When you poke sea anemones they close up… and maybe squirt you.
Black oystercatchers are rather skittish.
And you can never outgrow tidepooling.
January 22, 2009
a covey of quail, a flock of bushtit, a pod of orca, a confusion of warblers. (and a party of jays)
California quail are chubby and I like imitating their calls.
When you poke sea anemones they close up… and maybe squirt you.
Black oystercatchers are rather skittish.
And you can never outgrow tidepooling.
When you poke sea anemones they close up… and maybe squirt you.
Black oystercatchers are rather skittish.
And you can never outgrow tidepooling.
January 13, 2009
An (11) hour tour
So besides banding at Palomarin, penguin research in Antarctica, shrubsteppe work all over the Great Basin and points East, among other places, PRBO has field biologists stationed on the South East Farallon Island. Depending on the season you can find those biologists gathering data on elephant seals, migratory birds, resident burrowing owls, nesting gulls, and even watching for great white shark attacks from the top of “the rock” that is the island. The Farallon Islands are a national wildlife refuge that are incredibly rough. The only way to get onto SE Farallon (or SEFI) is by a safe boat (basically a zodiac) with cables that attach to a crane permanently fixed to the rocks overlooking a small inlet.
Nora and I had the opportunity to make the “food run” out to the biologists on SEFI this past weekend. We drove to the Petaluma PRBO headquarters on Friday, picked up our 2 page, single spaced, doubled sided shopping list, then headed for the nearest Safeway. We were shopping for the four people out living on the island. We were picking up 2-3 weeks worth of food for them. (It’s longer if the weather is so bad that the next re-supply boat is delayed.) By the end of the approximately 3 hours that we were in there we had 4 full shopping carts, and spent 911 dollars at the checkout. I do have a bone to pick with Dane Cook though. It is not true that if you leave your cart unattended it will be left alone. There was no way Nora and I could get around the store efficiently with 4 carts, so we left two, out of the way, and continued on with our shopping, to come back to them later. When we had crossed off everything on our list we made our way back to the left carts… only to find them missing. Some scrambling around ensued, and we soon found out that the Safeway employees had started replacing our perishables back on the shelves… mainly all the produce we had picked up (10 avocados, 7 heads of lettuce, a bag of brussel sprouts, 6 eggplants, 10 portabella mushrooms, 5 red beets, 2 heads of kale, 1 of chard, 6 zucchini, blueberries, grapes, clementines, 18 pounds of various kinds of onions, etc.) So we re-grouped, thanked the fact that we’re used to proofing lists of data, and began re-collecting what we had lost. When we had it all, we made our way to the checkout, I called off the items as I placed them on the belt, and Nora checked the list. We were the celebrities of the store. Everyone stared and the Safeway employees thought we were hilarious.
We drove back to HQs and removed everthing from the bags, and tetris-style packed them in 5 crates for the trip the next day.
After all that we were tired. And hungry. So we took the extra cash I had made for the Visitors Eye View chore, and went out to get some Mexican food.
The next morning we woke up, loaded up the truck, and drove to Sausalito, where we would be sailing out of. We met up with our skipper, Jeff, and loaded up the boat, “True North,” a 42 foot sailboat. We were underway at 1020 and passing under the Golden Gate at about 1100 hours.
Our crew was very competent. Alan, Steve, and Andrew did whatever it is that sailors do (I sure didn’t understand all the lingo, although, by the end of the trip I was beginning to pick things up.) The way they were talking about who was who in their sailing world, talking about races they had done, and speculating on the next international trips they would make, I felt like I was surrounded by a group of climbers. The enthusiasm was the same, just the vocabulary was different. There was no seasickness with the wind at our backs, and we saw about 8 grey whales and countless dolphins. We arrived at SEFI at 1500 hours according to plan, and began the process of getting onshore.
See the island in the distance? Getting closer…
When we got near enough we contacted the island via radio, and they informed us that they already had a safe boat in the water. We tied the “True North” to a large buoy, and then loaded all the supplies that we had brought out on the sailboat onto the safe boat. Derek, the PRBO biologist piloting the safe boat, would come back for passengers after the supply load.
Nora and I jumped on the first passenger run, and after being lifted by the crane out of the water, and carefully placed on the island, we hopped off the boat. Or, in my case, got my boot heel stuck in the last metal ladder rung, and fell onto the island. (Oops.)
We got the 25 cent tour of the island, which took only about 30 minutes total. (It’s a small island.)
