Bird Cams

Welcome to the explore.org and Audubon Live Cam Blog! Here you will find up-to-date information about our resident ospreys, Steve and Rachel, our burrowing puffin pair, seabirds galore, news from Project Puffin's research island teams, and more!

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Some great news from Project Puffin!

We are pleased to share some exciting news from the Maine puffin islands. Following the past two difficult summers, when most puffin pairs were unable to find ample food to raise chicks, the 2014 summer was a much improved season. Traditional puffin foods, white hake, Atlantic herring, and sand lance made up the bulk of the puffin diet this summer. Large butterfish (which are too large for puffin chicks to swallow) were nearly absent in the diet of puffins and terns this summer. Because of the improved food that was available for Maine’s two largest puffin colonies, Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge and Matinicus Rock, 75% and 66% of the pairs respectively fledged well-fed and healthy young. This was a welcome return to normal nesting behavior. The improved food supplies brought many adult puffins back to nest after taking a year or two off from nesting. This pattern led to the very exciting news that the puffin colony at Eastern Egg Rock increased by a third from 111 pairs in 2013 to a record high of 148 nesting pairs in 2014! This excellent year for puffins followed a moderation of the recent warm water trend. Following this past cold winter, the Gulf of Maine was somewhat cooler and this favored the puffin’s favorite forage fish.

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So the 2014 season on Seal Island has come to an end. Our small team arrived in early May and were picked up on August 9th, back to the mainland. Our time out here has been fantastic, especially so because the seabirds have succeeded in raising many young this year. The terns have already begun to leave the island on their Southward migration. Their chicks are now full size and flying confidently around the island. The puffins too did very well with fat, well-fed chicks in most burrows. Some have already fledged too, their burrows left empty until next April. Although we are saddened to leave our home out in the ocean, it feels like the right time. The birds are leaving so it’s now time for us to leave as well.

-Seal Island Research Team

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It’s that bittersweet time of year when all of the adorable little chicks we’ve been watching since they were eggs are all grown up and about to leave us.  We’re thrilled to see so many well fed, happy, fully feathered chicks about to fledge! The little pufflings will soon leave their nests in the middle of the night, hop down the rocks and venture out to sea for the next 2 to 3 years before they hopefully return back to Seal to rear chicks of their own. 

The arctic tern chicks are preparing to follow their parents on a great migration to Antarctica where the next two years will be spent growing up and preparing for the long solo flight back to their birthplace with the goal of beginning a new family.

Once the guillemot chicks fledge they will move out onto the water but do not have to migrate long distances.  This means we can continue to observe some of our fledgers floating around all winter long!

 -Nicole Passeri, Seal Island research assistant

Image 1: Puffin fledger

Image 2: Common tern fledger

Image 3: Black guillemot fledger

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Two days ago, I had the awesome experience of grubbing out my first puffin chick from deep inside a burrow that I had to wiggle half of my body into, and banding him. To see how big these chicks have gotten is astonishing, and watching them grow their first real feathers gives me great hope that they will return to the island as breeding adults for many years to come. We have also grubbed out a few adults, for the purpose of measuring them as well as taking off, or putting on, geolocators (as you can see co-supervisors Ed and Julia doing below). These tiny data-recording devices, once removed from the ankles of the puffins, will hopefully tell us all about where the individuals have traveled throughout the year. It is surely exciting to be at the forefront of such important research, not to mention being able to work with these adorable pelagic birds up close. Meanwhile, we had a friendly visit from two members of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service yesterday, who came to collect data from the tower they had installed to track our Common and Arctic terns. Hopefully, the towers they have been installing on islands all over the Gulf of Maine will receive lots of data transmitted from radio tags we put on our terns several weeks ago, so we can track how far out they have been flying to find fish. As exciting as it is to know how far our puffins and terns have been traveling around the world, it definitely adds a sense of loneliness to our little island, as it certainly feels as though we have been with these birds every step of the way through a very important phase in their life cycle. To the future interns and volunteers of Seal Island, if you come across the birds we have banded this summer while you are here, tell them they will always be in our hearts.

-Max Feldman, Seal Island Research Assistant

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Here are some of the birds that visit the open ocean around Seal Island in late summer. All are great travelers and have covered vast distances to feed on the abundance of food in the Gulf of Maine.

