Seabirds from an artist’s perspective

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“And now for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent…” as Monty Python would say. What is it like to look at seabirds from an artist’s perspective?

First of all I, the writer, would like to intro­duce myself. My name is Rose, and I’m one of the stu­dent interns here at COASST. I answer emails about seabirds, enter data about seabirds, and I draw seabirds. As an artist, I spe­cial­ize in pets and wildlife, and do cus­tom por­traits and odd job com­mis­sions when I’m not too busy with school here at the Uni­ver­sity of Washington.

Of all the pos­si­ble sub­jects, why would I draw birds?

A del­i­cate hum­ming­bird drawn by Rose

Birds have always been aes­thet­i­cally fas­ci­nat­ing to me. This fas­ci­na­tion is a lit­tle bit hard to artic­u­late, but I will try my best. There is a cer­tain light­ness to them that touches me, sort of like a gust of wind touches a leaf and lifts it for a moment. Very often gulls and turns glid­ing on a play­ful breeze will catch my imag­i­na­tion, and I will imag­ine myself as one of them danc­ing upon the wind. There is some­thing so beau­ti­ful and sleek about the smooth curves of a stream­lined bird that give me such deep sat­is­fac­tion to emu­late on paper.

Seabirds are a supreme design. For a designer, it is extremely dif­fi­cult to cre­ate an object that is both fully aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing and func­tional. If you think about all the objects you use in your daily life — your phone, or your vac­uum cleaner – all these things are made up of com­pro­mises between beauty and func­tion­al­ity, yet in seabirds both are one and the same.

A Mar­bled Mur­relet sketch show­ing the bal­ance of beauty and functionality

In real­ity, at least for me, seabirds from and “artist’s per­spec­tive” and seabirds from a “scientist’s per­spec­tive” aren’t ter­ri­bly dif­fer­ent. Aes­thet­i­cally beau­ti­ful wing curves can be described math­e­mat­i­cally in terms of lift and air­flow, which can then be ana­lyzed sta­tis­ti­cally to deter­mine fit­ness dur­ing win­ter months. Birds are fas­ci­nat­ing to me. This is the rea­son I draw them, and it is also the rea­son I peer at them through binoc­u­lars, or trek out to the beach in the rain to log their car­casses. When you get down to it, I’m sim­ply explor­ing what I love, with the skills that have been given to me.

 

The cover to a plan­ner designed by Rose also fea­tures a seabird

Kite board washes in from Canada!

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On April 30th, while walk­ing along the beach just south of Yel­low Banks (on the north coast of Wash­ing­ton), COASST vol­un­teer Dave Eas­ton found a kite board washed up on shore. The board had the owner’s E-mail on it, so Dave con­tacted him. It turns out the owner had lost it on April 6th in Canada after a bad wipe out about 400 meters off shore. As Dave puts it, it’s “amaz­ing how the cur­rents and wind work; chore­o­graphed chaos.” Next time you’re out scour­ing the beach for marine debris, keep in mind the poten­tial ori­gin of the debris and the long jour­ney it took to get there. The two are now work­ing to reunite the owner with his lost board. 

The start and end point of this kite board’s grand journey.

The kite board from Canada found along the Wash­ing­ton Coast

Tracking Pink-footed Shearwaters

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Pink-footed Shear­wa­ter. Photo by Caleb Putnam

The Pink-footed Shearwater’s (PFSH) pop­u­la­tion is in decline. In an effort to bet­ter under­stand their declin­ing num­bers, a team of sci­en­tists from Chile, the United States, and Canada are inves­ti­gat­ing the migra­tory habi­tats and behav­iors of the PFSH by track­ing their move­ments through­out the year. This real-time track­ing project involves six breed­ing shear­wa­ters, four of which have already begun their long migra­tion from the Chilean main­land and Isla Mocha to Peru and North Amer­ica. Ten more PFSHs will be deployed with track­ers from Cal­i­for­nia this sum­mer. This satel­lite track­ing tech­nol­ogy is being used to map and bet­ter under­stand their for­ag­ing behav­iors and impor­tant feed­ing locations.

