Post 10: Banding Cormorants - The Last Islands Adventure

Via Jon Krupfl

Tent camping can be brutal, especially in the muggy heat.  That hasn't been a problem for me in Wisconsin yet until last night.  I had woken up at about 9ish, late for a workday but early considering the night's sleep had been punctuated by early morning demands of cormorant observation.  Me and Jon the biotech hung out all day waiting for the evening to come.

When time had granted our wishes, our tri-agency program (Fish and Wildlife Service, Student Conservation Association, and the US Department of Agriculture) had been joined by a fourth, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources! All of the acronyms present!  That evening we met and had dinner together at the Sister Bay Bowl, which in the Wisconsin tradition was attached to a restaurant.  Bonding time over we split up into two groups and were on the water by 10pm to get to the islands by 10:30 or so.  We had our orientation on pilot island (the same island I was in the turkey blind the day before) and we were banding cormorants at around 11pm.  I was assigned to be one of the three wranglers, there were two people who applied the bands to to the birds, and another who handed bands out.

via John Krupfl

We took the island by storm, we started by heading south and we scooped up the cormorants often still sleeping in its nest, held them for a few moments so that the bands could be applied and set them down either back in their nests or within close proximity.  Some of the cormorants were not fond of being disturbed as they slept while others seem to sleep right through the banding process.  Those more active of the bunch went on scratching and biting both my full rain-suit as well as the exposed skin around my wrists. (I have the cuts to prove it!)  Probably around three quarters of the birds that we picked up proceeded to dump liquified excrement over my clothes.  A much smaller number, maybe one in six of the birds would vomit up their dinner, some of the fish were clearly recently swallowed as the fish often lie partially intact on the ground.

The smell of the island wasn't so bad but mostly since I had acclimatized a bit to the scent the day before.  To give you an idea of how much poop their was on the ground, with every step I took I sank a few inches in white cake like poop. What an experience!  I'm almost certain a decent percentage of my olfactory had been burnt off already!  One difficulty we encountered was being swarmed by hundreds of flies whenever we were in an area where something obstructed the wind from blowing.  Each of us wearing headlamps would be magnets making it hard to see, let alone breathe, or speak without swallowing some.

Via John Krupfl

The trip was awesome nonetheless, its quite the experience to knock off the bucket list.  Perhaps even more so when I had found out that a bird banding had been featured on an episode of the television show "dirty jobs"!  Our team had exited the island banding 500 birds, which means I probably wrangled about ~150 birds myself.  Not bad for a first timer!  Due to some watercraft difficulties it took us over an hour on the water to get back.  Honestly I was so happy to just be hydrating again I didn't care that we were stranded for a quarter hour or so in the middle of the night.

We had four hours of sleep that night, again basking in the heat and drove back the next day after packing everything up.  The pain came the next day when we had unpacked all of our gear that still had the stench of cormorant poo! What a week!

These islands trips, particularly this last one, were amazing because of the diversity and remote nature of the islands.  I was able to build on the experience I gained working at Horicon NWR and develop knowledge in areas my time at Horicon NWR never touched on like trail building and bird banding.

Post 9: Letter from a turkey blind - The Last Islands Adventure

I started the week driving out at Green Bay national wildlife refuge off the coast of Door County, WI in lake Michigan with Jon Krupfl the biotech.  We had two goals, to observe the band numbers of cormorants on two islands in the refuge and to band more cormorants the following nights. The day started at around 2:30AM when we met up with folks from the United States Department of Agriculture Research Branch at the University of Mississippi.  A fascinating group made up of a few graduate students and two USDA research biologists.  We woke up so early to get to the island to reduce the amount of birds that leave their nests allowing the nearby gulls who are less afraid of humans who would break the eggs at nests that the cormorants were not guarding.  After running onto the stinky island we each set up a turkey blind on an existing scaffolding and hunkered down until 6am when we would begin our observations.  Armed with a spotting scope, binoculars, a walkie talkie, a poop bucket, and enough peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to feed an army I sat and waited recording the numbers as I went along.

During the day I couldn't help but admire the birds interacting together.  If you've ever been people watching in any public place, I tend to gravitate towards coffee shops, late nights at Denny's and boardwalks (being from Florida), you would love the ability to watch these birds.  Aside from the surrounding gulls, they have no idea you are there and they go about interacting amongst themselves in a fascinating manor.  The two species of birds (the herring gulls and the double crested cormorants) act so differently.  A seemingly slight majority of cormorants were sitting on their nests made of sticks no thicker than half an inch but often a bit longer longer than a foot for the majority of the day.  Often times they could be found "loafing"(terminology stolen from the data recording sheets we used) either near the shoreline or closer to the colony.  They would stand very still not moving a leg for long periods of time perhaps because their cumbersome bodies don't allow much movement.  Other observations include

• Herring Gulls would all be covering the area between the colony and the shoreline ~50 feet standing around but each gull a good 5 feet between it or and the next gull.
• Cormorants feed their young by regurgitating fish they caught
• It seemed they did this by allowing the young to stick its head into the elders mouth causing a gag action that would cause the contents of the elders stomach to be puked up to be snatched by the young
• Cormorants would be constantly standing with their heads tilted up at about a 15 degree angle with the horizontal
• perhaps due to the fact that juvenile cormorants to always be asking (by way of bothering the elder cormorant by bouncing their own beak against their elder) and the elders being really annoyed by it
• Cormorants nests were clustered usually about 1-2 feet apart often causing them to bark at other cormorants who seemed to be getting close to snatch some hard fought branches from their nest
• Herring gulls seemed to occasionally have a massive squacking battle as the elder white feathered ones would have territory invaded by younger brown feathered cormorants.  One territorial invasion would call for the sqacking of dozens or even hundreds of others in the area.

The initial plan had us packing up our turkey blinds and exiting the island at around 9pm or sundown to again avoid disturbing to many nesting cormorants.  We ended up leaving at around 3pm due to some bad thunderstorms headed our way which was fine by me.  We had hit the quota for the amount of bands we wanted to record and I was exhausted from sitting in the blind all day.

What a day!