We woke up to dry weather!
St. George is a rat-free island, and we’re working hard to keep it that way.
Thomas and Karin spent a chunk of the day doing the rat-trap checks around the harbor. It was the first check on the season, and most of the traps had to be oiled and old bait replaced (peanut butter). Thomas is a pro from last year, and Karin has been working with the traps for years, so they were a fast team.
Ann, Anastasia and Arina started to map the harbor least auklet colony. We stood on a high point and watched the birds for a while, then carefully walked the perimeter of the area where birds were present on the rocks, marking GPS waypoints on our way. The girls took turns marking the waypoints, and Anastasia found an old egg from last year.
We set up the cameras in two new places in the colony, and counted birds in their field of view for the first 40 minutes. We’ll check the cameras tomorrow, but hopefully these new positions will actually take some photos of birds…
We had a fun evening together; a Seabird Scavenger hunt around the village, and painting our puffin masks.
We finished with an evening trip to the red-legged kittiwake colony for more resighting, and we caught two birds that had been carrying geolocators since 2017. Yay!
A full and good day.