We saw elephant seals on the rocks, including a few massive males. Saw an inlet completely covered in groaning and barking sea lions. Walked among hundreds of Western Gulls. Spotted one of the resident burrowing owls hanging in the shade of a rock positioned above his/ her burrow. Peered over cliff edges at hundreds of Common Murres, and laughed at the Black Phoebe we saw. (They’re everywhere Nora goes.) We made the short hike up to the lighthouse on top of the island and surveyed the landscape. It was golden in the late afternoon sun.
Our time on the island was short lived. We had a long trip ahead of us and the sun was soon setting. Back onto the safe boat and lowered by the crane into the water. We untied from the buoy, and made the circle around the western side of the island as the sun sank into the Pacific and the full moon rose in the East. A few sea lions put on a show for us, porpoising out of the waves, silhouetted by the sun, while groups of birds made their way to the island for the night.
We sailed into the night, headed towards the moon which lit up the sky like a headlight.
Along the way we scared up whole flocks of Common Murre, Cormorant, a few Brown Pelican, and one Ancient Murrelet. We sailed back under the Golden Gate at 2100 hours, the whole San Francisco sky line lighting up the southern shore like blinking fireflies. We docked at 2130, unloaded the “True North,” bid the sailors adieu, loaded up the truck, and drove back to HQs. Unloaded the truck, jumped into Carlos, Nora’s car, and drove back to Palo. We arrived at 2430. And I was up at 0600 the next morning to band at Pine Gulch…
Nora and I both agreed that the hours spent in the grocery store, the less than ideal nights sleep on a couch in the office, the hours on the boat (really not bad at all), and the exhaustion the next day, were well worth the awesome experience.
Nora and I had the opportunity to make the “food run” out to the biologists on SEFI this past weekend. We drove to the Petaluma PRBO headquarters on Friday, picked up our 2 page, single spaced, doubled sided shopping list, then headed for the nearest Safeway. We were shopping for the four people out living on the island. We were picking up 2-3 weeks worth of food for them. (It’s longer if the weather is so bad that the next re-supply boat is delayed.) By the end of the approximately 3 hours that we were in there we had 4 full shopping carts, and spent 911 dollars at the checkout. I do have a bone to pick with Dane Cook though. It is not true that if you leave your cart unattended it will be left alone. There was no way Nora and I could get around the store efficiently with 4 carts, so we left two, out of the way, and continued on with our shopping, to come back to them later. When we had crossed off everything on our list we made our way back to the left carts… only to find them missing. Some scrambling around ensued, and we soon found out that the Safeway employees had started replacing our perishables back on the shelves… mainly all the produce we had picked up (10 avocados, 7 heads of lettuce, a bag of brussel sprouts, 6 eggplants, 10 portabella mushrooms, 5 red beets, 2 heads of kale, 1 of chard, 6 zucchini, blueberries, grapes, clementines, 18 pounds of various kinds of onions, etc.) So we re-grouped, thanked the fact that we’re used to proofing lists of data, and began re-collecting what we had lost. When we had it all, we made our way to the checkout, I called off the items as I placed them on the belt, and Nora checked the list. We were the celebrities of the store. Everyone stared and the Safeway employees thought we were hilarious.
We drove back to HQs and removed everthing from the bags, and tetris-style packed them in 5 crates for the trip the next day.
After all that we were tired. And hungry. So we took the extra cash I had made for the Visitors Eye View chore, and went out to get some Mexican food.
The next morning we woke up, loaded up the truck, and drove to Sausalito, where we would be sailing out of. We met up with our skipper, Jeff, and loaded up the boat, “True North,” a 42 foot sailboat. We were underway at 1020 and passing under the Golden Gate at about 1100 hours.
Our crew was very competent. Alan, Steve, and Andrew did whatever it is that sailors do (I sure didn’t understand all the lingo, although, by the end of the trip I was beginning to pick things up.) The way they were talking about who was who in their sailing world, talking about races they had done, and speculating on the next international trips they would make, I felt like I was surrounded by a group of climbers. The enthusiasm was the same, just the vocabulary was different. There was no seasickness with the wind at our backs, and we saw about 8 grey whales and countless dolphins. We arrived at SEFI at 1500 hours according to plan, and began the process of getting onshore.
See the island in the distance? Getting closer…
When we got near enough we contacted the island via radio, and they informed us that they already had a safe boat in the water. We tied the “True North” to a large buoy, and then loaded all the supplies that we had brought out on the sailboat onto the safe boat. Derek, the PRBO biologist piloting the safe boat, would come back for passengers after the supply load.
