The cutest thing you've ever seen!

I have been meaning to post photos of my new kitten for a while now, I have just been so busy I keep forgetting to do it! So, here he is...Bisbee Marie!

He was born a poor boy with 4 other siblings, all fighting for the same nipples. His mommy was a shelter cat, only about a year old herself. She came in to the shelter in February. I seem to have a strange knack for finding pregnant kitties. Just about a year before this, there was another cat at the shelter that I went in to pet and thought she was pregnant. Well, turns out she was. It then turned into "Kittygate 2008". Let's just say, the cat disappeared from the shelter and the police were involved. That is all I am going to say about that!

Bisbee's mom turned out to be a step-sister to the mommy from the previous year! What can I say, we live in a small town. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows all the cats and dogs! So...Bisbee and his brother and 3 sisters were born on April Fool's Day. Perfect! He is quite a terror, and picks on every other member of the family!


He is Nimmy's best buddy, he is very curious about my dog Tex, and he is hated by Beanie. It has been about a month and a half and Beanie still wants to kill him everytime he gets close to her. I have a lovely scratch across my chin to show for all the hatred. Someday she may learn to love him, but I won't hold my breath.

Check out the big feet! My friend Victoria thinks he is going to end up being a big boy. Let's just hope he is big, but thin. Not big and chubby like his buddy Mr. Nimmy. Hey, we can't all be perfect! I am sure there will be a lot more Bisbee adventures to come. OH, I forgot. His name. I know you are thinking...Bisbee Marie, what kind of a name is that for a boy kitty? He is named after Bisbee, Arizona. Bisbee was a copper mining town, and he is a pretty coppery orange color. Marie comes from my mother. She passed away right before I brought him home. As with most kids, he only gets the full name when he is a bad boy. Most of the time he gets called Busy Boy, and he really is just that, a very busy boy!

It was like an albatross around my neck...

Well, it finally happened. I finally convinced my boss that I should get to go out and see some albatross!

We have been studying sperm whales for about 5 years now. Sperm whales feed right along the shelf edge. We are studying them because they are taking fish off the lines of the longline fishermen and we are trying to solve this "little" problem (which is actually a big problem!) For these 5 years I have not had the opportunity to get out on the "big water" as I have a tendency for getting sea sick. NOTE: I am fine when medicated! My boss worries about me and won't let me go on these trips. They are multiple day trips and it would be quite terrible to be stuck out on a boat and be getting sick! For 5 years they have been bringing me back photos. Photos of sperm whales, photos of fish, photos of birds, photos of albatross! I feel like I have seen these birds already since I have seen so many photos of them, but I have never actually laid eyes on them, until yesterday.

There are 3 species of albatross that they see off the shelf edge. The most common is the black-footed albatross, less common are the Laysan albatross and the endangered short-tailed albatross. Yesterday was a great weather day. A little wind, but pretty calm, so away we went at 5:30 am. It takes about an hour and forty-five minutes to get to the albatross domain, but when we got there they came to check us out! I was so excited...and they are so big! We only saw the black-footed albatross, but that was fine. I have quite some time to get back out there and see the other 2 species. Maybe I will get to see them on their breeding grounds someday. You just never know!

Black-footed albatross

I also saw northern fulmar for the first time yesterday. Neat little birds, and they have all learned to be very opportunistic and skilled at getting guts from the fishing boats. We saw 20 bird species total and also marine mammals. I will list them below and add a few more photos. We did have to stop and take photos of the many humpback whales that were in the area, we are scientists after all!

• Northern Fulmar
• Black-footed Albatross
• Sooty Shearwater
• Cassin's Auklet
  
• Ancient Murrelet
• Marbled Murrelet
• Common Murre
• Pigeon Guillemot
• Double-crested Cormorant
• Pelagic Cormorant
• Tufted Puffin
• Rinoceros Auklet
• Black Turnstone
• Bald Eagle
• Glaucous-winged Gull
• Boneparte's Gull
• Black-legged Kittewake
• Fork-tailed Storm-petrel
• Mew Gull
• Herring Gull
  

Rhinoceros auklets in flight

Northern Fulmar

Herring Gull

Cassin's Auklet

Tufted puffin in flight

Sooty Shearwater

One of the many humpback whales we saw today.

