Monday 27 June 2016, week 6: Buldir Island, 22:12

For many of my field jobs, my work involves searching for and then monitoring nests at stages from nest building and egg laying through incubation, hatch, chick rearing, and fledging. When described as such, it doesn’t necessarily sound that exciting.

The process of finding new nests is actually one of my favorite aspects of working with birds; they’re hiding and I’m seeking. Searching for spectacled eider nests on the Coleville River Delta meant walking around every single pond of the vast wetland complex for weeks. Brant work entailed looking on the edges of ponds and on the grassy islands of mudflats for big piles of down and pancake-flat geese. Auklet and puffin work involves shining a flashlight inside crevices between boulders or in dug-out burrows for the presence of a bird or an egg.

Often the naming of nest sites follows a standard, such as initials and the nest number, e.g. SLW27. While that’s logical and makes it easy to keep track of who’s found which nests and therefore inspire competition for finding more, the naming protocol for new crevice and burrow nests on Buldir is completely random.

My first thought was to stick with the standard, enabling me to leave my own little legacy on Buldir. When I learned that McKenzie had chosen to creatively use airport codes of places she’s been (ex. SEA and FAI) and animal names (ex. DOG and FISH), I decided creativity is more fun than being remembered. My creativity has come as a slow trickle, but the variety I’ve contributed is one of favorites and meaningful names.

– To join the region with POI, I’ve added MIA and FBI. The crested auklet was away from the egg when I found the nest site, making MIA a more fitting name.
– Because who doesn’t think of these 2 when number/letter combinations are mentioned: R2D2 and C3PO
– HBO replaced a name we had used twice. This crevice was active, then became inactive, and now a bird is there on an egg again. There’s lots of drama, so it’s HBO.
– Important universities: UAF and MSU
– Michigan pride: DET (Detroit), DaUP (Say ya to da U.P., eh?), FINN (Finnish), and PALM (week-long bike trip across lower Michigan)
– Odes to my past employers: OA (Outdoor Adventures), RBD (Riverboat Discovery), CK-9 (Conservation Canines), and TUT (brant work on the Tutakoke River)
– NZ is the highest nest I’ve located on the steep slope of Bottle Hill, and it was named as such because it’s above everything.

I did claim one nest for myself, naming it SW88, but the rest of the names give the nests personality and will stick with me longer. Just the other day I had the rare good fortune of witnessing the hatching of a crested auklet chick at the UAF nest. Although it seems cheesy, there must be some deeper meaning to the fact that I caught the event at the nest named for my alma mater.

Fun fact: While writing this, I was watching “Strange Brew” as a means to stay up late for whiskered auklet diet sampling from ~12:30-02:30. It only seems appropriate for me to name a nest HOSER.