After 30 days of dedicated incubation and meticulous rolling by both parents, many of these hardy emerald gems are beginning to hatch. With the red-faced cormorant chicks nearly ready to fledge, and a complete failure of both black-legged and red-legged kittiwakes, murres have become our primary monitoring focus during this last month of field work on St. Paul. By next week, the cliffs will be covered with tiny thick-billed and common murre chicks; miniature versions of their parents. This egg is from site T6 at plot 87 (see map below), and is due to hatch within the next two days. Neighboring sites T4 and T3 just hatched yesterday, my first chicks of the season. Finally seeing these little downy rock-stars hiding under the warm breast feathers of their parents is a nice reward after countless hours watching through a scope, in the wind and rain.
Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-400 f/5.6 @ 1/400 sec.
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