Incor­po­rat­ing this infor­ma­tion with wind pat­terns and oceano­graphic con­di­tions can help sci­en­tists to bet­ter under­stand these birds’ dynamic and cir­cum­stan­tial behav­ior. “Satel­lite track­ing data will shed light not only on cur­rent at-sea threats but also pro­vide pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion about the rela­tion­ship of these birds with con­di­tions at sea that may respond to vari­a­tion in marine cli­mate,” said Valentina Colo­dro, a biol­o­gist with Oikonos Ecosys­tem Knowl­edge, who attached the trans­mit­ters in early April. Eval­u­at­ing these loca­tions may also reveal where the PFSH may be most at risk of mor­tal­ity from human inter­ac­tions. The trans­mit­ters are expected to oper­ate until this fall when the PFSH reach their breed­ing grounds once again in Isla Mocha.

Dur­ing the non-breeding sea­son, the PFSH ranges from Chile all the way up to Canada and trans­verses ter­ri­to­r­ial waters of 13 dif­fer­ent coun­tries. How­ever they can only be found on 3 Chilean islands dur­ing breed­ing sea­son (Isla mocha, Robin­son Cru­soe, and Santa Clara). Their biggest known threats include pre­da­tion by non-native mam­mals, entanglement/hooking by fish­ing gear, habi­tat destruc­tion, and the ille­gal har­vest­ing of eggs. Because of this, the Pink-footed Shear­wa­ter is a listed as a species of con­cern in sev­eral countries.

This project is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Oikonos Ecosys­tem Knowl­edge, Chile’s Cor­po­ración Nacional Fore­stal (CONAF), Envi­ron­ment Canada’s Cana­dian Wildlife Ser­vice, the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS), Hawai’i Pacific Uni­ver­sity, Amer­i­can Bird Con­ser­vancy, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Click here to visit the track­ing web­site to see where the birds are now.

 

Volunteer Mosaic

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Last month we went to a talk by cli­mate sci­en­tist Dr. Kevin Wood — he’s a part of the “old weather” team at the NOAA-University of Wash­ing­ton Joint Insti­tute for the Study of the Atmos­phere and the Ocean (JISAO — rhymes with cow), and saw this really cool visual which dis­plays total vol­un­teer effort (in this case, log­book pages dig­i­tized) in one rec­tan­gle.  Each box within the rec­tan­gle is a par­tic­i­pant and the size (or area) of the box is scaled to the per­cent of total effort. Col­ors allow the viewer to dis­tin­guish one box from another.

For the COASST visual, we decided to use color to dis­play the year each COASSTer joined. Here’s a sim­pli­fied version:

click here for large version

Col­ors indi­cate when each per­son joined (year 1, year 2 or year 3). The size of each box is scaled to the total amount of time each per­son has sur­veyed. At the top left is some­one who joined in Year 1 and con­tributed LOTS of time, about 20% of all sur­vey effort shown (over all 21 squares). Toward the bot­tom right are par­tic­i­pants with less time invested in sur­vey­ing, includ­ing one we point out who joined in Year 2 and has con­tributed about 1% of the total sur­vey effort. Stand­ing back, it’s easy to see a color gra­di­ent which reflects that par­tic­i­pants who began in Year 1 (red) tend to have con­tributed more — on aver­age — than those who only just started in Year 3 (yellow).

Here’s what the actual COASST sur­vey effort visual looks like, over the last fif­teen years and all 2,112 peo­ple who have got­ten out there to col­lect data for us:

Click here for large version

Green and blue years are ear­li­est, so it is not sur­pris­ing that these “old folks” dom­i­nate the upper left.

The very largest box rep­re­sents about 1.8% of the total time, and you can see that there are plenty of folks who joined in the late 2000s and have already racked up the hours!  Harm­ful algal blooms, puf­fin die-offs, grebe mor­tal­ity – there is always some­thing pulling COASSTers out to do extra surveys.

Small boxes don’t mean slack­ers!  Lots of incom­ing COASSTers (yel­low) are toward the bot­tom right – our pro­gram con­tin­ues to grow.  Many of the small boxes are inside waters COASSTers – with short beaches and nary a bird in sight, it’s just not pos­si­ble to amass the hours of the “birdy beach” volunteers.

In fact, each COASSTer con­tributes their piece to the COASST whole – all of us together make COASST suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able, and now, colorful!

 

Here comes the sun!

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With spring­time upon us, and sum­mer quickly approach­ing, a COASSTer may, on occa­sion, encounter the elu­sive sun! As we enter this won­der­ful time, it is a good idea that we fine-tune our sur­vey­ing skills. So here is your ulti­mate guide to sur­vey­ing in the sun!

