COOPER ISLAND, ALASKA — Celebrating a solitary Independence Day on Cooper Island with a few hundred black guillemots. While many guillemots are still laying eggs, yesterday I saw the first successful fledge of the year — a barely flying snow bunting that was still being fed by a parent. Snow bunting nests can produce up to seven chicks and feeding and tracking that many flying (or at least fluttering) young is a major job for the parents. Snow bunting nest The big news from this past weekend was the movement of the shorefast ice (ice that is frozen to the beach and nearshore shallows during the winter) as...
George and the guillemots get used to their new homes
COOPER ISLAND, ALASKA — While the start of every field season is always an exciting (and frequently stressful) time, this year the start of the Cooper Island field season had more excitement than most. Preparations began earlier than normal as March and April involved acquiring, modifying and transporting 150 Nanuk plastic cases to replace the wooden nest boxes that allowed guillemots to breed successfully for almost four decades, but which in recent years have been destroyed by polar bears as they prey on guillemot nestlings. The cabin acts as a windbreak so snow in this area melts slower than on...
Sponsor a bear-proof nest site
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 donation will sponsor a nest site for one year and bring you (or an individual or school group you designate) updates about the fieldwork and observations on the island, the history of the breeding birds using the sponsored site and additional site-specific information. At the...
Video: Forty years of work in five minutes
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 study the affects of climate change on the black guillemot. This video explains George’s work and what it has been like living among birds and bears on Cooper Island for 3 months of every year for the last 35 plus years.
Getting ready for the season
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. With him he took 150 plastic cases which, if things work out the way George is hoping, will save the Arctic black guillemot. It seems because of the melting ice pack polars are coming to Cooper Island to find food, which happens to...
The BBC: Climate change and art
The BBC takes a look at the play Greenland and talks to the individuals involved in its creation. For more BBC podcasts about the environmental, development and agriculture, dealing with the impact of humankind on the natural world visit BBC One Planet.
Holiday Greetings from Friends of Cooper Island
Black Guillemot chicks Dec. 28, 2010 — We want to wish our friends a happy holiday season and thank you for your support and interest over the past year. 2011 promises to be a busy and exciting time for us as we hope to replace most of the wooden nest sites on Cooper Island with hard plastic cases to reduce polar bear predation on nestlings. In addition to the new nest sites, the New Year will see us starting an educational outreach with some excellent science teachers who want their students (and others) to better understand the reality of climate change. Lesson...
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 ice, has caused decreased production of young. The northward range expansion of the horned puffin, partially in response to the retreat of summer pack ice, has greatly reduced guillemot nestling survival as puffins kill (but do not eat) the young of the guillemots during nest...
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 a matter of days as the snow melts from the island and then, about a month later, when the nearshore waters go from ice-covered to open water with one good windstorm. The breeding season for the Black Guillemots, which has three distinct periods, is marked...
The Gulf Oil spill and Cooper Island seabirds – so far and yet so near
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 a major effect on the potential threats of oil to the arctic marine system that surrounds this island. Cooper Island biota has a history of being affected by distant and political forces: The boxes and debris used by nesting Black Guillemots are only here because...