First off, I'd like to say the mystery nest has been solved. The culprit is a pair of White-fronted Geese. However, they are the only geese, out of the 40+ nest we have found, that have covered their eggs with vegetation (that we know of). I have a theory that before the start of incubation, the geese cover their eggs with vegetation. Then, when incubation starts, they use the mat of vegetation as addition to the nest bowl. This would explain why we haven't found nests pre-incubation, except for this one.
Enough of that boring stuff, here are some of the exciting sciency things we are doing on the tundra, besides working with shorebirds and geese. First is our weather station. It is currently non-functional due to a faulty battery, but it sure looks like science!
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| This weather station will monitor wind speed/direction, temperature and precipitation when it actually works. |
We also are trapping inverts on a 3 day schedule to monitor significant hatches of insects. This is what the trap looks like.
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| Invert trap. The idea is that inverts will hit the net when flying and fall into the trap solution. Believe it or not, it actually is very productive. |
Like I mentioned earlier, we passed the 40 mark for Greater White-fronted Geese nests. Here is a pretty typical nest.
We also have an Arctic Fox in the area of our north plot, so I am losing hope for a lot of the birds up there. The densities of shorebirds are not what I expected, and it looks like reaching our goal of numbers of birds banded and blood samples may be unrealistic.
The weather is taking a turn for the better next week, hopefully the birds enjoy it.
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