1 — Avoid pesky shad­ows that may hin­der species verification.

Shad­ows, espe­cially in full sun­light, can either make parts of the bird much darker (left photo) OR washed out (right photo). This can lead to a loss of detail and make it chal­leng­ing to ver­ify the species, and the chalk­board may be dif­fi­cult to read.
When tak­ing pic­tures in the sun, it is easy to over­look shad­ows from grasses, logs, rocks, sign posts, etc. Be sure to dou­ble check for these shad­ows.
It is also very easy to ignore human-made shad­ows by either the pho­tog­ra­pher or the assis­tant.
If shad­ows are tak­ing over your photo, sim­ply rotate and move the bird.

A sim­ple way to get the cor­rect expo­sure is to set the cam­era to the full-auto mode (green box set­ting). Then, just focus the green box on the bird, and take the picture.

SNAP! You have a shadow free picture.

 2 – Be pre­pared! Plan­ning ahead will pre­pare you for almost any­thing dur­ing this some­what unpre­dictable sea­son, and ensure your sur­veys go as smoothly as possible.

Proper pro­tec­tion from the sun can make the dif­fer­ence between a a nice walk on the beach and a sur­pris­ingly painful reminder that it is no longer win­ter. Sun­screen, lip balm, and sun­glasses, are essen­tial when prepar­ing for a sunny sur­vey. Bring­ing light­weight (prefer­ably water­proof) lay­ers will also help you tran­si­tion from sun to rain if the occa­sional sur­prise driz­zle occurs.
Being in the sun for an hour or two can quickly zap your energy and dehy­drate you, so be sure to bring var­i­ous treats with you and plenty of water. HYDRATE!

A few sheets of parch­ment paper are a great last minute alter­na­tive to water­proof paper dur­ing unex­pected show­ers. Just record your data on the parch­ment paper with pen­cil and trans­fer the infor­ma­tion onto a data sheet when you get to a dry location.

Lastly, bring­ing a back­pack will make the process much eas­ier, espe­cially when you need to dis­card a few lay­ers when the sun comes out! Yay!


Seabirds help scientists monitor ocean pollution

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Sci­en­tists are begin­ning to real­ize that an effec­tive way to test for marine pol­lu­tion is through seabirds. Birds like pel­i­cans and gulls are at the top of the food chain, mean­ing they can accu­mu­late large quan­ti­ties of the tox­ins in marine ecosys­tems through a process called bioac­cu­mu­la­tion. In addi­tion, many seabirds will return to the same spots every year to breed after cov­er­ing large expanses of the ocean dur­ing migra­tion. This makes them ideal for study­ing pol­lu­tion in marine envi­ron­ments, as the birds essen­tially take sam­ples every time they stop to feed. Sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­sity of Man­i­toba are tak­ing advan­tage of this phe­nom­e­non and have begun using non-lethal sam­pling meth­ods, such as draw­ing blood or tak­ing a feather, to ana­lyze the toxin lev­els in the tis­sues of seabirds.

Birds like this Brown Pel­i­can that spend a large part of the year out on the open ocean are help­ing sci­en­tists study ocean pollution.

Seabirds—both alive and dead—are pro­vid­ing a way to ana­lyze the effect of plas­tics and other con­t­a­m­i­nants on the marine envi­ron­ment. Plas­tics con­tinue to be one of the biggest threats to the oceans, with many of the chem­i­cals found in them either leach­ing into the oceans or poi­son­ing the ani­mals that acci­den­tally eat them. Plas­tics can also form a plat­form for other pol­lu­tants such as oil and indus­trial by-products to attach. Steps are being taken to reg­u­late the use of cer­tain chem­i­cals found in plas­tics, but reg­u­la­tion can be tricky once the chem­i­cal is already on the mar­ket. Wildlife and envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing pro­grams have already pro­vided enough evi­dence to improve reg­u­la­tions on cer­tain chem­i­cals, a feat that would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the coop­er­a­tion of the birds.

For more infor­ma­tion about this research click here.

 

COASST-it’s not just for seabirds!

