√144PAD

2-7 September

  I'm cheating and posting six days in one--a 12PAD.  It's never been done.  What might happen? We simply can't know.  I've fallen behind and this is the way things must be.

  Birds have been painfully slow but we've had plenty to do with shark watch (one seriously injured elephant seal is our only indication thus far of great white customers), whale surveys, pinniped surveys, shorebirds, gulls, sea-watch... etc. Winds looked real good for lots of bird movement this week but suddenly look not so good.  If you see any migrants please tell them we have many flies and a large forest within which they may live.  Please do high overcast dance.  Thank you.

  Current battle score:
SEFI: 73
SCI:   72

Banding a Cassin's Auklet--this little guy should have fledged by now and should be on its way to eating the same food as Blue Whales (and occasionally being incidental Blue Whale food).

This is a California Gull.

Striped shore crab (Pachygrapsus crassipes) in Jewel Cave

Aulon Islets at sunset: Sugarloaf is on the right and is the favored haunt of The Gannet and other Sulid folk (at present totalling eleven Brown and one Blue-footed Boobies)

Oh! the channel walls are high and steep!

And the channel waves are wild and deep,

And on, and on, they madly sweep,

By Aulone Isle of the Farallones!

On Aulone Isle, Milton S. Ray, late 1800s/early 1900s

The time we caught a MacGillavray's Warbler.

Dragonflies are difficult to remove from nets.  This dragon lady didn't make it.

Peregrines like to eat stuff--sometimes they eat Western Gulls (it didn't eat this Western Gull)

Cuteness incarnate.  This photograph is dedicated to Felonious Jive.

Getting late--this was one of the last Pigeon Guillemots still bringing food to chick(s)--they have mostly fledged or failed at this point and the island Alcid show has plummeted.

Paleo-portrait of Don Mastwell (L) who arrived on Saturday to reinforce us.  Yesterday he found a Mourning Dove.

"The gulls are the virtual rulers of birddom on the Farallones, and that they live on the best the islands afford, those long-suffering subjects, the murres, cormorants, and rabbits, will testify."

Western Gull species account, page 82 of The Farallones The Painted World and Other Poems of California, by Milton S. Ray

Western Gull?  Western Gull.

"And they, too, howl like dogs in the freezing storm,

turning and turning from it as if they thought

one naked side could keep the other warm."

Inferno, 3rd Circle

The Zalophus invasion continues.  They own the terrace.

Die Brücke Nach Nirgendwo

Thursday, 27th August

Here we have a favorite Zalophus (California sea lion) perch:

Representative Ted Stevens (R-Farallonia) helped secure funding for this bridge

  They fight over it and it's nearly always occupied.  Why do Zalophus like bridging to nowhere? Difficult to say but perhaps it will be easy to say once I finish reading The Natural History and Behavior of the California Sea Lion by Richard S. Peterson and George A. Bartholomew.

Here are some scientists working with a Cassin's Auklet chick:

Boo Curry(L), Cassin's Auklet(M), and Eva Gruber(R) performing the science

  They are weighing him/her to track rate of growth (= are its parents finding enough food?) and placing a leg band to allow tracking of future reproductive success, longevity, etc. Monitoring breeding success and survival by marking birds in this way is fundamental to our understanding of the basic biology and life history of birds--and allows us to track changes that result from changing climate.

  The nesting seabird season is just about to wrap up with only a handful of Alcid nests and Ashy Storm-Petrel nests still being monitored--and we will soon lose Eva Gondwana and gain one Don Mastwell.  A worthy trade?  Too early to tell.

eBird checklist--not too shabby but the drought approacheth...

Battle Score...
SEFI: 63
SCI:   54

Bad Parenting?

20 Aug 2015.

Here, dear readers, is a Western Gull chick: fluffy, adorable, innocent:

"Why?" you might ask, would the following have been written about such a creature:

"Much that is good and all that is evil has gathered itself up into the Western Gull [...]  the Western Gull is cruel of beak and bottomless of maw [...] Nothing in the life of the Farallons [sic] is more striking than the rapacity of the gulls and their determination to profit by any excitement which will frighten the peasantry."  --William Leon Dawson, in The Birds of California, 1923

A picture is worth a thousand words:

"Am I hungry?  Yes.  Can I get away with it?  I'll try."

And the eBird checklist for 20 August:  http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S24703382

SEFI 41.1

SCI   41