Coches

Coches Prietos Canyon, known as just Coches, is our plot on the south side of the Island and the furthest plot from the cabins. Usually, Coches is a 10-15 minute truck ride up and over the south ridge but since the big rain on the 20th we've had to hike it. It is intensely steep and strenuous, but exhilarating at the same time. Thirty-five minutes of hiking straight uphill to the top, then thirty minutes back down to the bottom of the canyon, and then you begin to nest search. I used my GPS to determine how far I hiked four days ago: approximately 12.6 kilometers, which equates to about 7.5 miles. The GPS track also plots the elevation on a graph and I wish I could have posted a picture of that on here. It zigzagged up and down like a polygraph printout. Coches is by far the most topographically challenging plot. There are many steep drainages, and ridges upon ridges to scramble over. My favorite part about Coches is that I can see the glittering blue Pacific (if I am high enough up). It instantly reminds me that I am living on an island and I have the coolest job ever.

From Los Torres, looking North over the Coches plot. The little windy white road in the center of the photo is the road we hike up. See if you can follow it to the top (it turns red). That is where we hike to get back to the Cabins after a long day of hiking to find nests. Thankfully, we do not have to hike over the ridge in the far background...that is on the North side of the Central Valley of the island, where the Cabins are.

One day at Coches, I hiked to the top of Los Torres, a rocky ridge south of the canyon, to take some photos. It looks like a Dr. Seuss book up there: weird rocky teeth and an assortment of odd succulents and Giant Coreopsis. The top gave a great view down over Coches to the north and of the ocean to the south. It felt amazing to be so high up and to not see a single man made thing around me other than a barge in the shimmering distance, which I pretended was a whale sunning itself on the warm ocean surface.

Looking up at Los Torres

The road to Coches has only recently dried, so on Saturday we will get to drive the windy, steep road instead of hike it. It is a relief but I also enjoyed the hike, and the fact that my body was fit enough to propel itself up with little argument. In other news, the Lagunitas pair's first nest did in fact fail, but I found them building a new nest today in a Scrub Oak some 50 meters from their old nest. Hopefully, they will have better luck with this nest.

Lagunitas: Good News!

I checked Lagunitas' nest yesterday just to be sure it had actually failed in the storm. Lo and behold, she was sitting on the nest! Whoever had checked the nest three days ago had seen inside the nest and there were no eggs. Because we saw her sitting in it before, we expected there to be eggs, but she may have not laid them yet. She might also be confused because this is her first year breeding (we think), so perhaps she did fail. Only time will tell.

As for work today, I don't think I have ever spent so much time wriggling in the dirt. I was nest searching in Mulefat, Baccharis salicifolia, and in many parts I was crawling or slithering in the wet leaf-duff and soft but dry mud. The Mulefat was a little over 2 meters high (over 6 feet) and there was a tiny open pathway that was literally the width and depth of my body including my backpack. It was great. I didn't find the nest, but I have a good idea of where to look next time, with a few more clues.

I did find a nest today: Longtrail at Portezeula. Very satisfying.

Update on Lagunitas

The first Lagunitas nest has failed due to heavy rain and wind for 30 hours straight! It was quite a day. We couldn't go out at all, so we stayed inside playing cribbage, reading, and napping. We had company from off the island, so it was an enjoyable (though stressful) day, for the most part.

Fret not, the pair will re-nest as jays normally do, and we can continue to follow them throughout the season.

The creek was dry when the rain started. It went from no flow to very high in 24 hours!

Drying our boots on the deck after the storm.

