The wrap-up for this year’s camp started with finding a place for all of our big animal masks. We can thank Mr. Mac at the St. Paul School for displaying all the masks so nicely on the school library. Now the kids can see their creations year-round!
Intern Marjorie continued to work on Seabird Camp videos, putting together three that will soon be available on this website.
The fieldwork picked up for our other intern, Chauncey, after camp ended. He joined Veronica, Misty and Ram collecting feather samples from a variety of seabirds. Chauncey is always fun to be around and usually provides a lot of free advice. On these trips he counseled which birds would be best to catch. We often agreed, and had success using a noose pole to pull in Murres, Tufted Puffins and Red-faced Cormorants. Chauncey’s moment of glory, however, came on late Monday evening. Even with a tour group and three biologists on the cliffs, our young intern was the first to spot an unusual bird: “Hey, that’s a bird that isn’t found around here,” he said. The tour guide, Cory, saw it shortly thereafter and said it was a swift. On further examination it turned out to be a White-throated Needletail; A bird that has NEVER been seen on the Pribilofs before! In fact, this is only the 6th time that species has ever been recorded in North America!!!! This species can flap its way to faster speeds than any other bird on Earth. A truly wonderful sighting!
Way to go Chauncey! The young man was rightly very proud of himself and reminded us several times that he was the first one to point out the unusual bird.
