Category: Field Notes

Posted by Lori   Two Black Guillemots with its distinctive red mouth lining and feet. Here’s your chance to get involved in the work being done on Cooper Island: Friends of Cooper Island is initiating a “Nest-Site Sponsorship” program to help pay for nest replacement and our ongoing research on Arctic seabirds. A minimum $100 tax-deductible...

George is back from Cooper Island (for now) after having delivered 150 plastic cases to the island for use as new guillemot nest sites. (More information about these cases and how you can sponsor a nest site coming soon.) George will be returning to Cooper Island in May and will stay for 3 months to...

Posted by Lori George has left for Cooper Island on a short trip to get ready for the season that will begin in May. He’s a little swamped right now, so I’ll be posting updates to kick things off. George left his home in Seattle for Barrow, Alaska, the first stop on the way to...

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...

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...

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 31, 2010 — Cooper Island is about as far from the Gulf of Mexico, and its now-oiled waters, as one can be and still be in the United States. But the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and the resulting paradigm shift in how the government and public views offshore oil drilling, will have...

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...

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...

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...

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....