Tuesday 25 July 2017, week 11: Buldir Island

“Boogity boogity!!” yells Kevin as he jumps up from behind a concealing boulder.

Since the alarm is not directed at me, I can do nothing but laugh as I watch a grown man make a fool of himself. No, it’s not Halloween around here; it’s a session of parakeet auklet diet sampling. If my previous post seemed to romanticize whiskered auklet diet sampling, this post will be nearly the opposite. I’m not sure if I’ve done anything more ridiculous in fieldwork than ambushing parakeet auklets.

While typically we collect diet samples from parakeet auklets at the Spike Camp beach by setting up a fine mesh mist net stretched between two poles, that method wasn’t as productive this year as last. Standing between the water and the cliffs, the mist net has five shelves (or pockets) that are in the birds’ flight path as they approach their burrow nests in the cliff face. The parakeets are supposed to be oblivious to the net, get caught, puke, and not get too tangled before we can run to them from our hiding spots. In actuality they often get themselves tangled to high heaven and become bite-y, stressful birds to untangle.

Parakeet auklets typically begin returning to their burrows around 21:30, but most of them end up staging just offshore until around 23:30. The slow trickle of birds makes for nice even sampling with ample time for untangling; 23:30 is roughly when the magic hour begins and all hell can break loose.

In 2016 we dubbed one session “The Night from Hell” because we had 9 parakeets caught in the net at once and ended up needing to break the law of mist netting by cutting a few free. The onslaught began around 23:15 and kept us stressfully busy untangling until at least 00:30. From that experience we learned to close the net early while using someone as a scarecrow to help divert birds away from the net.

Because of windy evenings that made the net more visible, crested auklet bycatch, and low parakeet sample returns, we ended up spending more time trying to ambush parakeets this year. There isn’t an exact science to ambushing them, so Kevin, McKenzie, and I winged it by using a combination of hiding, jumping, being “big and scary”, and spotlighting.

Being positioned awkwardly behind large boulders – so that we wouldn’t be seen from the water – is as comfortable as it sounds. Parakeets are naturally wary, and even “new” rocks on their mental maps of the beach can spook them from returning straight to their burrows. The 3 of us stationed ourselves behind boulders and waited for birds to fly in and land on prominent rocks nearby. Then we struck.

“BAHHH!!!” I yelled as I leapt up, flailed my arms, and stumbled my way toward the parakeet perched 15 feet away. Behind me I could hear McKenzie laughing at my out-of-character volume and antics.

“Bonzai!!!” cried Kevin as he jumped, ran, and illuminated the rock where another parakeet had landed. Again, McKenzie’s laughter joined the background sounds of kittiwakes, murres, gulls, and fulmars.

Watching adults be “big and scary” is pretty hilarious, especially when the observer doesn’t see the bird at all. If anyone had been strolling down the beach and come across us, they would have thought us certifiably insane.

As the startled birds flew toward the water, we watched for the dribble of puke that we hoped would come. Often we couldn’t tell for sure and would need to scan the rocks and boulders below their rough flight paths. Scraping a puke stream dribbled down a 10 foot path wasn’t ideal, but at least it was a sample!

By the end of our last ambushing session, I knew I’d given the outing my best shot. My throat felt raw, and my voice came out hoarse when Kevin, McKenzie, and I had our end-of-sampling discussion. I hadn’t yelled that much or with such passion since being at a UAF – U of Michigan hockey game back in my college years. “DON’T LET HIM HAVE IT!!” I’d yelled at a UAF Nanook as a Wolverine stole the puck. My friends Bryson and Teri – not used to seeing such anger come from me – were maybe a little scared of me by the end of the game.

I’m happy to say a few parakeet auklets are now scared of me – maybe McKenzie and Kevin, too.