Refreshing Rewards and Reminders

Boat Day.



Every Tuesday the United States Navy is under contract to pick us up off the east side of the island. So we utilize this day to hit nest sites, currently being used and check those that have been in the past, on the incredibly steep canyons on the east side of San Clemente Island. These slopes are at such a gradient that by the time you reach the last terrace before the rocky beach, you really don't have the time or energy to attempt to hike back up.



We have a little raft that one of us takes aboard a Navy S.A.F.E boat and paddle it to the shore of one of our active LOSH sites. Then, in the afternoon, the Navy comes back, and we paddle back and forth from their boat picking up biologists. It is generally quite the tiring day.



Sometimes when you are fatigued and just want to get into some dry clothes and shut the door, pick-me-ups in various forms come along to remind you.



To remind you..... :

.....Where you are;

.....Why you are;

.....& What you are.

Due to poor internet connection on the island for which I return tomorrow morning, I probably won't post much or anything until 10 or so more days. I do check email. I do check replies. I can, at times, respond.

But perhaps until I get back to the mainland;

Good evening. Good morning. Good day.

Peace.

- mwyork

Kids Grow Up So Quickly

I remember when they were just one to two days old...

The above picture is obviously a nest we can get to, and have a number of days before these guys need to be processed.

At times, it doesn't work out that way. Nestlings turn to Fledglings before you get to them. Not ideal.

It's then when you get a couple of co-workers together for a nestling round-up. Not an easy thing to do on flat-land, much less canyons. We try to surround fledglings and persuade them to fly down ultimately to the ground. This time is then critical as they can quickly disappear into Morning Glory patches, rock crevices, shadows, etc.

The other day, we sat atop a ridgeling with 4 fledling LOSH in our scope. These guys were why we were there. We needed to round them up and process them. Four, very Shrike-looking fledglings, roosting on a Prunus spp. branch. Hmm, there was a fifth when this nest site was visited before. Nevertheless, we descende the ridge, down the wall, down canyon from the fledglings' Prunus on the canyon bottom.

Two co-workers were on opposite rims, just above the bottom, respectively. I, on the canyon bottom. The idea; to get the fledglings to fly down canyon toward me. Shrikes, fledglings suredly, are built to fly downward, not so daft to fly up as this seems like labored flight somewhat. So lets get these Fledges to flush down canyon to me. Alright.

Somewhere, an adult Shrike's alarm call is heard. So much for stealth.

We are nearly underneath the tree the Fledges are perched on. They are aware.

Ok, I let co-workers know I'm ready.

Alright, this one is about ready to move. See the tail? Here it comes...

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooommmm.

Oh Man!! That's no Fledgling, that's a Shrike!

It turned out that these Fledge's, while not adults this soon, where quite far along. Quite shrike-ish. Quite flight-worthy.

That particular kid flew, not only down canyon, but across and over to another drainage. "I wonder how long we'll keep at this?" I found myself wondering.

Another Fledgeling flew...up....canyon a bit. A third flew down canyon quite a ways. Mission, cough, Not Accomplished.

We eventually found ourselves under one of the shrikes that had flown down canyon, but was now back up the drainage, perched on a tree branch. This kid eventually was persuaded to fly down to the drainage bottom, a drainage bottom full of boulders and cobbles and dead Russian Thistle tumbleweeds.

A co-worker quickly put a butterfly net over the young LOSH. Nets work best when used on flat, without obstacles, land where the rim can lay flat not allowing any escape routes. This was not such ideal topography. BUT, we have it, we got it, I never saw it scurry out. Where is it? Where is it?

Co-worker then heard the the grating call of a young Shrike behind us, and just above canyon bottom. WHAT?! How in the?

Hey, there's a Shrike....is that an adult??.....no, thats a Fledge... GO!!

Co-worker armed with nothing but sharpened spidey-senses and a rounded butterfly net dashed for the slate gray-backed bird.

I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it. With a fluidity and quick judgement of one blessed with ninja pouncing skills and Jedi adept tendencies, he was one with the butterfly net as the net was one with him. An extension of self. Fledgling contained.

One down.

Did this guy really escape us down at the bottom?? Let's continue checking the rock and boulder crevices before you heard the apprehended.

I ended up finding the 2nd FL wedged under a boulder and dead Russian Thistle.

