Albatross News -- STAL on Tern!!!

We're definitely in albatross season now!  Chicks are everywhere, and growing like mad.  And this morning, while I was writing this blog, Morgan Gilmour found a short-tailed albatross on Tern!!!!  These endangered birds have only been seen in FFS once in February 1994, and Februrary 2002 -- so this is a special sighting!

Short tailed albatross on Tern today!!  Photo by Dakshina Marlier (above), and Sarah Youngren (below). 
(We'll have better pictures later, but we dont want to disturb him/her.)

Along with our previous O'ahu moli visitor, and a current nesting moli on Tern, banded on Kaua’i in 2008 -- French Frigate Shoals is turning into quite the metropolitan place to nest!

Morgan Gilmour is working on a project tagging albatrosses at Tern Island, for the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics program (University of California, Santa Cruz).  She is using both satellite and GPS tracking to monitor where the adults find food during incubation and chick-rearing.  This will tell us something both interesting, and useful if we need to protect an area or resource, or if we are impacting these resources.

Below is a GPS track of a female ka’upu (black-footed albatross) that was originally banded as a nesting adult in 1998.  During her month-long foraging trip, she traveled very near to Vancouver Island and then Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlotte Island) in British Columbia.  Unlike the mōlī (Laysan albatross), that tend to forage more in the central Northern Pacific, ke ka’upu seem to prefer foraging up the West Coast of North America.  The amount of plastic floating around in these areas also shows up in their chicks – a lot more in the mōlī, who forage closer to the “garbage dump.”

Satellite track of a ka'upu (photo below) heading up the West Coast, looking for food before returning to its nest. 

It seems that this bird encountered stormy weather near Alaska, because when she arrived back on Tern, the GPS tag was water-logged.  Only the first half of the trip data was recorded, as you can see on the map.  What a long way to go just for dinner!!!   After she returns to the nest, her mate will take off on a similar foraging trip.  This long trip appears to have been successful because the egg hatched two weeks after the bird returned to Tern Island, and the chick is doing well.

This is the very bird who was tracked heading up the West Coast (above), with its chick.  Photo by Morgan Gilmour.

In addition to the satellite and GPS tracking, Scott Shaffer (UCSC) and David Hyrenbach (HPU) have agreed to let us combine part of our monitoring program efforts with part of theirs – so we can study where not only where the parent’s go, but how that affects chick growth.  We may also be able to match up the plastic ingested by chicks with where their parents’ foraged.   This kind of partner cooperation makes the whole much larger than the sum of its parts.  Thanks to David and Scott for agreeing to be so cooperative, and thanks to Morgan and Abram for getting the work done!  (It takes a team to do great science!)

Above:  Measuring the tarsus.  Below:  Drawing blood samples.  Abram Fleishman is holding the ka’upu.  Morgan Gilmour is taking measurements and samples.  This information will tell us a lot about the health of the bird.

And some other assorted news and photos:

Dan and Sarah saw a ka'upu with a 'streamer', and tracked it down.  The bird had a hand-braided nylon line wrapped twice around its uper leg, knotted twice, and with a bolen-loop on the other end.  It looked awfully like someone had tied this bird up, and it escaped.  Luckily the crew removed it before much damage was done -- the bird is scarred, but won't lose its leg.  Nice job, crew!

Female turtle on South Beach.  We see mostly males and juveniles in the winter, but there's always exceptions.

Tern Island 'new' runway from the East end.  We're glad to see birds nesting in this area.

Paula Hartzell and Dan Rapp releasing a small honu out of the double seawall.  Turtles get stuck behind the seawall after they washed over by high waves, then can't get back out.  This one was particularly tricky because it was swimming around in hip-deep water.  We waited for low tide so the waves wouldn't bash us, and so the turtle had time to calm down and go to sleep, then Sarah herded it to us.  We had to hand-pass the turtle to a wide enough opening, because the bottom of the wall is lined with broken rusty barrels facing up -- like tires on a football field, only rusty and jagged.  :-)  Everyone was careful, and the turtle was released healthy and unharmed.

Holy Mōlī -- First Laysan albatross chick of the year!

First mōlī chick of the year!!!!  We'll call him/her Ka Hiapo, First Born.  Ka Hiapo is in Nest #48 of our chick growth study looking at the effects of plastic marine debris ingestion on chick growth, so we'll be able to follow this chick through the season with you.

Ka Hiapo:  The first Laysan albatross chick of the year!  (Photos by Sarah Youngren, 21Jan2012)

First ka'upu (black-footed albatross) chick of the year!

Yeah!  We've received our first ka'upu (black-footed albatross) chick of the year, as of yesterday!!!
Pictures to come -- don't want to shove the chick out for pictures so soon.

("Happy Hatchday" music is courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps Band.)

New Bird Videos and Sound Clips

Short but sweet this week:  Dan Rapp, who is practicing recording at burrow entrances and artificial nest boxes with a night-vision trail cam, has shared some videos of nocturnal seabirds in front of artificial nest boxes on Tern Island.  Nocturnal burrowing seabirds can be very difficult to monitor, so it is difficult to track if their populations are increasing, decreasing, stable, or gone.  Night vision is one way we may be able to 'see' these animals without accidentally crushing burrows, sticking our arms or equipment into their burrows, or otherwise disturbing them.  Few people will ever get to see these birds -- so this is pretty cool to see!

