Our 24th field seasons begins!

On May 4th, the crew headed down to Limestone, transported by the M.V. Highlander and LBCS Director, Danny Robertson Thanks to many helpers who came along to assist in offloading all the gear! Most of the next week was spent unpacking gear, setting up the camp for the season and doing some general camp maintenance. The sun was out the entire week, so camp start-up was very enjoyable (especially in shorts!).

Night work began as usual on May 7th, although the first chicks did not arrive until May 13th. It came down funnel 6 just before midnight and weighed in at a healthy 33.5 grams. As of May 15th, there have been a total of 19 chicks from funnels 5-8.

Cavity Nesters and Cassin’s Auklets are Fledging

There are now 4 Cassin’s chicks in the nestboxes on Limestone that we continue to weigh every 5 days. One recently fledged and another is not far behind. We set up a Reconyx infrared camera in front of box 25 with the hopes of catching the bird in action. We managed to get pictures of both the chick and the adult visiting at night. Before Cassin’s fledge they spend some time at night outside their nests exercising their wings. The chick in box 25 is still pretty young, but hopefully we will get photos of it venturing out of its nest box before fledging

The end of another great season in Laskeek Bay

Week 9 was a busy one as we completed the second round of oystercatcher surveys in Gwaii Haanas. This oystercatcher monitoring program is one of several monitoring programs associated with Gwaii Haanas’ SGinXaana Sdiihltl’lxa: Night Birds Returning project. The weather on this survey was surprisingly cooperative and we completed all 123 km of shoreline surveys and visited 101 known territories in a five day period. In this survey we found mainly chicks, although eggs were still present at some locations.

In our last week we finished oystercatcher surveys in Laskeek Bay. Although we found several large chicks we noted that, as in Gwaii Haanas, there appeared to be fewer than average chicks this season; perhaps related to the wet and windy weather that has prevailed this spring.

Murrelet monitoring comes to a close with start of the first Oystercatcher Survey

The crew departed Limestone Island on June 2nd to complete the first of two Black Oystercatcher surveys in Gwaii Haanas. This five day survey (on contract with Gwaii Haanas) is completed twice during the season and takes us down the eastern side of Lyell Island, past Hotsprings Island and as far as Alder Island to the south of Juan Perez Sound. We thoroughly scan the shorelines of many islands, islets and rocks for oystercatcher breeding territories, and closely examine both new and old territories looking for eggs and chicks. Of approximately 100 territories that we visited in Gwaii Haanas, many of the birds had eggs but only one newly hatched chick was found. We had very favourable weather during this survey until on the last day, when a southeasterly wind picked up and prevented us from visiting the last three territories on the survey route. Unable to make it back across Laskeek Bay we were fortunately able to take refuge at the Moresby Explorers float camp where we waited out the weather and then returned to Limestone Island the following day.