MAGANRORD: breeding

Showing posts with label breeding. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Tomb of the Cormorants!

12:24 PM | Posted by BourbonHawk | Edit Post

Warning: This post contains graphic, though not gory, images of dead birds.

During the adventure upon which we discovered the falcon with her kill, we also explored the remnants of the cormorant colony. For our readers who aren't aware, by 2008, Brandt's Cormorants were the most populous nesting bird on Alcatraz, with 1700 nesting pairs reported in 2007, and 1500 in 2008. Then last year, in 2009, they began washing up dead by the hundreds around the bay and by the end of the nesting season, not a single pair bred on the island.

While the lack of nesting was pretty disturbing to us bird nerds out there on the rock, the full on carnage we found in the colony area was surely a result of the successful nesting colonies of years prior. Life is brutal, and bird life is certainly no exception. So put on your favorite gothy-metal album (I recommend some Fields of the Nephilim) and ponder the very nature of your existence as we present the horrors that were found in the......TOMB OF THE CORMORANTS!

Labels: brandt's cormorant, breeding, brutal, dead things, gallery, seasonal resident, TOTALLY RAD | 1 comments

Friday, January 22, 2010

Looking toward the months ahead

4:53 PM | Posted by BourbonHawk | Edit Post

This past week has been rainy and miserable out on the island and nearly entirely lacking in good bird activity. The weather is supposed to be like this for several days to come so in lieu of anything current, I thought I'd post a few pictures from last summer. After all, it's almost nesting season, and there will be nearly an entirely different host of players for the spring and summer.

These can serve to whet your appetites a bit for what we've got coming in just a couple of months.