Category: 2010 Field Season

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Pelican Cases: Hope for Cooper Island’s Arctic Seabirds

Cooper Island, Alaska, Sept. 7, 2010 — The increasing distance between Cooper Island and the August pack ice has resulted in a range of problems for the black guillemots breeding on the island. The decreased access to their preferred prey of Arctic cod, which live under sea ice and in the cold waters adjacent to the...

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Survival in a New Arctic

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 18, 2010 — The transitions in the summer season on Cooper Island tend to be step changes rather than gradual trends for both me and the Black Guillemots I am studying.  This reflects, in part, the rapid shifts that occur in the Arctic when it goes from “winter” to “summer” in...

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A Very Common Species Provides a Very Big Surprise

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 27, 2010 — When my interest in bird-watching first developed in the 1960s (the avocation would not be called “birding” for a number of years), a common wintertime activity was visiting the Cleveland lakefront and scanning the flocks of gulls for any interesting vagrants among the large number of Herring Gulls...

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Extraordinary Rain Delays Survey of Island

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 21, 2010 — In addition to documenting the timing and success of the Black Guillemots breeding on Cooper Island I always make an assessment of the other avifauna attempting to raise their young here. The changes that have occurred in some of those populations have been almost as striking as the...

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Waiting for the Puffins

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 12, 2010 — As Black Guillemots finished up their egg laying — the last of the nests got eggs this weekend — I had the pleasure of having two visitors from the BBC’s Natural History Unit. Anyone with an interest in nature has seen some or all of the BBC’s excellent...

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Birds, Bears and the BBC

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 8, 2010 — This post, like the start of summer on the North Slope is a bit tardy. Once Black Guillemot egg laying finally started in the last week of June, I was busy checking every one of the 200 nest sites on the island to determine date of egg laying....