Arctic Update!

So obviously a lot has been going on in the last three, almost four weeks of June. Where to start? I guess a little from the beginning. I was not intending to come back this year, it was a fluke that someone quit and I was asked if I wanted to come back, and made the decision to do just that. And with all of the other things happening in my life, it was a good fit. So here I am.

Musk Ox

It has been quite a different year so far. First off, the Kuparuk bridge was temporarily out again this year, but not for as long as last year. So we have been out there to do our surveys regularly without any problems. Well, except the other day there was a bear in the area so we did not do surveys that day. Speaking of bears! We have pretty regularly seen bears this year. Always from pretty far away, unfortunately no good picture opportunities. Yesterday, we saw a sow and cub near a group of 18 musk oxen with a few calves.

Up until a few days ago, we have been seeing a lot more Pomarine Jaegers. They typically only stick around if it is a good lemming year, since they are fairly dependent on them as a food source. I even found a Pom nest! We haven't checked it in awhile, but the other crew said they were not around when they were out by it a couple of days ago. I think we will be out that way tomorrow, so I can check on it then. I wouldn't be surprised if they have just abandoned it since we have seen less Poms and not many Snowy Owls (another species that sticks around for the lemmings) or lemmings for that matter.

Probably the only decent pic I will get of a Pom.

Pomarine Jaeger nest

The rehab pads have been fairly active. Not so much for birds on them, as much as birds nesting on them. We have 6 different species nesting on 5 of the 10 different sites. Two of the species, a Lapland Longspur and a Cackling Goose are on the edge of the pad, but do count. Of course we have our typical Semipalmated Plover nests, but we also have a Greater Scaup nest, two King Eider nests and a Short-eared Owl nest. The owl nest since yesterday has 7 eggs. 7 EGGS! I doubt they will all hatch and fledge, but we are hopeful a few will make it and we can see some cute little owlets.

Short-eared Owl nest

Lapland Longspur nest

Semipalmated Plover nest

I am currently taking a class through Coursera on Animal Behavior, or Behaviour, as the Aussies say. One of the class assignments is to have a field journal blog on a species. So I chose to do it on the Parasitic Jaeger pairs that are nesting near one of our rehab pads and a pair of long-term monitoring plots. I have fallen in love with them, and feel that I can ask some interesting questions, that could even turn into a future project if I find a way to pursue it. You can find that blog at this link.

Parasitic Jaeger nest

Dark-morph Parasitic Jaeger

The artificial nest project has not fared well this year. The Haul road transect was alright the first time we checked it, we lost a little over half the nests, but it wasn't so bad. Endicott however, failed miserably. We had a total of 8 nests survive the first check, out of 60. We had our fourth check today, and we have now completely lost Endicott. The first check we had an Arctic Fox predation and a Pomarine Jaeger predation caught on camera. The second check we had three camera nests get eaten by, likely a single pair of Parasitic Jaegers. I hypothesize this pair was in the same territory last year and have cued in our cameras as a source of an easy meal, and they just cleaned up this year. I guess we will see what happens with our second trial when we get that set-up. But, the failure of these nests have given me some free time to write today, and watch the U.S. World Cup match! Go USA!

A tasty nest, just for us? Don't mind if we do!

Cross Island

It took me awhile to write and go through images for this one, so it is a bit late.

The Ikpikpuk crew all trickled back in to Deadhorse on Thursday and Friday. When the two girls came back they mentioned that Bob, the pilot at 70 North, offered to take them out to Cross Island to check out some whale skulls. Since we were already planning to have Saturday as a day off since Bryce and Caitlin were going to take Richard Crossley, of birding fame, out to bird in the oilfields, I thought maybe I could go; but I wasn't too hopeful that they would have room for another. Much to my surprise and glee they did; and I got to go out with them. When I asked the others to give me a ride over to the airport, Richard graciously offered his camera with his 300mm lens. What the wha?!?! All I could think was, "This is not real life. This isn't really happening to me." But it is and it did!

Cross Island in the Beaufort Sea

Cross Island is used as a whaling camp for Alaskan natives that live in the villages throughout the North Slope Borough. They are allowed to take a certain number of Bowhead whales in the Spring and Fall season. I've been told that the boats will go out in different directions, and depending on where they find and catch a whale they will pull it to land wherever they can. So, Cross Island is set up to accommodate for that purpose. I guess there are often polar bears there, which makes sense. My initial thought was it would look like this:

What I imagined the island would be like

This is an image from Barrow. One of the pad operators is really nice and shared this photo with us. It looks as if there are polar and grizzly bears, but they are all polar bears. They are just very bloody and grimy from the carcass and from fighting each other over the carcass. But, the island looked like this:

Just a bunch of skulls and birds hanging around. Of course, if there were bears we wouldn't have been able to land the plane and get out to walk around.

Rows of Bowhead skulls

The "shadow" under this skull is actually mostly oil from the decomposition of the tissue on the skull. Liz taking a break on a skull.

Feather in one of the skulls.

Closeup of some tissue on the skull bone.

Just another view of the skulls.

Nicole found this. Preserved quite well.

Not as well preserved as the fox.

This was a fairly small spine, which leads me to believe it is some kind of seal.

Here are some pictures of the plane and from the plane.

Plane console.

Liz and Nicole ready for adventure!

Tundra polygons from the plane.

Ice on the Beaufort Sea.

Approaching the island.

Row of whale skulls on the island.

Buildings on the island.

Pipeline from the plane.

View of Deadhorse and the Sagavanirktok river.

More tundra polygons.

Endicott Island from the plane.

Our housing facility from the plane.

The plane on the beach.

The buildings are really run down so I took a bunch of pictures of them.

Torture device?

Welcome home!

I believe this is where they carve up the whales.

Checking out the sites.

We actually found a couple of Common Eider nests in very odd places around the island. The first was in a shack. The lining of the nest is mostly made of trash; including some plastic and styrofoam. I found this to be very unusual for a bird like an Eider. The second one was right next to one of the trailers, but it actually had a decent amount of Eider down lining the nest.

Trash nest.

The nest is next to the beam on the ground, on the right side.

This is the shack the trash nest was in.

Even though we didn't see polar bears, we did see polar bear tracks!

You can even see some of the detail of the fur on this print!

Big feet!

Sort of a size comparison to Nicole's boot prints.

And of course I have to share the pictures of some of the birds we saw out there.

Glaucous Gull

Sabine's Gull

Sabine's Gull

Arctic Tern

Sabine's Gull

It was a fun trip and I feel very lucky to have gotten a chance to go out there! All of our other work up here is pretty much done. We will have to check that Golden-plover nest one more time. I have a feeling it will not hatch before we leave; the last visit it did not have any signs of hatching and even when the eggs are pipped it usually takes 3-4 days for the chicks to emerge. I suppose we shall see tomorrow. Otherwise, I am very excited to be going home soon. I miss Joey and my friends. However, the Arctic still has its hook in me and I imagine I will find some way to come back to this stunningly beautiful area again. But as far as returning to the oilfields, I have had my fill, and I give them a fond adieu!

A farewell to the Jesus!

PB Crew parting ways =(