Moving to the Cabins

For the last month, the Island Scrub-jay crew lived in the UC Reserve Field Station in the “Central Valley” of the island. We each had our own room but we shared bathrooms, kitchen, dining, and “living room” space with all Field Station residents. For the first week, it was pretty much just the three of us (we have a crew of five now, but start dates have been staggered). We spent most of our post-field hours (from about 2-9pm) cooking,playing cribbage, Pocket Farkel, Therapy (a psychology board game— weird, I know); and reading by the fire. Those days it was chilly by 3pm and we came in from the field wet and slightly numb around the extremities, so the wood fire was a wonderful bonus to the communal area. The Field Station kitchen has four refrigerators as well as a walk-in fridge; two gas stoves, ample counter space, and large mouse-proof storage shelves. This was all ours! We got used to the silence and limited company (which I mean in the positive sense—I love spending more time with less people rather than the other way around). It was a week of reunion, as Colin and Michelle and I had worked together at PRBO Conservation Science (formerly the Point Reyes Bird Observatory) as banding interns in the winter of ’08-’09 for 3-5 months (again, staggered start dates).

My room at the Field Station

The Field Station, capable of housing around 30 people, hosts a wide variety of groups. After that first week of comfortable solitude, we all of a sudden shared a kitchen with a group of 16 college students from UCSC and their 3 professors. We later had a small group of Park Service Firefighters from Whiskeytown, CA, up near Redding. They managed burn piles and felled trees to decrease wildfire fuel around the Main Ranch and Field Station. They were fun to have around for about two weeks. We also had a researcher, her two sons (ages 9 and 14), and her field assistant. They were great to have around as well. We learned a lot from Kathryn, who has been studying endangered plants out here for many years. Her sons were mature and intelligent for their ages, and entirely enjoyable to share the table with. We also overlapped with a school group from Green Mountain College in Vermont and an assortment of random researchers (one of disease transmission in Abalone, one who was inventorying mosses, a few who were studying Bishop Pines, and Larry the Manzanita guy). While these people all had a diverse variety of knowledge and experience to share with us, we were relieved when we got to move out of the Station and into The Nature Conservancy (TNC) cabins.

The Negra Modelo female, right before we banded her YBB/AY

Now, I share a cabin with Sinead and Courtney, and Michelle and Colin have the master bedroom. There is a well-equipped kitchen cabin, a shower cabin with a laundry machine, and a sophisticated outhouse. We have a dartboard, a porch and a deck; a laundry line, an outdoor grill, and we are right on plot, so on Field Station days we just walk out the front door and we are working! Two pairs of jays visit us on our back deck: The Stupak Pair (Hillary Clinton and Bart Stupak—as I may have mentioned before, Bill Clinton died last summer, so Hillary needed a new mate. Stupak’s old female, BYY/AP is now part of the new Reagan Pair), and the Castro Pair. Castro (we call him by his last name and her by her first, Dalia) looks for stray peanuts all the time and provides valuable entertaining observations.

The view from our deck, as the Sunday storm cleared on Monday.

After the storm, see how much the water has dropped in two days!

The Thief

To the Island Fox who stole my sock,

It must have smelled quite nice, that ripe three-days-worn sock odor. Nice enough to entice you to run off with it in your little fox teeth, I guess. Now, dear fox, this means nothing to you but that was my last pair of new socks. I bought two pairs of SmartWool socks to come out to the island because my old socks are crusty and worn. The first new pair—the best pair—was separated by a bucket of hot coals. I kept the non-burnt one. And now, you have pilfered one of my other pair. This wouldn’t be an issue if they were the same socks, but no, they were quite different. One pair was thick, cushiony, and oh-so-soft. The other pair was thinner and coarser. Mixing-and-matching these socks does not feel good on my feet.

So, little fox, I shake my fist at you for your thievery, but you are just so darn cute and endangered I just can’t hold it against you for long.

Love,

Nora

P.S. Fox, Michelle does not appreciate the stinky mark you left on her nest pole. 

Santa Cruz Island Fox, about the size of a house cat.

The Santa Cruz Island Fox (Urocyon littoralis santacruzae) is a subspecies of Island Fox endemic to Santa Cruz Island, just like the Island Scrub-jay. This furry critter is the largest mammal native to SCI, though it is one-third smaller than its mainland counterpart, the Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). The Island Fox is thought to have become isolated on the Channel Islands over 10,000 years ago and has evolved into a unique species. There are six subspecies of Island Fox, each unique to a different island within the Channel Island chain.