Nora and I jumped on the first passenger run, and after being lifted by the crane out of the water, and carefully placed on the island, we hopped off the boat. Or, in my case, got my boot heel stuck in the last metal ladder rung, and fell onto the island. (Oops.)
We got the 25 cent tour of the island, which took only about 30 minutes total. (It’s a small island.)
We saw elephant seals on the rocks, including a few massive males. Saw an inlet completely covered in groaning and barking sea lions. Walked among hundreds of Western Gulls. Spotted one of the resident burrowing owls hanging in the shade of a rock positioned above his/ her burrow. Peered over cliff edges at hundreds of Common Murres, and laughed at the Black Phoebe we saw. (They’re everywhere Nora goes.) We made the short hike up to the lighthouse on top of the island and surveyed the landscape. It was golden in the late afternoon sun.
Our time on the island was short lived. We had a long trip ahead of us and the sun was soon setting. Back onto the safe boat and lowered by the crane into the water. We untied from the buoy, and made the circle around the western side of the island as the sun sank into the Pacific and the full moon rose in the East. A few sea lions put on a show for us, porpoising out of the waves, silhouetted by the sun, while groups of birds made their way to the island for the night.
We sailed into the night, headed towards the moon which lit up the sky like a headlight.
Along the way we scared up whole flocks of Common Murre, Cormorant, a few Brown Pelican, and one Ancient Murrelet. We sailed back under the Golden Gate at 2100 hours, the whole San Francisco sky line lighting up the southern shore like blinking fireflies. We docked at 2130, unloaded the “True North,” bid the sailors adieu, loaded up the truck, and drove back to HQs. Unloaded the truck, jumped into Carlos, Nora’s car, and drove back to Palo. We arrived at 2430. And I was up at 0600 the next morning to band at Pine Gulch…
Nora and I both agreed that the hours spent in the grocery store, the less than ideal nights sleep on a couch in the office, the hours on the boat (really not bad at all), and the exhaustion the next day, were well worth the awesome experience.
January 01, 2009
So this is the new year
On the evening of the 28th all the current winter banding interns, plus Kathleen, the fall education and outreach intern, got together to make gingerbread houses. I was housesitting over the holidays, so we had a great set up for spreading out and enjoying ourselves. We made the batter, let it chill, ate an excellent meal, and then came back to bake and construct our houses. I’d say that the results were satisfactory… and even better than we were all expecting. There was definitely something in that frosting mixture. It worked like tacky glue. I kept the recipe for future construction projects.
This is the view in the morning from where we band birds at Pine Gulch. Pine Gulch is a Bolinas town park that sits on the lagoon.
While there this past week I extracted and processed an adult male Anna’s Hummingbird. Holding him in my hand took a little getting used to. He was only slightly thicker around than a cigar would be. And he squirmed. You can’t hold hummingbirds in the usual “bander’s grip” with two fingers around the neck because they’re too small. And they’ll flap their wings like mad. So instead, you hold them by placing a thumb over one wing, and a finger (or two) over the other. Getting one of those wings out to measure its length was another trick. This male was not happy with me. He was scolding me while I was processing him.
The last net run of the day at Pine Gulch I had no birds, until I got to the last net… where as I approached I saw three birds. Those three quickly multipled to 11 as a large group of birds foraging on the ground near the net suddenly spotted me approaching and took off. I watched as countless birds flew straight into the net. Some bounced out, but a large number were caught. I called Nora for backup to help get the birds out faster. We worked quickly extracting them, then carried them all back to the banding station…
About 8 of the birds were Oregon Juncos that had never been caught and banded before. A few were young White Crowned Sparrows, and two were Ruby-crowned Kinglets. We had our work cut out for us. It was a busy winter day at Pine Gulch. We processed 33 birds throughout the banding hours.
New Year’s Eve Colin and I banded at Palo… and had 5 times as many visitors as birds… Luckily the majority of the visitors seemed to show up when we had caught a bird and could show them what we do. (Besides just tossing a knotted up bird bag into a mist net to demonstrate how they work.)
New Year’s Eve at night we celebrated the birds’ “birthdays.” From now on there will be no more birds classified as “Hatch Years” when we age them… At least until the breeding season is underway and there are new fledglings. We made wishes and blew out candles on our cupcakes. We also had a ping pong tournament in the library… and Nora kicked all our butts.
At midnight we went for a dip in the Pacific. It was cold. But it was so worth it…
I enjoyed the water and waves so much I went back for more in my rubber boots shortly after putting some warm clothes back on.
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