Clockwise from top –

Great shearwater a visitor from the South Atlantic.

Cory’s shearwater, a visitor from the Eastern Atlantic.

Red phalarope, a visitor from the Arctic tundra.

Wilson’s storm-petrel, a visitor from the Southern Ocean.

- Ed Jenkins, Seal Island Research Supervisor

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A few days ago, we were in the puffin colony “grubbing” for puffin chicks, i.e. squishing our bodies into uncomfortable positions between rocks to get chicks out of their burrows in order to put shiny metal bands on their legs. While we were grubbing, we had a chance encounter with one of the adult puffins from the burrow cam burrow, so we took the opportunity to band one of Pal’s parents. We put a band on each leg, one is a BBL (Bird Banding Laboratory) band, with a unique nine digit number, kind of like a social security number, the other is a field-readable band with two letters and two numbers. These bands will allow us to identify the bird out in the field. We also took measurements of the bird, including wing length, weight, and some bill measurements, which provide useful data on the fitness of the bird.

Images: This is what Pal’s parent looks like up close

-Julia Gulka, Seal Island Research Supervisor

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These two pictures bring to light some major problems we see regularly as field researchers.  Negative human impact on our beautiful seabirds is a real and ever present danger these creatures face.  If/when we can step in to intervene on such horrors, we do, but more often than not the birds will not allow us close enough to help which was the case with this unfortunate puffin that got entangled in the balloon string.  The second picture I took while doing a puffin feeding study and didn’t notice the hook at the very end of the beak until I was reviewing the pictures later.  Knowing that beak full of fish was intended for an adorable puffling broke our hearts.  If this grim post can succeed in helping us to learn and spread the word about not littering, being vigilant about cleaning up our waste, not purchasing harmful objects (like balloons) that do not biodegrade and end up weekly on the shores of our island and generally attempting to reduce our impact on the planet, than it is worth it.  Please help us to spread the word and take positive steps toward helping the earth that does so much for us, and the animals we all hold dear.

-Nicole Passeri, Seal Island Research Assistant

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This morning, I got up at 4:00 and headed out to the Darning Blind for the first three hour stint of a 15 hour Puffin feeding rate study, one that is new for us this season. In order to better understand how frequently the chicks are being fed, we are taking shifts for this all-day study to record the times that the puffins fly into their burrows, which burrows they are, and whether or not they are bringing food. Sitting in the blind watching the sun slowly emerge from the horizon, lighting up the rocky landscape around me, I felt lucky to be able to witness these awesome seabirds rocket across the shore with bills full of hake and sandlance. Their recognizably deep, buzz-like calls bellowing from beneath the rocks, the ground seem to come alive with puffins as the dawn turned to day, and hungry chicks waiting below were receiving their breakfast. -Max, Seal Island Research Assistant

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Top: Puffins rest on the rocks after bringing in food for their chicks.

Bottom: This puffin brought in some huge sandlance.

-Edward Jenkins, Seal Island Research Supervisor

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The Perfect Storm

Out here on Seal we got word of Hurricane Arthur moving up the east coast, and let’s just say our first instinct wasn’t “Oh no, I hope we stay dry” but rather was “hmm I wonder what birds the storm might bring our way”.

We soon came to realize that the former should have been a more serious consideration. It started out like any other island 4th of July, a bit of research to do in the morning and a bit of relaxing in the afternoon followed by a BBQ of sorts with patriotic baked goods. Just when we were about to think about bringing out the sparklers, the winds picked up and the rain started. Let’s just say this will be a 4th of July to remember. That evening started a streak of 18 solid hours of rain and high winds, upwards of 50 mph.

The result: nine people crammed into a tiny leaking cabin, all slightly damp and chilled, three flooded tents, lots of hot drinks and book reading, and not much work that could be done. Luckily by 2 pm the next day, the rain stopped, the skies cleared, and the wind began to dry out all of the wet gear and people. We survived with little permanent damage, a few blinds had been blown over and some tern chicks didn’t fare too well, but all in all we came out unscathed. Thanks Arthur!

