Adventures in Arctic Science

Bird biologists have been working on PLI since the 1970s, with thick-billed murres being the focus of much of the monitoring and research, although the other species are used in a number of studies. Here are a few of the things that biologists do while on PLI.

Plot monitoring: Much of the day on PLI, and many other seabird colonies, is spent trying to see what is underneath the birds. The timing of when eggs are laid, chicks hatch and then leave the nest is all important to understanding how successful the breeding season is for the birds, and in understanding what affects these components of breeding. We use blinds, like this new one built especially for a kittiwake plot, to view the birds without disturbing them. Blinds on PLI are also often more for keeping bird biologists out of the elements than actually keeping us out of sight.

Each day we sit in the blinds and try to figure our what is underneath each bird; egg, chick, nothing? Can you spot which kittiwake nests in the picture below have one chick, two chicks, and where one chick has been left to fend for it self (at least for a little while, don’t worry the parents did return). Over the course of the season average lay, hatch and fledge (when the chicks leave the nest) dates can be calculated and compared to other years to study how these may be changing over time. In general 2012 was a late year for the birds with the island being locked in ice until late July.

Daily counts: Each day between 5pm and 6pm there are designated plots of murres, kittiwakes and fulmars that get counted each day. This involves hiking along the cliffs to the designated areas and counting all the birds that are in the defined area each day. On nice days this task is also a pretty great way to walk home along the 1000 foot cliffs.

On not so nice days, the daily counts can mean quickly counting the birds through breaks in the fog, and sometimes the fog is so thick that at times the trails start to disappear, and sometimes it gets so bad that we have to abandon the counts.

This picture is the murre U plot on PLI, I count 74 is this plot, how many can you see?

Banding of birds: There has not been a lot of banding of birds on PLI over the years, but there are a number of banded thick-billed murres in the areas we monitor. You can’t quite make out the number in the photograph below, but in person with some patience and luck you can read the bird specific number from the metal band. By tracking these individual birds over time we have learned much about the thick-billed murre, including the fact that these small birds weighing in at just 1000 grams can live up to almost 30 years.

Banded birds also allow you to monitor if birds move between breeding sites, how many years a bird breeds, potentially which other birds they breed with, and through band returns by hunters where the birds overwinter. For the most part the breeding colonies are one of the few places where we can access and get information from seabirds. The other source of information is when hunters report the metal bands on the birds they have hunted, usually during the winter months, which give us more information about where these birds spend the winter.

Long range tracking of birds: Where we used to rely on band returns to see where birds went in the winter with tracking technology advancing so rapidly in the last decade bird researchers are now able to get devices small enough to put on birds all winter so we can see where they go. This year on PLI a number of geologgers were deployed on glaucous gulls. Below you can see the small black anklet on the gull which is a geologger device.  Using length of daylight it will track the gulls movement all winter and tell us where this gull travels to, information that previously was almost impossible to get for individuals. The trick is that we have to recapture this gull next year so that we can get that small device back and download all the data.  No small feat! So hopefully next year reserachers can get this little device back and be able to see where this gull  spends its time when it is not breeding on PLI.

To get an even better view of PLI you can check out this story by the CBC that followed Tony Gaston to PLI and Coats Island in 2007.

To end the summer off I got to work on Prince Leopold Island (PLI) in the high Arctic. Although I have worked in a number of low Arctic regions, this is my first time to the high north. To reach camps in the far north you work with the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP) based out of Resolute, Nunavut.

View Prince Leopold Island in a larger map

Once in Resolute, the team at PCSP works with you to get all your gear and equipment to the camp you are heading to. In our case, PLI. Some of my samples for my MSc work came from PLI, but I have never actually visited the site so I was pretty excited to get my first look at this pretty spectacular colony.

PLI is located at 74°N 90°W so in the summer time that means all day sunshine, that is if it is not cloudy or foggy, which it is known to do a bit on PLI. It is also a federally listed migratory bird sanctuary, designated as a Canadian Important Bird Area, and as a key migratory bird terrestrial habitat site. It is pretty much a large slab of rock sticking up 1000 feet above the ocean with steep cliffs on most sides, which is why PLI is home to large numbers of to a number of marine birds.

There are the thick-billed murres. These birds nest along the rocky cliffs and lay their eggs right on the rock, in their narrow little territory on the cliff. They look like they are just sitting around, but under neither those sitting birds are the single eggs or chicks that each pair works hard to incubate, feed and raise each year.

Mixed in among the groups of murres there are also large groups of black-legged kittiwakes. Kittiwakes are a type of small gull that call out kittiwake as they fly around the colony. They build nests on the ledges from moss and grass they collect from the top of the island so you can often see gangs of these birds in the green valleys as you are hiking around the island. Kittiwakes usually lay 1 to 2 eggs each year, again with both parents needed to raise the gray little chicks until they can fly away from the nest.

The kittiwakes and the murres fill the face of the cliffs where they nest on the ledges, but up at the top on the scree slopes is where the northern fulmars like to nest. The hang out mostly along the tops of the cliffs where they can make a small nest cup out of the rubble and rocks. Fulmars come in light and dark morphs, with lots of different shades of gray in between, making it difficult at times to see them on the rocky outcrops. Can you spot all nine in the picture below?

Above the rocky scree, way up on top where the biologists hang out, so do the glacous gulls. These large gulls make a living by patrolling the rest of the colony, and taking eggs and chicks from the other birds whenever they can. These birds have up to 3 eggs usually, and are quite protective of their nests, which means that when you get too close to them you can expect some gull dive bombs.

The cliffs where all four of these species nest are quite chaotic, but there is one more species that nests of PLI. Black guillemots like to nest in rocky crevices and can be found in the relatively quite areas where the cracks in the rocks are relatively close to the water and provide good perching areas. Their red feet and high pitch calls make them difficult to miss.

There are other birds nesting on the island as well, but in much smaller numbers as compared to the thousands and tens of thousands of the above species. After weeks of eider surveys, I was still excited to find a new eider nest on the south spit of PLI. No matter how many eider nests I run across, the hens still make me jump when they flush from the nest when I am within a few meters.

One of the most exciting surprise nests that we found was that of a parasitic jaeger. Jaegers also start to dive bomb if you get too close, and they will also do a broken wing dance to try and lead you away from their nest like the bird in the picture below is displaying.

All in all I believe that our species count for the summer was 13, which sounds small, but when you consider that this small island, way up in Lancaster Sound in the High Arctic, is closer to the North Pole than it is to Ottawa, and is the home to hundreds of thousands of birds, all in all it is a pretty amazing list.