In the 1990s, the Santa Cruz subspecies fell victim to a human-caused ecological unbalance brought on by non-native species introduced to the island during the ranching era and the decline of Bald Eagles due to DDT. Introduced feral pigs and ranched sheep attracted Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) who took over the niche of the native declining, DDT-affected, fish-eating population of Bald Eagles (Haliateetus leucocephalus). The Golden Eagles preyed on the foxes as well as the wild piglets that first attracted them. The population of foxes plunged from approximately 1,500 individuals to fewer than 100. This ~90% population decline greatly reduced the effective population size, and therefore the genetic variation, of the species. Recovery from such an event seems futile, but the foxes have made quite a comeback. The restoration plan removed and re-located the Golden Eagles, reintroduced a population of Bald Eagles, eradicated the feral pigs (which caused quite a stir that I will discuss in a further entry), and captive-bred foxes. Currently, there are somewhere around 800 foxes on SCI.

When I arrived on the Island, I saw an Island Fox within an hour. In fact, I saw two or three. I see multiple foxes every day. Ten years ago, I would have been lucky to see a fox a week. I feel fortunate to get to observe this unique species while it is on the upswing. My favorite observation so far has been in the early morning after a rainy night—all the earthworms were wriggling on the muddy road surface and I had to tiptoe carefully around them all. I turned a corner and there was a fox trundling down the road towards me, head down, it’s nose less than an inch from the ground. It was weaving back and forth eating as many worms as it could find. It was so preoccupied that it didn’t even notice me until we were only 10 meters apart. It finally looked up, pricked its ears up, sniffed, and scampered away like an excited puppy. 

NOTE:

It turns out my fox count was off--there are approximately 800-900 sexually mature adult foxes on the island and up to 1300 total (this means almost a third of the foxes are less than 10 months old--the age when they reach sexual maturity).

Finding Lagunitas

The early morning sun cast long shadows on the hills in Portezuela. The Scrub Oak shadows were warped and elongated, making them look like giants. I scrambled across a small drainage while keeping a wary eye on the vegetation to make sure I was not diving into Poison Oak. I was out looking for a new pair of Island Scrub-jays who we have seen “acting nesty” in this area. I headed to where I saw them six days ago, hoping they would still be hanging around. I scanned the flat and gentle slope in front of me and saw nothing. It was barely seven o’ clock and a warm breeze rustled the leaves of trees and shrubs. I hadn’t seen a jay yet. Perhaps they knew something I didn’t. I wandered the hill, ears alert for any sound that might give me a clue to where these birds were. My eyes constantly scanned for movement.

Occasionally, I closed my eyes and just listened. Though the jays weren’t moving about, a concerto of bird song enveloped me. Spotted Towhees—perhaps the most abundant bird on the island—sang from nearly every aural direction. Bewick’s Wrens zoomed around and crooned from the tippy-tops of snags. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers “zee zee zee zee zeeeed” frantically, zipping from branch to branch. The leaves rustled, the breeze whispered, and the creek rushed behind me. Suddenly, I heard it—a single jay call, almost a scream. My head snapped up and I saw the silhouette of a Scrub-jay bobbing in the top of a large Scrub Oak 150 meters away. I began my quest to find their nest.

When I got to the tree, I dropped my pack and crept silently towards an opening in the branches. I could hear the pair rustling around in the protected sphere under the canopy. I peered through the branches and watched them hopping around from branch to branch, picking off bark and munching the goodies underneath. I might have been watching them for a while before they flew off to their possible nest site, so I began to take territory points on the male, AP/URB, a second year born on the plot in a different territory. I started the 5-minute countdown timer on my watch and took a mental note of where AP/URB perched so I could go back and GPS it later. I watched them forage together. Every so often they perched on the top branches of the tree and he brought her a morsel to fed her. Every 5-minutes, my watch beeped and started the countdown again. Each time, I took a mental note of his location until I had five territory points.