Two down.

Two, when zero looked inevitable. This site has had enough disturbance, we didn't see how we would be able to ge the other two where ever they went plus it was already 1000 hrs. Let's get these guys worked on and get out of here...

Aged at 24+ days-old. Healthy, very far along, young SCI Loggerhead Shrikes.

*thanks to M.C. Cammarota for the following pics*

Each bird gets a metal Service band with a set of numbers unique to that bird alone.

Nevermind the look on this kid's face. It's not that bad. Like a child going to the barber shop when it hears those electric trimmers turn on, the bird, like the child, is not hurting. I'm glad I was never like that as a kid...

A perfect fit.

Now to the color bands. We put on the color bands with a simple metal device commonly called a "spoon." You can see a white band, on a spoon, ready to go on my right leg in the above picture.

As the colorband is pushed up the slightly widening "spoon", the color band spreads out.

The spoon is of a concave shape that slips atop the birds leg. When the band is sufficiently spread out, the biologist holds the band and leg and slips the "spoon" out. This, ideally, then allows the color band to safely wrap around the leg.

In past work, I have always closed a color band with banding pliers much like the metal Service band.

Shrikes have a beak that is designed to quickly sever the spine of their prey. Consequently, it also is adept to tearing off color bands. The color band combination is also unique to a specific bird, allowing the biologist to identify (difficult at times) the bird in the field from a distance.

We need those color bands to stay on as long as possible. Thus bringing us to method of heat-sealing colorbands. The colorbands are a good bit longer than "normal" color bands, as they wrap around the LOSH's leg. This is quite noticeable with trying to spread them out with the "spoon." Anyhow, this extra bit of length gives some material to work with as the biologist takes a butane-fueled soldering iron-type instrument to melt, and fuse the seal.

This was a new methodology for me. Initially, taking a searing hot iron tip to an endangered bird nestling, or in this case fledgling, was a little disconcerting. Now, though, I have performed this numerous times and don't give it much extra thought. Obviously, care must be given not to burn most importantly the bird, secondly the biologist holding the bird for you, and leastly you. The pad of my index finger has taken a few hits. Never flinched.

Oh, I nearly forgot, we also take four feather samples.

The samples go in an envelope labeled with the date, nest site acronym, colorband combo, and Service band #. These are sent to a genetics lab for DNA analysis. From this, we learn the sex of the bird, and continue to track the bloodline of this endangered guy.

We also take weight and some other measurements as well.

After all this, we let these guys go. Nestlings go back in their nests. Fledglings of this grand old age go back to a branch near where we scoped them out way back on the ridge. After they successfully hop on a sturdy branch and away from us, we get back up the canyon as quickly as possibly. We then do a post-observation. This to make sure adult LOSH's are around, or come back to the site.

This is how I spend some of my mornings at work.

peace and good morning,

mwyork

**editors note: Seriously, I don't know what is going on with this huge space below. I guess just keep on a-scrollin'. **

He Has The Whole World In His Hands

He atleast had the whole world of this fellow being in his hand, at that moment.

I know my whole world ceases to exist, or perhaps I should say focuses all the way down to what is in my hand, at these moments I have pictured.

We work with nestlings like the guy pictured above. It might have taken an incredible hike to get to the nest, you guys have seen some pictures of many of these canyons on the island. Regardless of how tired, sore, cholla ridden, hot, or uncomfortable you may be; when it comes to times such as these one must bring everything down into focus. A focus on a great responsibility, entrusted to me. Entrusted not just by those I work with, or the permitting USFWS, but some other that has never needed a name, All Things and No Thing.

Nestlings must be atleast 9-days-old. When the reach the 14-day-old mark, they are beginning to get too old. Too old, because at this age they are able to hop out of the nest. Upon seeing us approach, the may take the moment and jump out of the bowl, and onto the ground making things quite difficult for all involved. That action is called a "force-fledge." We take all necessary precautions to avoid such an event.

Some birds we just don't get too before they get too old for us to approach the nest. Reasons might be we aged the nest wrong, or perhaps we found the nest late in the season and the nestlings were already fairly old, or (and this happens sometimes) the nest is unreachable...remember some of the pics of the canyons. You might be, I certainly am at times, surprised the nests we manage to get to.

