Alaskan Adventures of Mareth Griffith.
Page 3
Date: Wed, 2 June 2007
| Hello to Everyone Living in Slightly
Warmer Places, Well, spring has finally come to Alaska. The just in the past week a lot of trails in the woods around town have finally seen the last of their snow melt. The weather has been really sunny for the past few days (though now it looks ready to rain again), the trees are budding out, and the birds are back in some pretty impressive numbers. I went over to a neighboring town last weekend for the Homer Shorebird Festival – basically a whole bunch of birders getting together to go find some of the thousands of migrating birds that breed in, or pass through, Alaska at this time of year. I camped out with some of the people from the Avian Department here at the SeaLife Center, and we sold Puffin Paintings (not paintings of puffins, paintings *by* puffins, see http://www.alaskasealife.org/New/visitors/index.php?page=puffin_paintings.php) to visiting bird people. The tent was so cold that I woke up in the morning with frost on my glasses. But, we were right there on the beach with the shorebirds, and we did see some nice little flocks. I went on some hikes and field classes with other birders, so I covered a lot more ground that I normally can with just my two feet. Bird highlights included Red-Necked Phalaropes – great little birds where the females (not the males) are pretty and brightly colored. I also saw Surfbirds, which are these little sandpiper dudes that remind me a lot of European Turnstones – a yard bird for me when I lived in Shetland. Funnily enough, there aren't yet any puffins at their breeding sites near Homer, although we've been seeing Tufted Puffins near Seward for nearly two weeks. I also went to see a concert while I was in Homer, and the opening act was a woman from Northampton, Massachusetts, who I've seen play when I lived there myself last year. Exceedingly odd that we would both turn up in little hippy towns located on opposite ends of the country. I also have to share something she said about touring in Alaska: "I played in Soldotna; I think I played in a carpeted gym. There was a basketball hoop and an altar. Now I understand Alaska." Anyway, I had a lovely time in Homer, and I've pretty much doubled my bird list for Alaska in just four days. Back at work, my department is gearing up for the full schedule of talks, tours and presentations that theoretically starts Friday. I really have no idea how everything is going to get done by then. In addition to getting the talks up and running, there is also a constant effort to stay current with some of the season-dependant research information – such as, how many marine mammals are in rehab right now (seven – all seals so far) which resident seals are in what habitats (changes every other day at least) and how many pups have been born on the wild sea lion colonies we monitor (none yet, but some expected any time now). We're also constantly trying to keep updated on the current research projects, such as the Sea Lion Cam. The Sea Lion Cam is a feeding study with the steller sea lions involving live fish. Basically, both of our female sea lions (our girls Sugar and Kiska) have a video camera and a waterproof hard drive glued to their heads, so we can get a sea lion's eye view of how they forage for fish. We release live fish in the tank one by one, and the sea lions feast. Eventually, this sort of device will be used on wild sea lions to see how they are finding and catching fish. Since the 1970s, the population of stellers has dropped by about 80%, and researchers think this decline is at least partially caused by a shortage of their primary prey – herring – which they are replacing with a less nutritious and harder to obtain substitute – pollock. So figuring out how stellers are finding and feeding on fish is potentially pretty important stuff. Sugar is the best sea lion to use for the feeding trials. Sugar is kind of everyone's favorite – she's a little more reliable about doing what her trainers ask, and she's very sweet. Kiska, though, is the cleverer of the two. She isn't ideal for the feeding study because she's too efficient at killing the fish – she has learned that if she charges the fish right into the large acrylic window, the fish don't see the glass. The fish ram the acrylic so hard that they stun themselves, thus making it much easier for Kiska to eat them. That's a great feeding strategy as far as she's concerned, but it also means that there are never any lengthy chases. Kiska has also learned that she can release fish herself by nosing the mechanism that keeps the fish tube shut. Sugar is a little better at the trials because she hasn't figured any of this out yet, so it takes longer for her to actually dust the fish. However, Kiska doesn't like sharing her fish 'game' with Sugar. So if Kiska thinks that a fish session is imminent (she looks for the fish cooler, and for particular steller researchers suspiciously hanging out near her tank), she will simply refuse to leave the habitat. Kiska is not going to let Sugar get any of *her* fish. A woman came in with a stuffed giraffe once, which she set down in front of the sea lion tank. Kiska drifted to the bottom of the tank and stared at it pretty intently for several minutes. I think she was trying to decide if this strange alien creature was actually alive. We also had an indoor mini-golf tournament in here as a fundraiser for our rehabilitation department. The sea lions really looked like they wanted to join in and chase the tennis balls we used. A few of our donors were happy to oblige them by bouncing the balls outside their window and watching the girls' heads go up and down… A few of the resident harbor seals are real hams. One in particular likes to chase her tail for visitors. They you'll catch her looking over her shoulder to see if anyone's watching. She knows she gets attention that way, and she simply laps it right up. Another seal, Siku, likes to use the water outflow into the tank as his personal underwater treadmill. The water that leaves the exhibit to be filtered is then pumped back into the exhibit from the basement, so we get a pretty strong current as it comes back into the tank. Siku likes to swim against it – most days you see her little seal bum sticking out of the hole where the pipe is, her two hind flippers swishing away… These little seals (all of them are 2 or 3 years old) are here as participants in diet research – a few seals eating mostly pollock, a few eating mostly herring - to see how this effects their growth, health and blubber thickness. And Chloe, one of two adult harbor seals here at the Center, is pregnant. This will be Chloe's, and the SeaLife Center's, first pup. Not planned. Chloe is actually on loan from the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, while they refurbish her habitat up there. We housed Chloe with Snapper last summer, who at age 23 was considered too old to get up to anything with Chloe. Snapper has obviously proven this assumption to be incorrect, and Chloe is due any day now. Chloe is in an indoor pool by herself now, being pampered and fed lots of fish by the mammal staff. There's a camera set up in her pool to let us see in her pool without disturbing her, and hopefully once the pup is born we'll be able to watch the two of them together over the monitor. Well, I hope everyone is having a great start of the summer, wherever you are. Take care, and let me know what you're up to. Cheers, Mareth PS - A quick update for the KV Bird Club on the Rathlin Island seabird colony, where I volunteered last summer. The leucistic (golden) puffin has returned for a second summer, the pair of choughs are back on the island and now breeding (they are one of only two pairs of breeding chough in the whole of Ireland) and the kittiwakes are getting an earlier start on their breeding activities this year - after two years of failing to fledge any chicks, we are really hoping the kittiwakes will fare a little better this year. |