Marine mammals we saw were humpback whales, harbor seal, sea otter, and Steller sea lions. All in all a pretty good day! We returned home around 2 pm, I finished work and went home and slept and slept and slept...

Shorebird Festival Cordova, Alaska

The Copper River Shorebird Festival is held in Cordova, Alaska every year at the beginning of May. I had never been to the Festival before, so my friend Victoria and I decided to go this year. Hundreds of thousands of shorebirds stop at the Copper River Delta to refuel before continuing north to the their nesting grounds.

The photo above is a flock of western sandpipers. They were by far the most abundant shorebird that we saw. Unfortunately, this was not the best year for birds passing through. We had had a week or so of beautiful weather. Nice for those of us that live in Southeast Alaska, but not for viewing tired, hungry shorebirds! Everyone in Cordova said that the number of birds was very low this year. I think they took advantage of the warm weather and kept going north. Oh well! We did manage to see 5o different species of birds, one black bear, one moose, and a beaver! It was a pretty good time!


There was a little tragedy. I mean not everything can be perfect, right! The first night we were there I was getting down from the top bunk and sprained my ankle, badly! So, I never got to go down onto the flats and see the birds up close and personal, but it was still a good time. Cordova has a bunch of road to drive, so we were set! We saw a ton of Canada geese, trumpeter swans, and ducks. We took a ton of photos, some of them were really cool, so I'll post them below. Happy Spring!


This is a long-billed or short-billed dowitcher. They are so similar that it is difficult to tell in the field. This is the first shorebird that we saw, in the top of a tree, not a spot of water visable!

This is a dunlin. The ONLY dunlin that we saw the entire weekend. Well, I can't even claim it...Victoria went for a walk and found this guy in with a bunch of western sandpipers. Too cute!

I really liked this picture. It is a hermit thrush that was hanging out along the side of the road. He flew up into the tree and with just the perfect light, who could resist taking photos of it!


A pair of northern pintail. One of my favorite ducks, I think it must be the chocolate colored head on the male...hmmm.


You would think that two professional women in their late 30's-early 40's would be more mature than this, but we were having a great time taking photos of the swans when they tipped their hineys up in the air to eat. It is actually a really fun thing to watch, really.


This was a bumper sticker on a truck. I think I might need to find one. I mean, people need to know this. It's important information.


Finally, they had this amazing little sandpiper in town that liked to visit with the bird watchers. He was very nice, so I took my photo with him!

A sapsuckers work is never done

My co-workers at the Raptor Center discovered that there are red-breasted sapsuckers nesting in dead stump next to the deck. There are a bunch of good trees for feeding on sap all around the nest tree. I took the camera to work to get some photos of the birds. I actually think that the female is sitting on the eggs right now and the male is the only bird that we are seeing. The photo to the right shows the male on one of the trees that they have been feeding on. All of the small holes on the trunk of the tree are where the birds have been feeding.

I hope that the birds do okay once the cruise ship passengers start their tours to the Center. The first one is tomorrow, but after that we will have many people passing by the nest tree daily. Hopefully it won't bother them. If it does I see two outcomes, either the nest fails and the birds move to a new tree, or the male starts attacking people! I hope that neither scenario happens.

I will take more photos as the summer goes along. Hopefully there will be photos of young sapsuckers to follow! Wish them luck!

Secrets of a dead Steller Sealion

*WARNING* There are some gross photos in this post! If you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip this one!

This past Tuesday we received a phone call at work. It was Chohla, the science teacher at one of the local high schools. A gentleman from town found a dead Steller sealion and hauled it over to the school. He wanted to know if she wanted to do a necropsy on the animal with her students. Since Steller's are an endangered species, not to mention a marine mammal she needed permission from the National Marine Fisheries Service. So, after talking with NMFS, she got the permission she needed to do the necropsy on the following day.

Let me just say, this thing was HUGE! You never really see the entire size of a Steller sealion when they are in the water, but they are impressive! The males can get up to 1500 pounds, and we believe that this male weighed at least 1000 pounds.

