We had a full day on St. George. Thomas started the day learning more about excel and entering the least auklet count data from yesterday. We plotted the numbers, and it looks like birds spend the most time at the colony in the morning, before 1:30pm.In the afternoon, we all put on rain gear and headed out to Starya for beach cleanup and COASST surveys.
COASST stands for Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, and it is a citizen science program that coordinates monthly surveys for dead birds washed up on beaches in the Pacific North West. Two beaches are monitored monthly during the summer season on St. George Island by the Fish and Wildlife Service Crew, and today was the first of these surveys.
Thomas and Ann did the COASST surveys, and showed Kasey (Fish and Wildlife crew) the protocol for the summer. We didn’t find any dead birds, though there was a pile of feathers that looked like they were from a kittiwake. Maybe left over from a fox?
Karin, Marge, and kids got busy with the cleanup. They found lots of bottles, bits of plastic and pieces of rope. We filled 4 sacks full of debris. Jillian found some beautiful old fur-seal bones, and the twins made a fun teeter-totter.
It was a beautiful evening, and we headed out to resight kiitiwakes. These birds are really settled on their nests now, and many look like are sitting on eggs. It’s great to see the birds serious about breeding, but it makes spotting banded legs hard!
We saw about 7 banded birds that are carrying geolocators, but none that we need to recatch this year.
Wonderful walk home to the village, with strings of murres flying overhead.