The annual announcement of the minimum extent of the Arctic’s summer sea ice has become one of the more important metrics by which we measure the rate of change of our warming world. This year’s minimum extent of 3.4 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles) on September 16th broke the previous minimum set in...
Category: 2012 Field Season
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Black Guillemots mingle before getting down to business
COOPER ISLAND, ALASKA — While no year on Cooper Island is like any other, so far the 2012 field season has been more different than most. For that reason ( and also because Max Czapankskiy did such a good job with his blogposts in June) I am way behind in my postings. In late June I took a...
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Learning to speak bird
Posted by Max Czapansky: Ex-Microsoft employee wants to be a field biologist. Will he after his first season on Cooper Island? COOPER ISLAND, ALASKA — The birds arrived on Tuesday, I’m writing this on Friday, and during the interval George and I have been walking the colony, taking a census of the guillemots. Which birds have returned?...
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Inspiration and the midnight sun
BARROW, ALASKA — Well, it is midnight and even though I promised myself to go to bed earlier, I am not able to withstand the draw of the midnight sun. One more walk down to the pack ice to look for another group of Common Eiders, one more discussion about changing ocean salinity, one more...
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Special delivery for the birds
During the salad days of the Cooper Island Black Guillemot colony, in the late 1980s, there were 200 wooden nest sites, which I had created in the late 1970s with wood left on the island by the Navy two decades earlier. All 200 nests were occupied by breeding pairs and the colony enjoyed high breeding...