Field Journal: Days 3, 4, & 5

Days remaining: 5 weeks

Day 3: Saturday June 5th
Another mellow, work around camp day. Kelly and Terry arrive (yes, both men) and the two boat crews departed for their respective areas. The boat crews were sent out as mobile camps. Since the boats were more maneuverable than the float plane, the boat crews were able to get more plots done in a shorter period of time, and were able to get to some plots that were inaccessible by plane. We also had some Migratory Bird Management aerial survey crews coming through. The weather was not great, and I started getting upset about having to go to the bathroom outside. I expressed my wish that I was a guy a number of times.

Day 4: Sunday June 6th
Another camp day. The weather was a bit better today, so I managed to take photos this day. I chased around a western sandpiper for a half hour, trying to get a decent shot, but I could never get close enough. Same with a Pacific loon.
The one interesting thing that occurred this day was two guys from the Manokinak camp boated over since they were having technical difficulties with their satellite phones. One of the guys was a Canadian, and as soon as I found out about that, he had to hear me yammer about hockey for a good amount of time. From him, I heard the results of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals.

Day 5: Monday June 7th
New birds: glaucous gull, Sabine's gull, semipalmated sandpiper
Plot 25, W 165.01982, N 61.12544

Today was the first day of plots. I was put out with Julian, the project leader, and Spencer, a fellow noob. It was quite difficult. First off, I fell in the mud as soon as I hopped off the float plane. Since this is a delta, the majority of the soil is silt. Subsequently, the mud is thick and sucky. My boots didn't fit quite right, due to the fact no one makes my shoes size in field gear (small girls do field work too, jerks), so that combined with my inexperience meant my feet got stuck in the mud easily.

After the mud incident, and with the windy weather, I was getting frustrated. Once I started finding nests, however, that went away. The tundra and mud was difficult to walk on, but I started to get my stride right and just considered it a good work out and excellent rehab for my recovering knee. I told myself, "If I complain about hockey being hard, just remember working out at Kanarymiut!"

Finding nests was what you would kind of expect it to be like - an Easter egg hunt. For the most part, they blending into the tundra well. The easiest way to find a nest was to flush the birds off of them, and too look for little fluffs of down blowing in the wind. Once we found nests, we recorded the species of bird and the status of the nest. The nest could be considered active, abandoned, or destroyed. Many nests would get predated by arctic foxes or jaegers. Then we would count the eggs, and float the eggs in water to determine the age and development of the chick.
The majority of the nests were cackling geese and greater white-fronted geese, especially on this plot. The other common birds were black turnstones, dunlin, arctic terns, glaucous gulls, and Sabine's gulls. At first, I found the Sabine's gulls (above) very pretty. Their wings create a black, white and grey triangular pattern. But then I came across a Sabine's gull nest.
Like most gulls, the Sabine's are very protective of their nests and divebomb anything they consider a threat. Apparently, that's what they considered me. Initially I was a little afraid - I didn't want to be clawed by a gull. However, unlike arctic terns, gulls rarely actually make contact. They're merely divebombing to intimidate. After that, I used the opportunity to take pictures of the attacking gulls.At the end of the day, I felt very accomplished. I had completed a plot, learned how to find and identify nests, and survived gull attacks. I also made dinner when I got back to camp. I slept like a dead woman that night, and my back, quads and hip flexors ached in a good way. My knee was twingy, and so was my old rib injury from last summer (which at this point is incredibly annoying), but nothing to be concerned about. I felt optimistic about the rest of my field work.