Cordell joined us over at the harbor, and we spent a couple of hours figuring out a good plot to do an all-day Least Auklet attendance count and finding a place for the trail cams. It sounds an easy task, given the number of birds present at the colony, but it was surprisingly hard to find an area with low enough boulders for good bird visibility. Thomas and Cordell fixed up a creative rain hat over one of the cameras, and we ended up mounting them both on tripods to get a better view down to the birds. Cameras are now out in the rain, and (hopefully) collecting data!
We spent the evening learning about puffins and the work researchers at the PWSSC are doing to learn where tufted puffins spend their winter. The researchers are using the same type of geolocators as we are using on the red-legged kittiwakes here on St. George Island. It will be interesting to see where these two seabird species spent the winter of 2018/2019.
We all got doughy making paper mache puffin masks, and then creative with puffin painting. It was a good end to a wet and stormy day.
