Week 2: Canning River Delta Camp: June 19, 2010

Greetings from the Arctic!  We are fully on tundra time now.  Our schedule tends to shift later because of the 24 hour daylight, and we lose track of the day of the week by working 14 hours seven days a week.  We’re up at 7AM, head out for the field after morning chores, but often aren’t back in camp until 9 PM, and then there is dinner, dishes, and data to log before bed.  The weather has been a real challenge this year!  Early in our trip we had five cold but glorious consecutive days of full sun, which was very unusual here on the Arctic Ocean coast where fog rules.  But that was followed by another six days of clouds, fog, and freezing drizzle with high winds.  Meanwhile, it has been 17 days since our last showers.  Most of the snow is gone now, but the ground is only thawed to an average depth of 2” before hitting permafrost.

We thought you might enjoy a summary of a typical day, so we took notes throughout the day on June 17th.  We woke at 7:15 to 35°, thick fog, and winds 15-20 MPH.  After breakfast, a work meeting to plan the day, and refilling banding and Avian Influenza testing kits, Metta and I left camp at 10:15 with the mission of banding the mates of 2 Dunlin and 2 Semipalmated Sandpipers (SESA) on previously found nests, and searching for new nests.  By lunch we had walked 3 km, it was 41° and still thick fog. Distances seem much further on the tundra, because the ground is either hummocky and hard to walk on, or wet and marshy, which makes for slow going.  We had checked one of the Dunlin nests finding the banded bird on it, and tracked a few birds that did not lead to new nests.  At 13:15 we caught the Dunlin mate on the 2nd nest and banded it with a numbered metal band, color bands unique to the individual bird and the Canning River Delta camp, and a geolocator to track its migration.  Check out the photos of the nest and bownet we use to catch the bird so you can get a better sense of what this looks like.  At 14:30 we found a new SESA nest and color banded the incubating bird. 

By “second” lunch at 4 PM (it takes lots of calories to stay warm and active on the tundra!) we had walked 6 km and checked the other two SESA nests to find the banded birds incubating, then set out to search for new nests in a wetland between camp and the ocean.  At 16:50 after 3 more km we found our 2nd new SESA nest and banded the incubating bird; it was 37° with winds over 20 MPH and still foggy.  At 19:30 we found a 3rd new SESA nest on a slope only 50 meters from the coast, banded our 4th bird of the day.  Banding in these temperatures our hands are so cold they burn and it is hard to be nimble enough to work the delicate bands and soldering tool and write up the data.  We also have to move quickly so the bird doesn’t get cold and isn’t off the eggs too long.  Imagine trying to do delicate sewing work along with office work with bare hands outside in a February storm in Massachusetts and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the challenge of working in this weather.  We then walked another 3 km home arriving in camp at 20:35.  It was still foggy, 35° and high winds - then we had dinner and the usual evening chores before getting to our tent and cozy sleeping bags around midnight. 

Altogether our crew of 7-8 has found 91 nests and banded 66 birds in the first 2 weeks of work, an astonishing total.  Even more remarkable is that very few of the nests are being lost to predators so far, which is quite unusual.  The total number might not sound like much to those of you familiar with the land bird banding program at Manomet, but we think they have it easy compared to banding on the tundra!  We have to find the nearly invisible nests in a vast area, which is like the proverbial needle in a haystack, and catch each individual bird one at a time.  It takes lots of energy and determination, and our great crew has an abundance of both.  Five of us are over 45, so we have enjoyed the youthful energy of Heather, Chelsea, and Eddie who are all 21 years old.  Heather is a Fairbanks resident and a veteran of last year’s post-breeding survey (and was in the boat that flipped en route to setting up that camp); Eddie (from Bethel, a small Alaskan village near the Yukon Delta) worked last season with our colleague Brian McCaffery on the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge; and Chelsea is enjoying her first arctic field season and coping amazingly well with the shock compared to her home in South Carolina.  In addition to Brian, Metta, and me, our other two camp-mates, Steve (who was here for the first week and then left for another project) and Scott have spent several field seasons in this site and others in the Arctic Refuge, and their skills and experience are extremely impressive.  Everyone works equally hard in camp and in the field, and more importantly, with a cheerful and uncomplaining attitude that is so important in such adverse conditions!

At the moment (11:30PM) it is 34° and partly sunny with low wind for the first time in more than a week, but the fog bank has rolled in again from the north.  When the fog lifts we can see (and hear on calm days) a recently built drilling station a few miles northwest of our camp.  We are near the Staines River, which is the western boundary of the Arctic Refuge.  Oil drilling is underway on Point Thompson to keep their leases and options in the area open for the future.  In addition to a multi-story drilling tower they have built several large buildings to support the people and equipment to build the many roads and feeder pipelines that are necessary for each actual well.  Today we can also see a huge flame atop an adjacent tower burning off natural gas, and some days helicopters have come and gone ferrying personnel for 20 hours straight.  It reminds us how close the developed world is, and how special this area is to still be so pristine.  And we feel even more grateful for all of our supporters, who make it possible for us to do this work and try to help keep this extraordinarily beautiful and, so far, pristine ecosystem healthy. 
 

One more week to go!  I will send at least one more podcast, and one more written update, before our return to the beautiful summer weather at Manomet on Cape Cod Bay.