Apparently gulls don't have Sundays.
Who knew. Of course, I had anticipated such a thing but, being a tad
lazy, and with Dave being miles away, I started nest checks at a
leisurely 8 AM. 10 AM, Sunday brunch time, rolled around and I was
still out on the rocky coast with three more chicks to bleed and
measure before I would be done... with barely half of my nest checks.
I dashed off a frantic text to Kayla and Brendan asking them to save
me a pancake or two – for food disappears quickly on Appledore –
processed the three adorable little day-old fuzzballs, earning a few
nicks on my helmet in the process and a half hour later was finally
back in the RIFS lab with eight new blood samples rattling away
happily in my makeshift tackle box blood-kit.
After brunch, it was more nest checks
and even adding a few late nests to the list, racking up the total
number of nests I monitor to 59. Let me tell you, running over
precarious rocks with a little ball of Herring Gull fluff clutched to
your chest as an angry parent slams repeatedly into your helmet is
definitely the greatest adrenalin rush, ever. It was a beautiful,
sunny day and after taking twenty or so particularly hard hits from
one of the gulls at nest 12 H 283, it was time for a break. I just
lay down on a nice, flat rock on Pebble Beach and soaked up the warm
sun, the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks and the gulls
mewing to their chicks almost lulling me to sleep. It is quickly
becoming my favourite rock on the island.
The rest of the afternoon was spent
trying to catch Barn Swallows under Palmer-Kinne (P-K) Lab for
Brendan's independent project. His research this summer involves
putting PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tags on the swallows and
antennas around their cup-shaped mud nests to record the amount of
time each parent spends at the nest, feeding the chicks and such.
Basically, every time a PIT tagged swallow lands on a rigged nest,
the antenna records the individual's PIT tag number and thus enables
us to track each individual bird's activity around the nest. But, to
be able to do this, the swallows need to be caught and banded and,
unfortunately for us, the little insectivores have amazing eyesight.
Brendan set up supposedly "invisible" mist-nets around the entire sketchy underside of P-K but
they still eluded us.
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Brendan, trying to cordon off the underside of P-K with plastic sheets to try to get the swallows to fly into the nets. |
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Sketchy underide of P-K, rigged with mist nets |
Mostly, we just ended up lounging on
the deck, watching planes fly by, their contrails making funny
patterns in the sky and eliciting a sarcastic remark from Josh Moyer,
the island coordinator, “Now don't work yourselves too hard!”
Hey, it was Sunday.
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Funny contrail patterns |
After
dinner it was time for data entry. But I got very distracted by the
Great Black-backed Gull chick outside Laighton being adorable!
I spent a good twenty minutes crouching in the grass as it got fed
and then jumped around a bit, flapping its stubby “wings”.
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Foooood! |
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Wow, do we really belong to the same species? |
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I can fly! Maybe! |
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A portrait of Laighton chick |
But we
eventually got all of the data entered and are now watching the third
episode of Sherlock, season 1. Best. Show. Ever.
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