Each summer, the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge employs researchers, many of them college students, to live on remote islands along the Maine coast and monitor seabird colonies. It is an experience like no other. This is their story.
Island work includes conducting an annual census of all nesting seabird species, monitoring what adults feed to their chicks and how many chicks survive to adulthood. Researchers also trap and band adult seabirds and chicks, and monitor for predators. Seabird species studied include: common, Arctic, and roseate terns, common eider, laughing gulls, black guillemot, leach’s storm-petrel, Atlantic puffin, and razorbills. Life on the island is primitive; there is no running water and researchers are often exposed to harsh weather conditions.
During the summer, researchers live on the Islands of Petit Manan, Metinic, Eastern Brothers, and Ship. Additionally, through a partnership, the National Audubon Society’s Project Puffin employs researchers on the Islands of Matinicus Rock, Seal, and Pond.
I was a seabird researcher and predator control tech on Ship Island in Blue Hill Bay for this nesting season, May-July 2011. If you’d like some information about the USFWS Ship Island project and results, I’d be happy to provide some. I can also provide some photographs of chick banding, peregrine falcons and common terns. Our colony stabilized around 200 birds in late June, and we fledged a couple dozen chicks. This was the first year that USFWS operated the Ship colony since the early 2000s. Please let me know if you’d like some more information.
Hello,
I am a documentary film student at Rockport Maine’s Maine Media School. I am very interested in making a documentary, as part of my class, on local wildlife or ecosystems. Perhaps with your knowledge of local flora and fauna, you could steer me in the right direction. What wildlife or other natural subjects would make an interesting short film that could be made in a few weeks? Is there any animal, behavior, or natural community that is fascinating and little known, something not covered much in the past? I am looking especially for something new or neglected.
I will be very interested in what input you may have.
Many thanks,
Austin Fitzhenry,
Biology and Documentary Film Student
Charleston, SC
I would like to request permissions to use your photos of Common Tern pin feather growth in the Handbook of Bird Biology. Who can I contact for this?
You may use the photo, and credit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.