It had probably been dead a few days, but was still in pretty good shape. My friends Ellen and Victoria (a veterinarian) came along to watch. Well, Ellen and I watched and Victoria got right in the middle of all the action! You need to wear some rain gear when you work on a marine mammal or you end up smelling just as bad as the animal...and let me just say, there is pretty much no stink as bad as the stink of a dead marine mammal!

We aren't really sure why the sealion died, but it didn't have much food in it's stomach, and there seemed to be a lot of blood in the abdomen. It may have possibly been hit by a boat or attacked by a killer whale. I am not sure we will ever know. Victoria is not very familiar with marine mammal anatomy, so we weren't sure what looked normal or abnormal! We took a bunch of samples for NMFS and they will be sent off and tested.

Chohla is measuring the length of the sealion for the report that needed to be filled out.

Something I didn't know...sealions have a tail! It's short, but it's there. They also have nails on the top of their rear flippers. I don't really think that they are used for anything, but they are still there.

Here is the business end of the sealion. Look at the size of Victoria's hands compared to the sealions head. Their skulls are actually bigger than a brown bear!
If you haven't figured out that this sealion was ginormous by now, take a look at Victoria. She is holding the heart! The aorta, the biggest artery in the body is inbetween her hands on the top. It was so big, you could have put a baseball in it with no problems. Amazing!Here is what he looked like after they were done cutting! They had to use an ax to get through the sternum. It was really difficult! We were thinking about stretching out the intestines to see how long they were, but it would have taken a ton of work. None of us really had enough time for that!

It was a really neat thing to watch, and we actually learned a lot about the sealion. After we were done, the carcass was towed out past the breakwater. Hopefully it sank, but I don't really know!

Surreal time in Prince William Sound

I just returned from an amazing trip. I got to travel to Cordova, Alaska. Cordova is very different from Sitka, in a good way. Very open and flat areas, but also very mountainous. We went to Cordova to do humpback and killer whale surveys. The day we landed it was a beautiful, clear, sunshiney day. That, of course, led to an amazing sunset.

The trip was really good. Only one bad weather day and we ended up sitting at an anchorage for half the day. It was worth it because we got a lot of stuff done that day! I only saw one new bird, a red-faced cormorant. There was a little disagreement about whether it was a double-crested, or red-faced, but research was done and I WON! We saw 8 humpback whales and 3 killer whales along with many Dall's porpoise, Stellar's sea lions, sea otters, harbor seals, and bunches of birds. I met some great new people and can't wait to go back to Cordova for the Shorebird Festival in May.



Jan and I doing work! Jan outside, dressed in like 12 layers and me, inside dressed in 2 layers. Yes, this is my usual M.O. I like to stay inside and take notes where it is warm and I can feel my fingers. This makes everyone call me a whimp...but I take damn good notes! Besides, there were already 3 people out on the deck and not a whole lot of room for me to get in the way.

I took this picture of the cliffs and the ice because I thought it was pretty. There are many areas like this in Prince William Sound. It is much colder there than in Sitka and that makes for beautiful icicles!
The mountains are beautiful here! It was a very surreal feeling being in PWS knowing that it was once covered in oil. We were there at the first part of March and on the 24th it will be the 20th anniversary of when the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef and spilled 8 million gallons of oil into the Sound. We went right past the spot where it happened. I learned so much about where the oil went and how a change in the weather made the situation so much worse than it could have been. Dave, the captain of the M/V Auklet lived in Valdez when it happened and told us what it was like. No one knew what to do, there was only a small amount of boom to contain the oil and then the wind changed direction. CRAZY. If you look at the Sound today you see an amazingly wonderful place...but just think about what it could have looked like. Dave had photos of oil that he collected from one of the beaches just a few weeks before we got there. Twenty years later...and it's still there. Incredible.
This is all of us...on the M/V Auklet. Yes, I look nutty, but the sun was in my eyes, FOR ONCE! So, left to right: John Moran, Me, Jan Straley, Craig Matkin, Neil Dawson, and Brad Reynolds. It was a great trip and I can't wait to post photos of my next trip to Cordova. Shorebird Festival should be amazing!