Late last night we completed round two in a series of three least auklet diet collection sessions at a colony called Zapadni on the west side of the island.These birds nest in rock crevices within boulder beaches and scree slopes, hatching a single chick each year. Both parents take on the incubating, brooding, and feeding duties, switching out twice a day to forage at sea. As one would guess from their small stature, least auklet diet mainly consists of tiny prey items like euphausiids (krill), copepods, and larval fish. Parents return to the colony in mass generally at noon and midnight, with crops full of food for the awaiting chicks. Some prey items are better energetically than others, so it's important to monitor what these birds are eating and feeding their chicks to help better understand the overall health of the population. It's also a great way to sample what's available in the waters around St Paul. To do this we simply set up a mist net in the colony during peak attendance, wait for a bird to fly into the net, and collect the sample they inevitably barf onto the rocks. We have a target of ten barf samples per session.The three netting seasons are spread ten days apart to capture the early, middle, and late chick rearing phases.
Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-250 f/5.6 @ 1/800 sec.
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