featured – Proteus

A pair of Cooper Island Black Guillemots. Image Credit: George Divoky

In a breeding season and field season that has been a tough one for both the Black Guillemots on Cooper Island and the investigators studying them, today was a day of celebration as morning nest checks revealed that the oldest nestling on the island had departed for the sea during the night.

The first fledge of the year is always exciting since it is an important benchmark in our field season, which begins with recording the owners of nest sites and continues with observing the dates of egg laying and monitoring the hatching and subsequent growth of nestlings. While it is the parent birds who get all of the credit for a successful nesting season, we cannot help but feel some satisfaction having monitored daily the details of their three-month reproductive cycle. Additionally, and certainly now with the recent decline in the size of the colony, a fledged chick provides hope for the future. With sufficient luck, in three years the chick that fledged last night will return to Cooper to join the breeding population.

So we congratulate the proud parents White-Black-Gray, a bird fledged from Cooper Island in 1995 who has bred here since 2000, and Blue-Blue-Yellow, an immigrant (likely from one of the large Russian colonies) who had been breeding on the island for the past twelve years.

We are hoping that in the next few days their now independent fledgling will be joined by its sibling and a good number of the 50 birds that remain in nest sites.

This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 44th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.

Climate Change in the Arctic by National Snow and Ice Data Center

Some Of The Oldest Ice In The Arctic Is Now Breaking Apart by Christopher Joyce

Cooper 2014 — An aerial view of Cooper Island from 2014. Image Credit: George Divoky

Great to be back on Cooper island after two intense weeks of preparation in Seattle and Utqiaġvik. Arriving on the island begins an even more intense period as I need to turn the 8-by-12 foot cabin from the overwinter storage shed it has been for the past nine months into a place where I can sleep, cook, process data–and eventually even relax.

A low-level aerial shot of camp from just east, circa 2012. Image Credit: George Divoky

Concurrently, I have been setting up my power sources (solar and wind generators powering a battery bank) and communications (satellite phone, inReach and VHF radio) that keep the camp running and connected to the outside world. While the large snowdrift that currently surrounds my cabin impedes my accomplishing these tasks, it does provide my drinking water for the first half of the summer. Throughout the day I have been shoveling snow into any available container as the island has no fresh water and I need to melt as much snow as possible before it disappears.

All of the required logistics chores need to be balanced with the daily fieldwork. Since my arrival three days ago, conditions for censusing the colony and retrieving geolocators have been excellent with clear skies and little wind. While visiting all nest sites to determine who survived the winter and who is breeding with whom is the highest priority, I also need to retrieve the geolocators that I put on 25 birds at the end of the 2017 breeding season. Catching the birds in their nest cases has gone well this year with nine of the units retrieved in the past two days.

These light-sensitive data loggers record the time of sunrise and sunset each day allows me to determine their location for the nine months they have been away from the colony. We have deployed geolocators since 2011 and this year’s data is extremely important since the Bering Sea ice, where guillemots typically winter, did not form this past year. The effect of this unprecedented event on guillemot movements and distribution will be one of this summer’s most important findings.

guillemot2012 — Black Guillemots in 2012. Image Credit: George Divoky

I will know the size of this year’s breeding population in about a week and, since many of the females have had low colony attendance in the last few days and are likely offshore building up reserves for egg laying, the first clutches should be appearing within the next 4-5 days.

Looking forward to sharing what is promising to be a most interesting and important field season.

This field is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 44th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island.

Arctic Sea Ice a Major Determinant in Mandt’s Black Guillemot Movement and Distribution During Non-Breeding Season by George Divoky, David Douglas, and Iain Stenhouse

He’s Watching the World Melt by John D. Sutter

SENtinels of the SEa Ice – SENSEI on ResearchGate

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