Well, we made it back from our first trip at dusky camp in one piece! We were out a total of nine days, managed to deploy trail cameras on 86 dusky nests and had a lot of great experiences. I really enjoyed our multi-night camping stay out at dusky camp and the comradery that built in our crew was great. We ate great! With spring green-up upon us, fiddlehead ferns were a part of almost every meal. After night two, I got accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of honking geese that were nesting directly behind camp. After our return trip back to town, I will say it is nice to be able to take a shower and do laundry!
We started the trip by doing an eagle survey riding down the Alaganik river. The amount of eagles present was outstanding, close to one hundred individuals along the three mile stretch of river we covered. The high eagle density correlates with the presence of Eulachon, an anadromous small fish also known as “Hooligan” locally, that were running up river. The Eulachon attract more than just eagles, as we saw some cool marine life as well, such as seals and sea lions! We were lucky enough to see a group of sea lions thrashing around as they were fishing. It was incredible to see these giant creatures moving around so easily as they hunted. Spring bird migration was also under way. It was interesting to see birds such as Wilson’s warblers and Golden-crowned sparrows spontaneously show up overnight.
The first couple of days of nest searching were slow. We were finding more depredated nests than active nests, possibly due to the high presence of eagles. As the days went by, however, we got into a groove and started to run low on cameras because we were finding so many nests! We found a good amount of duck nests as well, including lesser scaup, American wigeon, and mallard (pictured below, left to right), along with northern pintail and green-winged teal. We do not deploy trail cameras to these nests, but we still collect the data from them.
After doing some nest checks, we were able to retrieve cameras from depredated nests and download the data. Most of our early depredation events were due to eagles but a few geese that were still laying abandoned their nests. Signs were evident of mammalian predators being around from the coyote and bear tracks we have been seeing in the mud.
Next up, we will be going back to dusky camp for a few days to monitor our cameras and check on the nests. Aleutian tern surveys are under way as well, so I’ll have a post about that soon!