall for an hour at the cliffs. There we identified the seabirds and noticed what kinds of nesting habitat we found them in. A surprising diversity! Nests with mud and grass, nests with no nest at all, some in crevices and some on wide open ledges. The Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge biotechs, Ellie and Emerald, joined us for the day and shared about the work they’re doing this summer. They were invaluable help during our bird bingo. With the exception of the (now) elusive crested auklet, nearly everyone got black-out on their sheets. We saw seals porpoising in the waves below and the windy day meant we had excellent views of seabirds soaring in the air close to the cliffs. We rounded out our visit with an investigation of potential nesting material in the tundra. We compared cliff dirt to mud collected where we had seen kittiwakes gathering nesting material on Monday (very different!), found several worms, a fly, and some very nice dried grass and moss. A few campers even built themselves a small nest to keep warm from the cool east wind.
The best part about field trips is that you never really know what you’re going to see. We left school in dense fog only to discover that there was great visibility just past Tolstoi. Our van made a stop at Zapadni to check out the least auklet nesting habitat and while there we saw a fox carrying a fresh meal. The van was full of intense discussion about what animal the ribcage and organs were from and an impromptu sing along to Elton John’s “Circle of Life” (Lion King) after addressing the realities of how nature works.
During the rotation back at the science room campers dug into several creative pursuits. Paints, glitter glue, scissors, markers, and crayon were applied to the diet mobiles started yesterday, fox masks (for Friday!), and some coloring pages. We completed our field ID guides with the addition of nesting habitat entries for each seabird and wrapped up the day with rehearsals for our end of camp performance. Everyone is into their parts and nailing their dance moves.