They continued to forage until finally, I heard the satisfying “craaack” of a stick breaking off a bigger branch. I swung my gaze to the female, PGO/AP, and she had a fresh stick in her bill and she was about to break off another one. She took the sticks, each about the dimension of a pencil, and flew up to the top center of the tree. Lucky me, their nest is in this tree! Usually, you watch the birds pop out of the chaparral with material and then fly many meters until you can’t see where they go or they fly behind a ridge and you have to follow them and wait for another material carry. It can take hours of careful observation or random vegetation searching to find a nest. Thankfully, the male began carrying sticks to the same part of the tree. I was surprised that they were building the nest right in front of me. I’m sure they knew that I was there because they had acknowledged my presence with chuffs and grunts and the occasional curious head cock. They are a new and young pair; perhaps they haven’t learned that when they see a human it means their nest is soon to be discovered. I let them build for a while so I didn’t disturb them. When they seemed to take a break, I took my nest pole and snuck into the foliage.

The nest was roughly 3.5 meters high in the oak, hidden from the top and only barely visible from below. The birds had woven the sticks into a round platform in the crux of a branch. Next, the birds would add smaller sticks to the inner bowl, and then soft lining in a neat cup. I took a GPS point directly below the nest, took notes on the shape, height, and progress of the nest, and slipped out of the tree again. The birds took little notice, and continued to build their nest. I flagged a nearby tree and took off again to look for my next pair.

Nest found. Satisfaction. When you find the nest of a new territorial pair, you get to name the territory and therefore the birds. Since the territory is in Portezuela, the beer-themed plot, I named the territory Lagunitas after a Marin County brewery. I checked the nest today and there were no birds around. Usually when you go near a nest, the pair flies in and “chuffs” at you—a sort of grunting “ruh ruh”. I was worried that the nest had been abandoned, but I later saw them carrying lining material (fine grasses) to the tree. Hopefully they will fledge young, although reproductive success on the island is low. Of approximately 141 studied nest attempts last year, only 18 nests fledged young. The others were lost to predation, abandonment, or weather. The idea of so few nests putting young into the population is startling, but once the birds make it past the fledgling stage they have much higher survival rates. Island Scrub-jays can live a long time compared to smaller birds; some have been known to be at least 16 years old.

I will follow this nest until fledging (or until it fails) and let you all know how it goes.

Banding La Negra As The Sun Went Down

I banded my first Island Scrub-jay today! Michelle (my boss, who I've known since 2008) and I drove up to Portezuela after a full day of nest searching on Field Station (I will explain these place names if you read on) to trap an unbanded female whose nest Michelle had found yesterday. Trapping these intelligent birds is a test of patience but offers a good long time spent observing the bird.

First, you throw it peanuts. The birds are interested in you so they come close and when they realize you are giving them food, they hop down and eye it warily, hop back a few steps, then hop up, snatch the peanut, and fly off as quickly as possible. Upon eating their first peanut, though, the bird can hardly resist the temptation when you throw the next. And the next. Basically, we hook them on peanuts and let them get used to us. Then, we set a wire box-trap (think wire box propped up on a stick with a string attached--boy scout style) and pile peanuts under it. We let the bird hop in and out to let it get comfortable with the box. This process took over an hour and a half. The bird, who we named Negra Modelo (I'll explain), was hesitant at first but soon she snagged most of the peanuts to cache them for later. Her banded mate was watching the whole time. He knew not to go in the trap. You see, once a scrub-jay is caught in a box trap, it can never again be fooled. They remember.

We waited for La Negra, as I call her, to turn her back and fill her crop with peanuts, and Michelle gave the string a quick yank and sprinted toward the trap. La Negra was scared and frantically trying to escape, but Michelle deftly scooped her out of the trap and into a safe, dark, warm cloth bag. This may seem traumatic for the bird, but the rest of the time she was quite calm. Ornithologists have been banding birds for a century now and it seems that they respond to the stress of the situation like they would being swooped by a predator--they react but continue their lives unfazed.

