The Gift of the Gurge

The other day a kittiwake chick pucked all over my leg. I was ecstatic! The regurgitation contained a bunch of fish eggs. I had never seen a single fish egg in a gurg, let alone this amazing quantity. I couldn’t wait to tell everyone.

Yes, this is the type of thing we talk about over dinner out on St. George Island.

I’m continuing the annual kittiwake chick growth study and, well, it can be a messy job. We make the rounds of weighing and measuring a set of 40 chicks every 4th day. The purpose is to get growth rates and collect gurges for diet analysis.

The first step in this process is to don a climbing helmet and “special” set of rain gear that I wear just for doing chick growth. I also call it “The Stink Suit,” for obvious reasons. The chicks will puck and poo on me with reckless abandon. I take an extension ladder and head for the bird nesting cliffs. I usually have one person with me to hold the ladder when I climb up to the chicks. Then it is wobble bobble over snot rocks and up and down the shaky ladder with pockets and handfuls of birds.

This can be a dicey operation. The ground is uneven, rocky and slick with a combination of wetness, sea slime and bird shit. The situation can be a bit shaky below…and above. The cliffs are rather crumbly, you see. I don’t know which job is more dicey, climbing the ladder or holding it from below, dodging falling rocks.

Almost without fail when I grab a chick it releases a squirt of excrement. You would think by now I would know how to avoid this, but no. My chest is always covered with white streaks. Sometime during the weighing and measure the bird usually gives a high pitches, urgent call. I know what is coming. If I am lucky I get my hand out in time to catch the gurge. If it falls elsewhere it is harder to collect. Of course, the dream is always to get the chick to gurge directly into a collection bag, but that almost never works out.

Later that day, usually sometime after midnight, I process the gurges as shown in this picture. If you look closely you may be able to find the one with the entirely intact baby octopus. Another first this year and, yes, another great dinner conversation in the making.

Fecundity is Fun!

I love chicks. Everyone knows this. That is why I am delighted to report that I have squeezed many this summer.

Biology types are always saying kittiwakes are “boom or bust” breeders. Don’t believe it. My experience is that they are usually neither. This year, for example, is a mixed bag. Some plots are dripping with chicks while others have nothing to show but fading streaks of white poo. Still, any time you can get a picture of four fledging-age chicks in one frame you can’t call it a “bust.”

This relatively high fecundity has lead to a successful chick growth study. Today I realized that I am pretty much done with this study, so I reflect on my month and a half of squeezing chickens.

It was very rewarding to see so many chicks reach fledging age. I enjoy watching them grow up. The young chicks are, well, there really is no word for them but “cute.” Then they go through quite an awkward stage. They are gawky and messy, covered with feather dandruff and other birds’ excrement, unsightly feathers poking through damp matted down. Just when you think they can’t get any worse-looking they become beautiful. The last of the down is replaced by sleek contour feathers as the birds reach an age where they can properly preen and keep themselves clean. Their large, dark eyes are enhanced by a gentle circle of black.

Today when I reached for the remaining chicks they flew away, ready to try the vastness of the non-nest world. I wish them well.

And by the way, we tend to call any hands-on work with large bird chicks “squeezing chickens.” I don’t know why. That’s just how it is.

Booty Haul

As many of you know, beachcombing and chicken appreciation are two of my favorite hobbies. There are no chickens on the island, so I have concentrated on beachcombing this summer. And, without a doubt, this has been the finest season ever for collecting beach booty. Yes, this summer has even exceeded the famed spring of 2004 when I found my radiant and rare amethyst sphere and many other glass balls.

The booty is quite varied. Some handsomely net-covered glass floats have turned up this summer as well as large, colorful inflated buoys of exceptional character and flair. As usual I have gathered a large collection of colorful pebbles to bring home and use in mosaics. The marine mammal remains, though, set this season apart.

Many of you have already heard about the walrus skull. The tusks of which are still under negotiation. It was quite a massive creature! This animal died fairly recently. I went through quite a long and stinky process of boiling and scraping the meat off it. Sound gross? That’s because it was.

Did I mention that I have a penis bone? I do. I have gathered a handsome collection of petrified seal and sea lion bones. These will serve various utilitarian purposes around the house. Sort of like on the Flintstones. The glory of this boney group is a perfectly-preserved penis bone. I think that one will just be for display.

Then there are the 2000-year-old seal and sea lion teeth. My obsession. I had never found one before this summer! One beach on St. George is adjacent to a bog. Bogs are excellent for preserving artifacts. The acidic soils erode under the pounding surf and the mighty Bering Sea tosses the treasure back onto St. George’s expectant shores. They are pure ivory. These ancient relics display a remarkable variation of size, texture, color and pattern.

What a haul! And that is not even including the items I have not mentioned due to questionable legality.

Flogged by Fog

May and June were peaches and cream. Sunshine, blue skies, movie stars. Apparently it’s payback time. We are experiencing the foggiest August in memory.

Well, so what? So it’s foggy. What’s the big deal? I’ll tell you.

Fog really makes work out here much more difficult. You see, most of my work requires seeing. I follow plots of cliff-nesting seabirds through the season. Sometimes it is so foggy I can’t see the cliffs, let alone the birds. So when it’s that foggy I can just stay home and play parcheezi and eat eggs right? Wrong. Generally, I go out anyway and wait for the fog to clear. And I struggle to see what’s going on. And then I wait some more. And struggle some more. Looking at a nest on a clear day I note that the adult kittiwake has a chick. The chick still has its egg-tooth and a slightly bluish hue to its eyes. In the fog sit there asking myself if the bird is standing or sitting or if it is even a kittiwake.

In the fog I am often in the company of stranded travelers. Planes aren’t able to land when it is foggy so it is common for people to get stuck out here. We haven’t had a scheduled flight land for 18 days. Stranded people tend to be grumpy people. The daily ritual for such travelers goes like this. Get up, listening to the automated weather report from the airport. Here that it is foggy. Listen to it 10 times more, noting slight variations in ceiling height and visibility. Call Pen Air and hear that the plane is on weather delay. Drive to the airport and check your baggage anyway. Wait some more. Hear that the flight is canceled. Pick up luggage and wait to do it again the next day.

And of course no planes means no food or mail as well. After a couple weeks the store shelves start to look rather bare. Note this freezer from earlier today. It features a few half gallons of ultra-pasturized milk and a box of moldy lemons. I suppose we can avoid contracting scurvy by sucking lemons. That’s something.

Limping toward the end of the season.

Mid August on the Pribilofs. Time to wind down and relax a little. Or not. It is hard to relax when coming face to face with a bull fur seal.

Even outside the rookeries, we unwary biology types often stumble across the occasional outcast fur seal hauled up on the rocky shore. You see, seals blend in amazingly well with stones. Occasionally a seal pops up from nowhere. Both seal and human get startled. The seal generally moves toward the ocean and the person moves up toward the cliffs. No big deal.

My encounter last week, however, had a different tone. I was strolling down the beach when I heard a bellow. Turning, I was looking directly into the mouth of an angry fur seal. I was between the seal and its escape rout to the sea. According to Rachel it was 1-2 feet from my face. I ran. I ran faster than most people are accustomed to seeing me move this fast... a bad idea over big, slick, rocks. I felt a sharp pain in my knee and crumbled into a heap, hoping I was far enough from the ravishing seal to avoid being lacerated.

Now as some of you know, I am the last man standing out here. Fish and Wildlife Service started with three people out here. One quit and one left, ironically, with a knee injury. As I sat there clutching my knee I was thinking "Maybe this field season was not meant to happen."

So now I am limping toward the end of the season. Don't worry, I'll make it.