Day 78: Fish food

We had our last night of Rhinoceros Auklet netting tonight.  That means we also processed our last fish. Rhinos bring in these fish to feed their chicks and we collect a sample of them to identify, measure and weigh. The species they bring back change every year and, in addition to the Murre and Guillemot diet data, gives us a good idea of what fish are available in the ocean in a given year. This year, Rhino's started out eating a lot of juvenile rockfish, a favorite seabird food, but then switched to Pacific Saury like the one Jen is measuring here. We have also seen a fair amount of squid.

Day 66: I love biology

No this is not a picture of Russ being swallowed whole by some unseen creature. He's checking what he calls the "I love biology" Rhino Auklet crevice in Rabbit Cave. The cave was carved out of the island eons ago when the sea level was higher. It is now well above the water line and Rhinoceros Auklets love to breed in it. So of course we have to monitor some of the accessible sites. Whether this site is accessible might be debatable. It gets it's name from the fact that you really have to love biology to squeeze your body headfirst down a sloping crevice and crane your neck as far as you can to the side in order to determine if the site is occupied. Today, Russ was able to see that it is in fact occupied by a downy Rhino Auklet chick.

Day 61: Rhino in the net

We completed our first session of Rhino netting tonight. A session consists of four nights of netting for Rhinoceros Auklets for about an hour each night. Rhinos come in just after dark to feed their chicks. They bring back a bill load of fish (they sometimes carry over ten fish at once!) and we set up a net to catch them and collect the fish so we can identify what they are eating/feeding their chicks. Katie is extracting a Rhino that has just hit the net (it didn't have any fish). It's pretty amazing to see what they are finding out there in the ocean and how that changes from year to year. We also band and measure the adults to look at adult survival and condition.  They are don't move around much so we catch a lot of birds year after year at the same sites.

Day 57: Counting

Russ and I got out on the water today for a boat census. Not censusing boats, but doing a census from the boat. Last week, we did the land based census for cormorants (Brandt's and Pelagics). This is how we get our annual estimate of the breeding population and it's done by counting the number of birds sitting on well-built nests around the island. Unfortunately, there are some places we can't see from land so we have to go to the boat to count those areas. But counting birds from a boat is no easy task and requires good, calm conditions on the water. Today we had a break in the wind so we went for it. Conditions were a bit rougher than is ideal, but we managed to get the count in. And in between counts, I managed to get a picture of a Rhino on the water.

Day 46: Fluff muffin

We're starting to get a few Rhinoceros Auklet chicks now. They have some of the most luxurious down of any chicks. It's so thick it can be nearly impossible to see their eyes. Bonus points if you can find them on this chick. Hatching Rhino chicks means the adults are now bringing fish back to the colony at night to feed them and we will soon be sampling these fish. More on that when it happens.

Day 23: The farallon rhinoceros

Bet you didn't know we had rhinos out here did you? So maybe it's not actually a rhinoceros, but the Rhinoceros Auklet does share one distinctive characteristic with its namesake: a prominent horn. The auklet has a much cooler hairdo though. Rhinoceros Auklets, which are actually closely related to puffins, have begun laying their eggs and it's always a treat to pull one of these out of a nest box. They are quite strong so handling them has to be done with care. That bill can deliver a powerful bite. The farallon rhinos are a conservation sucess story. After being extirpated from the island, they returned to breed in the 1980's and population's have been growing ever since.