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“Seabird” is a part of the COASST acronym and seabirds are the focus of our pro­gram, but from the very start vol­un­teers have col­lected data on ALL dead birds found, not just the ones asso­ci­ated with the ocean.  COASST vol­un­teers have thus far doc­u­mented 156 dead-on-the-beach species from Hum­boldt County to the Chukchi Sea. About 30% of those are species that have no ties to the marine envi­ron­ment. So what gives? How does a land­bird end up dead on a beach?

Some­times, we know exactly how. We have rap­tors to thank for many of our out-of-place finds. COASST data ver­i­fier Char­lie, watched this Pere­grine Fal­con (photo above) swoop­ing on a North­ern Flicker at Gray­land Beach in Wash­ing­ton. He was curi­ous to see if it would then show up on a sur­vey. Sure enough, Lau­rie Lin­de­man and Bev Dage came through, find­ing the picked-clean wings 5 days later (photo below)!

Then there are some real puz­zlers. Var­ied Thrushes are gen­er­ally described as reclu­sive for­est birds, but for some rea­son they show up more than we’d expect on COASST sur­veys. Com­pared to Amer­i­can Robins, by any mea­sure a more numer­ous bird, Var­ied Thrushes (photo below) have been found 20 times, while robins only 6. The rea­son for this is a total mys­tery to us!

Life must be hard for rap­tors, and like any bird (think mur­res!) the first year of life presents spe­cial chal­lenges. There is a real learn­ing curve when it comes to pur­su­ing active prey. Most of our rap­tor finds involve juve­nile birds, like this Red-tailed Hawk (photo below) with the banded brown tail of a youngster.

COASSTer receives national service award

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Nancy Mess­mer and Roy Nor­ris, recip­i­ents of the 2013 National Marine Sanc­tu­ar­ies Vol­un­teer of the Year Award.

Con­grat­u­la­tions are in order to Nancy Mess­mer (and Roy Mor­ris) who earned the National Marine Sanc­tu­ary Foundation’s Vol­un­teer of the Year Award, to be cel­e­brated on June 4, 2013 in Wash­ing­ton DC. This husband/wife team has cumu­la­tively donated over 500 hours to Olympic Coast National Marine Sanc­tu­ary activ­i­ties in 2012. Nancy, a COASST vol­un­teer since 2010, has logged over 134 hours (not includ­ing travel!) on 74 sur­veys at four dif­fer­ent beaches: Hobuck, Hoko West, Island View, and Sekiu River West. Sixty nine birds found — way to go Nancy and Roy!

Marine Debris Update

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I hope everyone’s May is off to a great start. The marine debris photo project con­tin­ues to move for­ward. We’ve received lots of pho­tos from many dif­fer­ent COASST regions. We’re at almost 4,400 pho­tos. Great work every­one! With the warm­ing weather, now is a great time to head to the beach.

 

Here are a few of the pho­tos we’ve received recently:
Fish Float

A fish float with bite marks found in Oregon

AK toy

A toy found in Alaska

CA bait net

A bait net with bones found in California

deep sea guitar WA

A gui­tar found in Washington

Thanks again for all your help with this project.

Olympic Peninsula Field Trip

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Amaz­ing trip out to the COASST with Bar­bara Blackie’s “Top­ics in Marine Ecol­ogy” class at West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity. Bar­bara, a for­mer COASST Vol­un­teer Coor­di­na­tor, uses COASST sur­veys as a learn­ing oppor­tu­nity for numer­ous col­lege stu­dents. As all COASSTers know, you can’t head out to the beach with­out look­ing for (dead) birds!

COASST finds made up for the less-than-ideal weather – a cou­ple of Black-footed Alba­tross, a Rhi­noc­eros Auk­let (com­plete with white lead­ing edge), and a Sabine’s Gull (dis­tinc­tive white upper­wing triangle).

Bill (BFAL), wing (PHAU), wing (SAGU) from the WWU field trip weekend.

Occa­sion­ally, new recruits ask whether “Wrack: Thick >1M wide” refers to wrack height or spread across the sand. At Sooes, we actu­ally found wrack almost one meter tall – incredible.

Stu­dents from Barbara’s class show just how much wrack can accumulate.

We fol­lowed up COASST sur­veys with a walk on the Cape Flat­tery trail, with some stun­ning views of Gray Whales, Tufted Puffins, and migrat­ing geese. After all that, how could you not want to become a marine biologist?

View from the Cape Flat­tery Trail, with Tatoosh Island in the background.