Least Auklet capture
Seabird Camp interns joined the USFWS crew to collect least auklet diet samples. Here's the report from Destiny (age 13yrs): Today on Friday 14, 2017 Seabird interns, [...]
Population Counts
Thursday (July 13th) was spent learning about seabird population counts being conducted on St. Paul Island. Student intern, Destiny, and Ms. Kushin accompanied USFWS biologists Ryan Mong [...]
Seabird Camp interns
The week before Seabird Camp 2017 has begun in full force! On Tuesday July 11th, our student interns, Destiny Kushin and Maurice Lekanof along with Mrs. Kushin [...]
Art preparations
Seabird Camp is next week, and the team on St. Paul are busy with preparations. Here's their first report: Today (Wednesday July 12) our student interns and several other [...]
Welcome!
A huge welcome to Natalia, Aleksandr, Polina, and Artym from the Commander Islands! They've made it to Alaska! Even though the Commander Islands in Russian are only [...]
Waiting for eggs…
Rachael and Abram are on St. George Island studying red-legged kittiwakes. Even though field biologists can be totally organized with all the details for camp-life, they can’t [...]
Letters between islands
For the last 3 years, students living on the Pribilof Islands and the Commander Islands have been sharing letters. Letters are translated between Russian and English and [...]
Back on St. George
The red-legged kittiwake research team are back on St. George Island. Here’s Rachael Orben’s update on the start of their field season: Abram and I arrived on [...]
Mercury
Mercury is one of the most toxic contaminants found in the environment. It is released naturally during volcanic eruptions, however, over the last 300 years, humans have [...]
Welcome Poster
Summer is approaching, and school is almost out for the summer vacation. Students on both the Commander Islands and the Pribilofs are getting excited for summer activities. [...]
Measuring light to track seabirds
When we track birds (measure their movements) over long periods of time, it is important to use small data loggers so that individuals don’t have to carry [...]
Letters of welcome
It’s happening! Three students and one chaperone from the Commander Islands (Russia) are coming to St. Paul Island for Seabird Camp this summer! School students on St. [...]
Alaska Bird Conference
Hi, my name is Destiny and I am in seventh grade recently attending Hanshew Middle School in Anchorage. The reason I came to Cordova was to present [...]
Unangan Songs
Bering Sea Days culminated with a community event, where Aquilina Lestenkof and her Unangan Language students shared some songs, including singing happy birthday to the oldest resident [...]
Fall on St. Paul
Bering Sea Days was in early October this year, and Fall on the Pribilof Islands has a very different hum to the breeding frenzy of summer life. [...]
Bering Sea Days 2016
Another week of Bering Sea Days is over! Many thanks to all the hard work of folks at the Ecosystem Conservation Office, Aleut Community of St. Paul [...]
Seabird Survivor Game
We’ve enjoyed following Catherine Pham’s journeys as she studied seabirds out at-sea over the last year. This past week, Catherine flew all the way from Hawaii to [...]
Bird art from Colorado
Students (ages 10-12) from Roxborough Primary and Intermediate School in Colorado have sent us these beautiful pieces of bird art to share with students on the Pribilof Islands. [...]
Aglakh
Students living on Bering Island (the largest of the Commander Islands) have just returned from their summer camp. Here's their report.. The etno-ecological camp "Aglakh" started on [...]
Last day of art-camp
Today each student made a T-shirt design featuring a seabird. The kids were impressed by how well the stencils worked to make crisp designs. […]
Kittiwake mobiles
Art-camp on St. George Island continues… We started the day by making Kittiwake Mobiles. Bianca was so excited that she wanted to make two: One for her [...]
Painting skins
Art-camp continues on St. George Island. Today’s camp featured painting on Northern fur seal skins. […]
The Water Tank
As soon as Seabird Camp finished on St. Paul Island…Ram jumped on a fishing tender and made it over to St. George Island to spend a few [...]
Showtime!
The day of the big performance finally arrived! First, campers had to make something for their audience to eat. They started cooking with Zee, a local elder, [...]
Day Five of Camp
We started the day with a three station rotation that included Chicks and Splatters, a custom made board game all about the ups and downs of seabird [...]
