The second week of St. George Seabird Intern work has begun.
Yesterday we had a long day in the field. We started off down below the red-legged kittiwake colony looking for banded birds and birds still carrying geolocators. There were some birds on the cliff, but only two birds had bands. One bird was half-heartedly collecting nest material, but the others seemed perfectly content to just quietly stand on the cliff ledges. We’re hoping that the birds are just late to start breeding and are not going to fail another year.
We then headed up to the Least Auklet colony and finished repositioning the last of the nest boxes. Sarah found a few new eggs during her productivity check, so the least auklets are laying.
The Refuge uses a rock blind for people to sit behind as they look for birds with colored bands to study auklet survival rates. We added some new rocks to the blind to provide a little more coverage. It was a lovely day outside with the birds, and with some bonus sunshine.
Today we ticked off the last of the rat-trap checks. The sun shone, and we got through the checks pretty quickly. A bull fur-seal had climbed inshore a ways, and was blocking access to one rat trap! We finished up the day collecting fire-wood for a beach fire planned for tomorrow.
