Day 81: Guillemot gang

Pigeon Guillemots are furiously feeding their chicks right now. Chicks are big, getting ready to fledge, and eating up a storm. PIGU's generally feed small fish that they find close to shore so they feed frequently. This makes them regular targets of gulls trying to steal their fish. You will often see PIGU's sitting on a rock with a fish in their bill, waiting for the gull by their crevice to get distracted so they can sneak in to feed their chick.

Day 60: Walking on water

Here's another shot from our boat survey the other day. Alcids, the family of seabirds that includes Common Murres, Cassin's Auklets, and this Pigeon Guillemot, have relatively short wings for their body size. This makes their wings ideal for propelling them underwater while diving, but doesn't make them so great in the air. In order to take off from the water, they have run along the surface for quite a ways to get up enough speed to lift off. It always makes me laugh to see them skittering across the surface.

Day 59: Chicklets

Pigeon Guillemot chicks are hatching. This is one of our followed sites that has two fresh chicks. PIGU chicks, like Rhinos and Casssin's Auklet chicks, get weighed every 5 days so we can track their development. Because the eggs typically hatch a few days apart, the fist chicks to hatch can often be much larger than its younger sibling. If the younger sibling can survive until the first chicks fledges, it will often gain weight rapidly to make up for lost time.

Day 47: Tight sqeeze

I've been seeing this Pigeon Guillemot popping in and out of this crevice for the past few weeks. It's just on the way up to the cormorant blind where I do most of my fieldwork. Today I took a peek in there and noticed a bird incubating but one of it's eggs has been kicked to the front of the crevice. This may or may not have been on purpose. Guillemots can lay up to two eggs per clutch but in poor years the second eggs is just insurance in case something happens to the first. If both chicks hatch in a poor year, the second one frequently dies or is kicked out. It's a bit too early to tell what this year will bring for guillemot chicks.

Day 38: PIGU party

The Pigeon Guillemot are finally laying eggs. After a very slow start, the last two checks have turned up many new eggs. Pigeon Guillemots (PIGU is their four letter id code so we call them "Pee-goos") breed in rock crevices and some seem to like the nest boxes we put out for them. They lay 1 or 2 speckled eggs and spend a lot of time socializing and chasing each other outside their crevices. They seem to particularly enjoy showing off their bright red gapes to each other.