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.