Tristram's storm petrel video (sound at end)

Tristram's storm petrels live only in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the Bonin Islands of Japan. These giggly little seabirds flutter and patter over the ocean when they feed. (If you watch the video, keep watching to the end -- the sound actually comes after the bird moves out of sight.) 

Dan Rapp checking on trail camera at Tern Island. 

Tristram's are actually quite large for storm petrels, which are usually the smallest of all the seabirds.  Birdlife International lists Tristram's as 'near threatened'; because we really don't have a reliable population estimate by any stretch of the imagination, their conservation status is really unknown, but they certainly are not widespread nor numerous.  They're active at night, and nest in burrows or artificial nest boxes.  Over this last year, Sarah Youngren and Dan Rapp found that Tristram's chicks are among the hardest hit by plastic ingestion (along with the more well known Laysan albatross).  Tern Island is the only place in the United States, and perhaps the world (we're not sure what's going on in the Bonin Islands right now), where Tristram's are actively monitored -- so its important that we do a good job with this species.

Bonin petrel video

Bonin petrels also live only on only a few islands in the Pacific, with a largest portion in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.  They feed both when sitting on the water and by dipping for prey. Bonin petrels used to breed in the main Hawaiian Islands, but rats killed them off there. They were almost eradicated from both Midway and the Bonin Islands, but since rats have been elimiated there, the Bonins are coming back.

Like many of these seabirds, Bonin petrels can live to be pretty old: Last year, Dan Rapp and Sarah Youngren found the oldest recorded Bonin Petrel in the world living right here on Tern Island! That bird was banded 30 years ago on Whale-Skate Island -- an island about 3 miles southeast of Tern that no longer exists. Imagine a bird that is older than most of the people reading this blog..... Over 50% of the world's Bonin population still live in the U.S. Pacific islands, so knowing about this bird's status is very important to us.

Sarah Youngren setting up acoustics array.  There's a microphone, cell phone (for relaying the signal to the computer & satellite dish), and other innards attached to the solar array, which powers the equipment.  After calibrating this equipment, we may be able to use it in remote locations and sensitive locations such as Nihoa or Gardner Pinnacles, where people can't stick around to monitor seabirds.  The acoustics allows us to obtain a relative number of seabirds active in an area -- and hence to follow trends in breeding populations.

Sarah Youngren has recorded the night sounds on tern Island, with support and equipment from Matthew McKown (UCSC) and Martin Lukac (Nexleaf Analystics).  Like the night-vision camera, the acoustics recorders can share some sounds that very few people will ever hear -- like this Tristram's storm petrel and albatross from Tern.

Tristram's storm petrel -- or inebriated elf?

Albatross Soundbite

Brown Noddy Soundbite

(I have to say, I can't stop laughing when I hear the Tristram's!)

Finally, some photos from this week...

Manu o Ku (white tern, love tern) on egg.  How do they DO that?!

Noio (black noddy) on egg. 

Ka'upu (black footed albatross) sky moo as part of their dance.  Tern Island.  Photo by Sarah Youngren.

Northern sky on Tern Island.  The land and birds were lit by moonlight.

Tern Island Gothic.

New Years on Tern Island

Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou!!!

An 'iwa (great frigatebird) welcomes you to Tern Island.

Theme for 2012?  Sesame Street has nothing on us -- There are plenty of birds to count here!

We have lots and lots of albatross breeding now: about 3,000 ka'upu (black-footed albatross) nests and about 1,000 mōlī nests (Laysan albatross).  Team Tern Awesome has been crazy busy counting these birds -- or more specifically, reading the auxillary bird bands ('aux bands') on albatross this past month. Every year in late December and early January, we read every aux band on about 10,000 albatross across the island. Then we do it again. Then again. Then yet again. We're in the midst of the 3rd sweep right now, and have already counted over  25,000 aux bands, and still have one more sweep to go!

Mōlī nesting in non-native grasses, Tern Island (Photo by Dakshina Marlier)

An overachieving ka'upu.  This ambitious parent is brooding one egg, with two more in the nest.  Where did he/she get those, do you wonder? :-)  Photo by Paula L. Hartzell.

The point of all this counting is to determine what the breeding population of mōlī (Laysan albatross) and ka'ulu (black-footed albatross) is on Tern Island, as part of a mark-recapture study.  The number of breeding albatross here is very important for two reasons:  (1) because while Midway and Laysan Islands have much, much larger albatross populations than Tern, we are the ones who conduct most of the detailed biological monitoring.  (2) Tern is also a more protected environment than Midway or Laysan, so may serve as an important refugia for seabird species nesting here -- Just like when the tsunami wiped out large portions of Midway's and Laysan's breeding grounds last year, but did not affect Tern Island.  We also have the most dense population of nesting albatross in the Hawaiian Islands.  (I don't know how the Japanese populations compare.)

