Microhabitat

Now that all of our nests have hatched, all we have left to do is evaluate the microhabitat and vegetation on the pads.  Throughout the field season during our surveys, we marked various sites where we saw birds foraging, loafing, nesting or brood-rearing their young.  These different sites are then divided by group of bird; shorebird, waterfowl and passerine are the primary groups.

We create Daubenmire boxes to assess the percentage cover of each site.  These are based off of botanist, Rexford Daubenmire's paper, "A Canopy-Covereage Method of Vegetational Analysis."  So at each site we build a 2x2m square with rope, ensuring that the spot is in the middle of the box.  The rope then cuts through the box diagonally.  We then throw two PVC pipe boxes on either side of the diagonal line and measure the percentage of cover of grasses, shrubs and bare ground that are grouped into classes.  We also measure the relief of the square.  Using a level, we measure the distance from the highest point to the lowest point of the square.  Then roughness (the overall relief of the square) is measured subjectively as low, medium or high.  All pretty technical and tedious, but easy once you understand what you are doing. I just wanted to give an idea of what this part of the field work is like. As much as I wish that it was, it is not all cute and fuzzy animals all the time.

The set-up.  The small boxes were randomly thrown in. 

Measuring relief with a level.

This one has high relief and high roughness.

Now back to the cute and fuzzy! Near one of the pads, called Kup 30, we had a Parasitic Jaeger nest. Well, our last visit to that pad was a few days ago and there was nothing in the nest, so we knew the eggs must have hatched because the Jaegers were still in the area. We scoped them out for awhile and while sitting on the tundra waiting, the female Jaeger started cooing. Lo and behold, the chick was approaching her and we could see its little head. So we went over to take a look at it and take some pictures of the cute fuzzball. Too large to call a nugget, it is more like a muffin.

Jaeger chick-let!

Cute little gray fluffball! 

I also mentioned in a previous post, our last day to check the haul road was on the 10th. We got some more good pictures on the cameras, nothing super exciting. Got a few with a pretty good look at a lemming. Unsure if it is a collared or brown lemming though, they're pretty much impossible to distinguish without seeing the stripe on the back (collared). At least to my untrained eye they are.

Oh, hello there!