Sarah and I played at being field biologists today. When we woke up we could hear the wind rattling the “puffin palace” cabin. Looking out the window at the white caps marching across the bay and the long green grass rippling vigorously, we knew we weren’t going to paddle the 10 mile crossing to Unimak today. Instead we trundled through the grass up the South side of the island, following Amanda and Stacie to the cliff tops with their telescopes. We paused to look down at a bald eagle on top of a pinnacle of rock, one of his chicks just visible in the criss crossed mesh of twigs. At the top of “Gull mountain” we were abreast with dozens of nesting glaucous winged gulls. Perched on the cliff edge, Stacie and Amanda looked through their scopes at different species of cormorants and murres (guillemots to my Atlantic friends! ) that were nesting in the cliffs while Sarah and I wrote down the results. It was a fun job with the bonus that we got to see close up the difference be tween
common and thick billed murres, and red faced and double crested cormorants. It was relaxing sitting watching a procession of clouds hide and reveal the white volcanic cone of Shisheldin on Unimak, and a never ending stream of puffins fly by in circles, the blond locks of the tufted puffins looking suave as they cruised by. In the afternoon we watched the girls check ancient murelet nests. Apparently the chicks only stay in the nest for a couple of days before their dad takes them out to sea to learn to fend for themselves so we weren’t expecting to find any. Most nests contained 2 eggs or shell membranes where chicks had successfully hatched. But one muddy burrow housed 2 tiny fluffy chicks who were adorable.

We’ve just had dinner, or as Sarah put it, round two of the great American/ British bake off! It’s so nice to have a range of cans, fresh food and a kitchen so we Brits produced roasted sweet potato soup with flat bread, bean burgers with fries and apple and BlackBerry pie. Good job there are no scales here!