Day four of camp
Campers started the day by showing off their seabird identification skills with several rounds of Seabird Bingo. After reviewing the special characteristics of both seabirds and shorebirds [...]
Day Three of Camp
A wet and wild Bering Sea morning greeted us on Wednesday. Not good weather for a three-hour field trip, even with great raingear. We made a last [...]
Day Two of Camp
Today we had a very special opportunity to visit Anna Mel, Aqualina and all of their Unungan language learners/teachers at the St. Paul Civic Center. Through sign [...]
First Day of Camp
Thirty-seven kids packed the St. Paul School’s Science Room on Monday to learn about seabirds, shorebirds and how they all find food. […]
Field work continues
Our field biology interns, Chauncey and Carley, have had quite a week! Four younger kids joined us for Thursday’s resighting expedition under High Bluffs. Resighting shows which [...]
“I see an egg!”
Today Chauncey and Carley learned all about how U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service keeps track of seabird nesting on St. Paul. […]
First Day with Interns
It’s count-down to Seabird Camp on St. Paul Island, and on Monday, all of our interns started work! Carley started her field work with an adventure led [...]
First Red-legged Kittiwake egg!
Update from Rachael and Abram on St. George Island We saw our first red-legged kittiwake egg today! Abram spotted the egg as we watched a bird we [...]
First Day of Camp
Our first official day of Seabird Camp! Everyone piled into the truck at noon, and we drove over to Zapani for more least auklet captures. The foxes [...]
More Least Auklet capture
The day was windy, but sunny. Bianca got up early to join us for a morning least auklet capture session. We were treated to great views of [...]
We made it to St. George
The fog cooperated, and we made it to St. George! It’s fairly quiet here. The fur seals aren’t really around in any numbers, and there are hardly [...]
St. Lawrence Island
Biologists from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF) and Tokyo, Japan, are starting a new seabird research project on St. Lawrence Island this summer. St. Lawrence Island [...]
Before there were eggs!
Where do red-legged kittiwakes forage before they lay their eggs? No one really knew the answer to this question until Rachael Orben and team deployed GPS dataloggers [...]
St. George Students – Учащиеся с Острова Святого Георгия
We’re excited for the 2017 Seabird Camp. В предвкушении встречи в Лагере Морской Птицы 2017. […]
Central Place Foraging
What is a central-place forging trip? Red-legged kittiwakes are birds and therefore they lay eggs to reproduce. And, an egg needs to be kept warm for the [...]
Kittiwake Highways and Traffic Patterns
St George Island is home to roughly half a million red-legged kittiwakes and the majority of these birds nest on the north facing cliffs of the island. [...]
What did the GPS loggers tell us?
Last summer, Rachael Orben and Abram Fleishman attached GPS loggers to red-legged kittiwakes on St. George Island to find out where they were finding food during both the [...]
Fun activities on St. Paul
Some recent fun activities at the school on St. Paul Island. Недавние увлекательные занятия на острове Святого Павла. Above: The fire department came to our school and [...]
Sharing Letters
Students living on St. Paul Island (Pribilofs) and Bering Island (the Commanders) are enjoying getting to know each other through pen-pal letters. Учащиеся, живущие на острове Святого [...]
The Arctic Eis Team
We’ve discussed in the past how important teamwork and collaboration is for research. Ship-based research is often an extreme example of collaborative work. […]
Data analysis…
We’ve learnt a lot about doing seabird surveys at-sea. But, what happens after you’ve collected all those data? Maybe this is when the hard work really starts? Catherine [...]
Pen-pal letters begin
Начался обмен письмами друзей по переписке Russian translation is provided below: Перевод на русский предоставлен ниже: Last month, at Bering Sea Days, we initiated the pen-pal project between [...]
Flashback…
Here’s a flashback to the 2015 field season studying red-legged kittiwakes breeding on St. George Island, by Rachael Orben: In early May (before the grass had really started to [...]
Plastics in the Ocean activity set
We’ve just added a new set of seabird activities! Marine debris and plastics in the ocean are topics frequently visited during Seabird Camps, Bering Sea Days, and [...]
Start of Bering Sea Days
Bering Sea Days has started on St. Paul Island. Bering Sea Days is a weeklong program hosted by the Ecosystem Conservation Office, Aleut Community of St. Paul [...]