In the next post I'll show pictures of young LOSH's that are now Fledglings. Fledglings are those that have had first flight from nest.

peace,

mwyork

Field Notes

This video is of a male San Clemente Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus mearnsi) [LOSH] vocalizing on the opposite rim across canyon from a male Homo sapien not vocalizing. The female LOSH of this pair is incubating a nest down in the canyon in a Rhus integrifolia. Rhus, the sumac genus, dominates some of the canyon slopes and bottoms on San Clemente Island. It also is a popular nesting substrate for LOSH this year.

There are many LOSH pair in the Incubation stage presently. Meaning, in the near future, the Shrike Monitoring Crew will become very busy checking on nestlings, and then banding, recording morphological data from, and pulling feather samples from them before they fledge.

The LOSH incubation period is generally 15-17 days. During this time the female will spend long times on the nest. Sometimes I won't even see her, even during observations over an hour long. Other times I will see her very briefly. During these short times off-nest, she will preen, stretch her wings, defecate, and otherwise perch for a moment. The male will periodically bring her food. As he approaches the nest, the incubating female will often give her begging call.

Otherwise, at a site still in the incubation stage, one generally sees the male out foraging for himself and sometimes for the female on nest.

Should everything go right, in 15-17 days, the successful incubation stage leads to these guys.

When a monitored site shifts to nestling stage, it is often quite apparent as the characterized description of "male seen foraging, bringing food to nest. female heard begging as he flew to nest site. female only seen twice during observation." moves to --> "both male and female seen bringing food to next every few minutes" or something similar.

There are far, far too many sites and too few personnel to visit every one of them every day. So when a site now is at Nestlings(NE), we don't know the exact moment, the very day the hatch took place. Some sites, that were not known to us earlier, may even be at NE. Nevertheless, we need to find out how many nestlings there are, and how old.

The above picture shows part of the methodology. We try to time when both parents are off the nest. It is then we hike, descend, ascend, slide gracefully, slide not-so-gracefully to the nest location. Using EXTREME caution not to destroy any surrounding vegetation on our way to, at and around, the nest, we use a "mirroring pole." A mirroring pole is precisely what its namesake is. It is a mirror affixed, often by wrapping of duct tape, at an angle at the end of a long pole. The pole is then carefully moved into a position...if possible... to an angle above the nest where we can take a picture of the bowl. This allows us to count how many nestlings there are and, by physical characteristics, age them.

How many nestlings do you count in the picture? They are 3-days-old, by the way.

When they become older, the absolute minimum is 9 days old, we band the chicks and take necessary morphological data and feather specimen from them.

Clutch size is usually around 4-7 eggs/nestlings. Ideally, the lower an organism is on the food chain the more offspring it produces; for reasons that become obvious if you think about it. The higher the organism on the food chain, the fewer offspring. Ideally.

Not all nestlings make it. One example of a nest site we are monitoring: the nest had 5 nestlings banded and worked up, it now only has two of those five that survived. Those two are quite the successful fledgelings and near the end of their "dependant" status. In fact, I believe that ends today. It's Saturday, right? A nestling becomes a fledgeling upon "first flight" or "first leaves the nest." When one approaches a nest to work on nestlings that are older, the biologist takes great care in not causing a "forced fledge." These kids, at a certain age, have a bit of locomotive ability. Atleast enough to jump out.

Anyhow, not all nestlings/nests make it. Its just part of it.

This vid is a nest predation event by an Island Fox (Urocyon littoralis clementae). The Island Fox is the smallest fox species in the U.S. Smaller than a house cat. Recall me alluding to the feral cat problem on the island, and for that matter on the continent? Native birds on the island have enough predator pressure on them already, from Island Fox to Common Ravens (Corvus corax). Native birds on the mainland have enough as well. Its a balance that was set a long time ago. We all know this. We all know this to some degree if we take a moment to think about it.

Now..., do we care?

Moving on. Regarding my work with the SC LOSH, I plan to share more pictures in the future directly illustrating methodologies and my time with this species.

The pictures of butterflies, other bird species, herps, canyon vistas, and beautiful mornings are all taken getting to work, after work has been finished, or my time off-island.

On the subject of beautiful mornings, I hope you are having one. If not, perhaps you can take a moment to step outside, if not able; just look outside, and make this morning what it is.

Good morning and watch your step.

Peace,

mwyork