 -Julia Gulka, Seal Island Research Supervisor

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Every day when we go out to do our fieldwork, we walk through some green areas on the island. Every time something there catches my eye, the beautiful flowering plants that live on this island. Some of them are widespread while others are scarce. Purple, yellow, pink, white, etc., all of these flowers make Seal Island a colorful land. These are some Native North American flowering plants that we find on this island.

o   Northern Blue flag

o   Virginia Rose

o   Common Yarrow

o   Roseroot

-Alejandra Fabila Blanco, Herz Fellowship Recipient

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As the Arctic and Common tern chicks continue to grow here on Seal Island, we have been monitoring their growth, by measuring both weight and wing chord every other day in fenced in productivity plots. This has proved to be a more challenging task with each passing day, as the chicks are becoming more adventurous and wandering into the deeper parts of the undergrowth in their plots. We also do feeding studies on a select few chicks to see what the adults are bringing in to feed them and it has also yielded some interesting data, with a variety of fish coming in and even some unexpected species being recently found, such as a Black-bellied rosefish and a Goosefish.

Image: Tern chick being fed by parent. We mark chicks with color on their heads, backs, and chests to tell apart older and younger siblings and to tell apart chicks from different nests.

-Max, Seal Island Research Assistant

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Don't mess with another puffin's burrow!  A young adult male, searching for a future nest inflames the fighting instincts of a protective puffin parent.  The ensuing scuffle is one for the ages.  Watch the highlights in this video: http://youtu.be/w8ypnu5ddxg

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Even though Seal Island is remote and has no trees, we have more than just seabirds out here. Sparrows and sandpipers nest amongst the grass and the odd raven or eagle passes by from time to time. During migration however, almost any bird can and has turned up on Seal. Here are a few photos of some we have seen so far this year.

Photo 1: Cedar Waxwing

Photo 2: Semipalmated sandpiper

Photo 3: Blackpoll warbler

Photo 4: Western Kingbird

-Ed Jenkins, Seal Island Research Supervisor

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Top: Our Guillemot chicks have finally hatched!!! When measuring growth, in order to tell the A chicks apart from the B chicks (older sibling from younger sibling) we give them a stylish little manicure. 

Bottom: In addition to adorable chicks, we’ve been doing puffin feeding studies to determine what and how many fish the puffins are bringing in for the little pufflings. Here are some of the more impressive bill-loads.

-Nicole Passeri Seal Island Research Assistant

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HAPPY GUILLEMOT APPRECIATION DAY!

Every year on June 27, Black Guillemots are celebrated worldwide. They are an alcid related to Razorbills, Murres, and Puffins, yet they often get little attention. They are a really interesting species with a circumpolar distribution, not to mention that they have really cute chicks (see pic below). So once a year, we take a day to reflect on what a great species the Black Guillemot truly is. It also usually involves baked goods and artistic expressions of poems and songs. This year it also included a picnic outside by the rocky pool we endearingly refer to as the splooge pool, where the Guillys frolic and splash every day, chocolaty goodness, and temporary tattoos. What a great day it was.

Image 1: A Black Guillemot carrying a red rock eel back to its burrow to feed its chick

Image 2: A cute and fluffy chick

Image 3: The team enjoying pancakes by the splooge pool

Image 4: One of many chocolaty baked goods of the day

Image 5: Cupcakes and tattoos

-Julia Gulka, Seal Island Research Supervisor

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Rocky islands like Seal Island are important puffin breeding sites, puffins here nest in crevices, and sometimes they are deep and difficult to reach. Every time that we go out to monitor the puffin colony to do the productivity, we put on or best outfits and get ready to practice our stretching and grubbing abilities, crawling through crevices to take a look inside the burrow to try to see if there are any puffin eggs, chicks or adults.

Top images: Grubbing

We can find one of the adults incubating the egg (both sexes incubate, they take turns) but occasionally the adult will come out to fly around briefly, so sometimes we just find the egg, puffins only lay one egg, which is a rounded ovate and dull white.

Bottom left: Adult puffin and egg in a burrow.

Razorbills nest in Seal Island’s crevices as well, but their nests are easier to see because they are shallower than puffin nests. Even so, we have to do our best grubbing to try to see a Razorbill’s egg or chick.

Bottom right: Razorbill chick in burrow.

-Alejandra Fabila Blanco (Herz Fellowship Recipient)