Country Island Update Part II

Well, the time really does flies fast out here…

We’ve been getting into a bit of a routine of doing several errands around the island and camp, and doing General Island Surveys (GIS), with some adventures along the way.  We do our GISs twice a day at 6:00 am, 12 Noon, or 6:00 pm.  What we do is go to six different points across the island and record all of the predatory birds, seabirds, shorebirds and other water birds that we see.  We do this to get an understanding of what is around the island.  We’ve seen some neat birds during our watches including Harlequin Ducks, Cory’s Shearwater, Purple Sandpipers and Iceland Gulls. 

One of our tasks new to the island this year is the Japanese Knotweed Project.  It is an invasive plant that is incredibly difficult to control.  They are found on three parts of the island, so we’re trying to weed them out by placing Astroturf over it to try and choke it out.

The weather has been pretty cold and foggy… It has not been higher than 11 Degrees since we’ve arrived, and quite often we can’t see further than a couple hundred meters!!  Despite the cold weather, we finally got the rain we needed. I even decided to have a shower in it, when it was SIX DEGREES out! It really wasn’t all that bad though.  The rain is good because it filled all our buckets for dish water and more showers.  The much needed rain came with a bit of an adventure though!  Last weekend we got woken up to galling winds during a rainstorm.  Our kitchen door was slamming open and closed, and its sides and a side of our living tent went undone.   So the three of us braved the storm to secure our tents so that everything can keep dry (And we still got up for our morning GIS!). 

We’re still eating pretty well… We’re out of bread so Charmaine baked some today (Which is better than store bought stuff anyways!!), and it will last us a little while!

What else…

Our bird species list is now at 60 species! Our goal is to get over 100 which hasn’t been done before…. Our recent additions include:
Common Terns
Arctic Terns
A Cory’s Shearwater (I didn’t see it L)
A Northern Waterthrush (First recorded at CI)
A Swainsons Thrush (First recorded at CI)
A Philidelphia Vireo
A Iceland Gulls (First recorded at CI)
A Blackpoll Warbler
A Black and White Warbler
A Grey Catbird
A Flycatcher (likely Alder, but he wasn’t singing for us!)
and more! 

The terns are staying around the island longer and longer in larger numbers, but they’re still not sticking around the whole day.  They leave in the afternoon to forage and stuff.  When the terns start to stay on the island all day and night, we will start our Predator Watches.  Predator watches involve sitting in a blind for two hours and recording and observing all predator intrusions around the Tern colony.

But until then, we’ll continue doing what we’ve been doing the past few days… our GISs and errands around the Island…

Brennan

Country Island Update - Part I

We are alive!

I have yet to introduce the Country Island crew… there are three of us for the time being; the lovely Charmaine Holloway, the awesome field manager Megan Boucher, and myself(other people will come and go, and a fourth person will join us in mid-late June)...

It is pretty sweet to be back at Country Island.  It looks a lot different than when I was here a couple years ago because a lot of the vegetation is dead, and the green is just starting to show up.

The days are flying by real fast as setting up camp has taken a bit of time (Which is why its taken me so long to update this blog).  We’ve got our camp unpacked, our chick feeding blinds in place, Roseate Tern nest boxes are out and prepared, and much more!   Our Terns have started to arrive the past couple of days, and now we’re waiting for our Tern babies to settle!!!  We still haven’t seen the Roseate though…

In between all our work, we’ve fit in a bit of birding…. We have a goal of beating the Country Island field season record of 92 bird species…. And so far (8 days in) we are at 39 (plus a couple different birds we were unable to identify suck as a cuckoo, an Owl, a likely bonepart’s gull, possible shearwaters etc…)!!! 

Some highlights include

Harlequin ducks (We’ve had up to 12 here by the island!!)
A pair of Red Throated Loons (A Lifer)
A Purple Sandpiper (A Lifer)
A Parasitic Jaeger (A Lifer)
A Cuckoo (Species unknown, but I haven’t seen them before!).
A flock of Surf Scoters (First record for the island)
A Yellow Bellied Sapsucker (First record for the island)
A Brown Creeper (First record for the island)
A single Rusty Blackbird (First one seen here since 2002).
Razorbills (Just a really cool bird)
Northern Gannets (Just a really cool bird)
Leach’s Storm Petrel (Just a really cool bird)
and there has been lots of other cool stuff!!

Due to the lack of internet reception and space, I won’t post pictures until my week off in Late May/Early June.  Our work is going to start getting into more of a routine, so soon, I should have more time to post more.

Brennan

And... We're off to Country Island!!!!!

When I left my five week stint at Country Island nearly two years ago, I figured it would be a once in a life-time experience.  Tomorrow morning, I have the privileged of going BACK!!!  After a couple-day delay, we will be leaving for Country Island (CI) first thing tomorrow (Friday) morning. We will be welcomed by Leach's Storm Petrels (at night), Willets, Common Eiders, among other wildlife and we'll be busy working right away!!  To get a better (rough) understanding of what Country Islands about, check out Country Island Excitement Part I and Country Island Excitement Part II.

We now have all our gear and groceries packed and ready to go!  Finally, weather permitting (And the weather is looking promising!), we WILL be on the island!! WOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

This is going to be a very exciting year... there are a lot of new things going on with vole monitoring, petrel work and general island surveys (GIS).  We will have more guests in comparison to previous years, mainly working with petrels and voles... but also with Terns when the time arises.

I'm not sure how frequently I will be able to update this blog, but I'll do my best!

Take care civilization,

I'll try to keep in touch! ; )

Brennan