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 that wintered on the south shore of Lake Erie. One of our “fantasy birds” was the Glaucous Gull. The thought that this large and very pale arctic species might visit our temperate latitudes was very exciting and a sighting would provide a link to remote...

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 findings for Black Guillemots. Brant, a coastal goose, formed a major colony in the past two decades while Arctic Terns went from being the most abundant species on the island three decades ago to having just a few scattered pairs today. An Arctic Tern takes...

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 “Planet Earth” series, which does indeed live up to its catchphrase “Earth as you’ve never seen it”. The BBC is now wrapping up filming for a series entitled “Frozen Planet” with the catchphrase “Earth as you’ll never see it again”. They have been filming frozen...

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. The snow drift in front of my cabin persisted until the Fourth of July due to both the large amount of winter snow accumulation and the cool temperatures in May and June. Snowmelt in front of the guillemot nest sites was also slow. Black Guillemot...

Seattle, Wash., May 4, 2010 — Over the last four decades there have been many technological advances that have helped make the fieldwork on Cooper Island more pleasant and efficient but none has had a bigger impact on day-to-day operations than the addition of the 8×12 ft. cabin that has served as a summer home since 2003. After the 2002 field season it was clear to me (and to my field companions who saw their tents shredded by a polar bear in August 2002) that there was a need for sturdier living quarters on Cooper Island. While protection from bears...

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 27, 2009 — What seems like a long,long time ago,black guillemots on Cooper Island had the best of all possible worlds. The summer snow-free period was increasing annually, providing breeding birds with more time to raise their young, and the Arctic pack ice was close enough offshore that there was a readily accessible supply of Arctic cod to feed the nestlings. The only real dark cloud on the horizon was the realization, slow in coming over the past three decades, that the warming planet that had given the guillemots their “salad days” in the 1970s and...

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 22, 2009 — Last Monday evening near the end of a rainy stormy day, I called Lewis Brower, who would be my transportation to Barrow, to let him know that I hoped to see him on Wednesday when winds were predicted to be close to 10 mph. All day Monday wind speeds had been in the high teens and low 20s and from a direction that meant waves were breaking on both sides of the island. To my surprise Lewis told me he was getting his boat ready and would be on his way from Barrow...

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 12, 2009 — Of all the questions people ask me about guillemots, one of the least common is “What the heck does ‘guillemot’ mean?”. This surprises me, since I would think that would be one of the first things people would wonder about the bird. It turns out that “guillemot” is the diminutive of Guillaume – the French version of “William”. But it also turns out that no one seems to know why the genus Cepphus — or in England the closely related members of the genus Uria — are called guillemots. When talking to school...