I have banded Jays before, both Steller's and Western Scrub-jays, but La Negra was special. How many people in the world can know that they banded an Island Scrub-jay? Perhaps less than fifty. Even though Island Scrub-jays are slightly bigger than mainland jays, La Negra felt small as her heartbeat pulsed against my palm.  She immediately latched her sharp claws into my right ring finger. She may be small, but she has got one hell of a strong grip! I gave her a pencil to grab onto instead, which is pretty cute, I have to say. I used banding pliers to secure an aluminum band with a unique number to her right leg, and Michelle showed me how to apply the plastic color bands. Each bird in the study has 4 color bands--three on the left leg and one on the right combined with an aluminum band. In the field, you read and record the bands from the bird's left leg to the right leg, top (closer to the body) to bottom (closer to the foot). So, I banded La Negra with a Yellow band on top of two Black bands on the left leg, and an aluminum band over a Purple band on her right. Her combination reads YBB/AP. We often talk of birds by their combo, which can be silly if you don't get what is going on. We also name the territory of each pair, and refer to them as those names too.

I finished applying La Negra's bands and fell back into the banding routine--I determined her age (we knew her sex) using her flight feather shapes (pointy is young, truncate is older), measured her wing and tail, looked for breeding conditions and the amount of fat she had (birds store extra fat in little pockets in their furculum, below their wings, and by their thighs), and measured her bill and tarsus (foot) with calipers. Michelle showed me how to bleed her for a DNA sample. Island Scrub-jays, like all island species, are more susceptible to foreign disease and the populations depend on genetic variability to persist if an event like West Nile or Avian Flu were to strike SCI. These blood samples test the birds for disease but are now being used for population studies. Michelle is doing her graduate work through Colorado State University. She is using the DNA we take from these birds to determine whether there is extra-pair paternity (aka hanky panky) occurring within the study pairs. More on this soon.

Back to La Negra. She didn't make a sound the whole time we were poking and prodding her. She blinked calmly as I held her gently and spoke reassuring words quietly (this makes me feel better than it makes her, obviously). It almost felt like patience. When we let her go, she ruffled her feathers while sitting on Michelle's hand, then took off back to her mate to preen. The sun was going down and it was cold. It felt good to know that La Negra would never again be fooled by a box trap. 

Now a bit of background. I am technically a Smithsonian Institute Intern, and I came upon the job by luck. It was finals week at Warren Wilson in December and I was exhausted. I had just had the thought not two days before that maybe it would be a good idea to take more time off from school to do field work (I took a year off in '08-'09 to work for the Point Reyes Bird Observatory and the Mono Lake Committee). I checked my email and there it was--Michelle telling me that she was starting the hiring process for SCI, jokingly seeing if I was available (she knew I was in school, we had discussed this back when she was getting ready for grad school and she knew I wanted to finish straight through). It was a flood of YES YES YES...can I? Maybe! So I emailed her back saying it was a possibility. Within 20 hours I had talked to the registrar, my adviser, my work supervisor, and the financial aid office and it looked like everything would work out perfectly. I was hired the next day, and now here I am. It feels very right. It seems like the few split-second decisions I have made in the last few years have been the right ones. I am very happy.

Now, a little bit more about the job. We have three study plots: Field Station, Portezuela, and Coches. Each established territory is named in themes in each plot. Field Station is politicians and or political characters, i.e. Nader, Kennedy, Castro, etc. Portezuela is beer and/or alcoholic beverages, mostly regional--Smuttynose, Pemaquid, Tuckerman--but there are a few main streamers in there, like High Life, Extra Special Red, Newcastle, and Guinness. Coches is constellations, stars, greek mythology and the like. I've nest searched Orion, Neptune, Scorpio, Taurus, Sirius, Alpha, and Cassiopeia. There are between 10 and 20 nesting pairs in each plot. Today, I found Hillary Clinton's nest. Sadly, Bill Clinton died this past summer at the age of at least 16. Now Hillary is with Bart Stupak. Their nest is in a Coast Live Oak that is surrounded by poison oak. It took me over 15 minutes to maneuver 10 meters into the vegetation to find the nest because I had to avoid the itchy-rash-giving branches dangling in my face, wrapping around my ankles, and clinging to my jacket. Needless to say, I have washed everything I have including myself with Technu, and am anxiously awaiting to see whether or not it worked.