The 'a maka'ele (masked boobies) are staking out territories now, and getting their nests set up.  Right now we only have two nests on island, both with the customary 2 eggs.  'A maka'ele lay two eggs as 'insurance' when they lose one -- twins are rarely ever raised all the way to fledging.  In this picture, the female is on the bottom left, and the male on the top left -- You can tell by his brighter beak.  (That only works sometimes, though.)  These are one of the few seabird species you can identify the sex of individuals:  The males hiss and the females honk.  The females also defend their offspring more viciously. 

In December, we also participated in Audubon's annual Christmas bird count.  Right now there are about 13,000 birds on Tern -- Relatively few compared to a summer population of about 1/4 million birds, due largely to high numbers of sooty terns in the summer.  But that's still a whole lot of birds on an island about 930m x 120m.

Tern Island 2012 Christmas Bird Count	2007	2008	2010	2011
Short-tailed Albatross	0	0	0	0
Laysan Albatross	3369	3238	2466	2549
Black-footed Albatross	2983	3370	1580	5690
Black-footed Albatross x Laysan Albatross	1	1	1	1
Bonin Petrel	19	4	0	5
Wedge-tailed Shearwater	1	0	0	40
Tristram's Storm Petrel	16	31	0	50
Red-tailed Tropicbird	10	3	8	7
White-tailed Tropicbird	0	0	0	0
Masked Booby	86	125	55	220
Brown Booby	1	1	2	0
Red-footed Booby	1435	1572	1418	1907
Great Frigatebird	758	816	744	565
Lesser Frigatebird	1	0	0	0
Pacific Golden-Plover	127	84	63	175
Wandering Tattler	1	2	0	2
Bristle-thighed Curlew	0	0	0	4
Ruddy Turnstone	437	165	295	541
Sanderling	5	0	9	6
Cattle Egret	0	0	0	2
Dunlin	0	0	0	0
Ruff	0	0	0	0
Brown Noddy	54	319	11	571
Black Noddy	3441	1686	34	553
Blue-gray Noddy	1	0	0	0
White Tern	82	118	18	72
Sooty Tern	1	11	0	5
Gray-backed Tern	1	0	0	0
Laysan Finch	0	0	0	0
Laysan Duck	0	0	0	0
Northern Pintail	0	0	0	0
Bulwer’s Petrel	na	na	na	0
Christmas Shearwater	na	na	na	0
Vagrant:  Northern Mockingbird	na	na	na	1
Total # Birds	12830	11546	6704	12966

We don't just count the birds, of course, although that's a really important part of our work here.  Morgan Gilmour is satellite and GPS tagging ka'upu, mōlī, and 'a maka 'ele to see where they forage during nesting time.  That will help us understand not only where they go to get their food, but how that is impacted by fishing, marine debris, climate, and other factors -- so we know whether we need to do more to help, or whether they're just doing fine on their own (which is best of course!). 

Dan Rapp is working on quantifying the amount of plastic that seabirds ingest, paying special attention to mōlī and Tristram's storm petrel chicks, since his previous work suggests that these are the hardest hit by plastics.  Sarah Youngren has set up acoustics monitoring equipment to see if we can use this method to reduce our impacts to the birds while monitoring, or even use this monitoring system for areas where humans can't stay!  We're also doing some very initial testing of night vision (trail) cameras for burrow monitoring.  Abram Fleishman is creating a new map of Tern Island, with natural, man-made, and science-important features -- which we really need badly because our maps are really out of date.  Dakshina Marlier is working on developing some training materials for future volunteers on Tern Island, to help them appreciate the value and story of Hawaiian culture and history here.  We're all working with several Hawaii classrooms, along with Barbara Mayer and NOAA's Wes Beyers, on special projects.  Paula Hartzell is summarizing our work, and providing some statistical analyses of 30 years of monitoring for this year's annual report -- It's really important that we publish what we're doing, so people can actually use this information! 

We're also working long hours trying to get our boats -- our newest engine is 9 years old -- running so we can do outer island surveys.  We finally replaced the fuel pump, cleaned the starter and carburetors, replaced the manifold (which had to be sawed off, the bolts were so rusted), prop, bearings, and all fluids and filters on our whaler, the Mōlī -- and now the lower unit is toast.  Mutiply that times a total of 5 outboards, the others of which are worse.... Aarg.....USFWS doesn't have funds to get us new engines, but you can only repair an engine with limited time and funds so many times.  If anyone wanted to give us some tiller-driven 50hp Honda engines so we could actually get to the outer islands, we wouldn't complain!

Manu o Kū (white terns) are nesting as well -- but they nest year-round, so that's not unusual.  Among the myriad of projects he's taken on, Dan Rapp is going to be tracking how many times individuals birds relay during the year.  Photo by Abram Fleishman.

See if you can identify these following pictures, all by Abram F.  (Nice photos, Abram!)  Answers are waaaaaaay below; good luck!

photo #1

photo #2

photo #3

photo #4

photo #5

down

to

the

answers

keep

going

you're

almost

there

here

you

are!