Birds From The Last Few Days

My days were winding down on SEFI and the hopes of grandeur dwindled---less days left meant less chances of some crazy mega-vagrant flitting into the Rixford Tree or scrounging for micro-bugs at the lighthouse. The days went by and very few birds showed up. I was happy with the birds that did and ecstatic for the one special seabird that showed up, so it wasn't too bad bird-wise at the end of the season.

One of my favorite birds from the Eastern Sierra (they are all over, but I grew to love them there), the Warbling Vireo.

The Vireo takes off.

A rare island migrant, a Green-tailed Towhee. This bird stayed for at least a week.

A Western Flycatcher noms a beetle in the Coast Guard Tree.

Same bird, extra curious.

One of the few dozen Black Turnstones.

A terrible photo of a Blue Grosbeak through a window with a screen on it. If it hadn't been for the window it could have been a delicious crush.

On the Thursday before I left, the seabird we'd all been waiting for finally showed up on the island. There had been reports of Blue-footed Boobies up and down the California coast (and inland, the first sighting was in August at Mono Lake, and there are at least a dozen BFBOs seen at the Salton Sea) and we knew one had to show up on the island at some point. No one had ever seen a Blue-footed Booby on the Farallones before, so it was an exciting thing to anticipate. We all had Booby fever, constantly scanning every rock perch and feeding flock for this sub-tropical Sulid. After days and days of tiring anticipation, one arrived in the late afternoon, perched on Saddle Rock and preened for 30 minutes. We all rushed out with scopes and cameras and watched the first island record Blue-footed Booby preen amongst the Cormorants. It was too far for great photos, but here is one I got from far away, and one I "tried" to digiscope...looks more like an abstract painting.

Extra-SEFI Adventures

Southeast Farallon Island is the only inhabited island in a small archipelago of granite rocks thrust out of the sea just east of where the sea floor drops from 300ft deep to almost two miles deep. Most Farallon researchers spend all of their time on SEFI, but I was lucky enough to be invited along on two trips off of SEFI and onto (or near) some of the other Farallon Islands.

The first trip was a boat journey to North Farallones to survey roosting Brandt's and Pelagic Cormorants, as well as pinnipeds. The sea was almost glassy and the pewter sky reflected off the ocean to create a surreal feel to the whole day. Were we boating through the sky or the sea?

North Farallon Islands, glassy sea.

It took about an hour to get there in the SAFE boat (the one we use to schlep gear back and forth from our supply boats to the island). The "islands" are small and jutting steeply out of the water so there is no landing spot--we circled each islet to get a count of the birds and pinnipeds, and took photographs of this bizarre collection of oceanic monoliths. We found a pair of Peregrine Falcons roosting above the cormorants on one islet, perhaps biding their time between meals.

Pinnipeds checking us out while we checked them out.

On our way back to SEFI, we swung by Middle Farallon--which is called "the Pimple" by some--a single rock in the crashing swell (well, not that day...it was more a gentle licking).

Middle Farallon, looking back towards SEFI.

The second extra-SEFI adventure was a trip across the Jordan Channel to West End, also called Maintop Island, to count Northern Fur Seals, California Sea Lions, and Steller's Sea Lions. Four of us suited up in full body harnesses and clipped into the 20 foot zipline to pull ourselves (one-by-one, of course) across the channel while California Sea Lions surfed the waves in the waters 15 feet below.

Jonathan and Nyssa (USFWS) strap into the full body harnesses.

The Jordan Channel zipline.

This is me, halfway across the channel on the line.

Then we hiked into the center of the island to a perch above a flat terrace where all the Fur Seals hang out. It sounded like a goat ranch. Baby Fur Seals bleat like little baby goats. They also sit in the most adorable positions and use their incredibly long hind flippers to scratch their chins and swat away the flies.

Young Northern Fur Seal hangout.

Adorbz.

Just look at those long flippers!

After we finished the count, we climbed to the top of Maintop--a 220 foot scramble up the granite dome--and relished in the breeze. The fog prevented us from enjoying the view back towards our little home island (you couldn't see it AT ALL), but it still felt amazing to be on top of the second highest rock in the archipelago.

Almost too foggy to see Saddle Rock, definitely too foggy to see Lighthouse Hill!

This view is (obviously) not from the top of Maintop because my camera ran out of batteries before we climbed it.

These adventures were a great little getaway from the monotony of foggy, virtually birdless surveys during a week straight of socked-in fog and few migrants.

There Are So Many Flies

To get an idea about the conditions in which I have been conducting field work in the last few weeks, read this post on the Farallones blog. It will terrify you. There is even a video. You might feel sick. Not really (unless you have pteronarcophobia, a phobia of flies), so please read this blog post. We worked really hard on it. The flies have become an obsession over the last few days because it has been so birdless. WE'RE GOING FLY CRAZY!

Trying to out-zen the flies. Not an easy task.

Birdless

There are no songbirds here. Correction: there are three individual songbirds here. Three. There are more people on the island than songbirds. I spend my days wandering around the island, searching every nook and cranny for invisible birds, and being swarmed by flies (more news on the flies soon). We were socked in with fog for a week, but the last few days have been sunny with a breeze. Neither are conducive to migrants landing on the island. It's gonna pick-up soon, I know it! 

I haven't been taking many pictures lately, and a lot of them were washed out in the fog, so I messed around with the contrast and colors on a few. Enjoy!

Great Blue Heron perched regally on the tippy-top of Saddle Rock.

Ruddy Turnstone with extra color saturated legs.

Sunset behind Maintop. There haven't been many clear enough evenings for sunsets, so this was great.

The California Sea Lions don't mind the flies as much as we do.

A Least Flycatcher I banded. Sweet bird.