Puffin Factories

Parakeet and Crested Auklets

A seacliff is a place impossible to feel dead. Take a walk to the edge, inhale deeply the fusion of seabird excrement and nootka lupine. Stumble through the pushki pits, sit in a grassy hollow, marvel at the abundance of life unfolding below.

Tufted Puffin

Horned Puffin

From your perch, enjoy the puffin chuckles, the braided wake of porpoising fur seals, the Red-faced Cormorant stench.

Red-faced Cormorant 

Naked-eye, the cliff is a writhing blur: incubating murres looking meditative (hell, I would too if I had to spend a month preventing my egg from rolling off the ledge); gray and green lichen; whitewash against black basalt. 

Thick-billed Murre

Arctic summers are so short. Much must happen in a limited amount of time; these nesting colonies explode with life. Sitting here, you have to wonder: if your life was likened to an arctic summer, would you be exploiting the finite time? 

Least Auklets

Parakeet Auklets

Crested Auklet

Least Auklets leap from rock to rock, jostling for the title of King of the Mountain. Crested Auklets assemble in bickering clumps; they sound like chihuahuas with squeaky toys. Breeding plumage and behavior are in full display. Every creature is living out what it was designed to do. The beauty of this is pure, simple--yet overwhelming. 

Pacific Wren

Tufted Puffin

Like the wren belting away down the wall (I will always marvel how such a small bird comes with such a large voice) or the puffins bouncing jauntily beneath, I recognize my place here. The accompanying joy is palpable. 

Tufted Puffins

A few evenings ago, I was working with three photographers on Ridge Wall. A fierce Tufted Puffin dispute unfolded beneath us. To my surprise, the pair tumbled off the cliff, crashed on the rocks below. The luckiest arctic fox on Saint Paul carted one off, and I sat in goosebumps and disbelief. Although it takes a less-blatant role on the cliffs, Death is an inherent facilitator of Life. 

Northern Fulmar love

Red-legged Kittiwake

One of the best things about this job is the privilege of showing our visitors their first Bering Seacliffs. Each time we peek over the edge (and they're bombarded with the decision of which specialty to feast upon first!), it's like I'm seeing the place through new eyes myself. The life unfolding beneath me is powerful, compelling, restorative. 

Least Auklets <3 

Pribilof Fourth

I write this latest St. Paul installment from the balmy refuge that is our boiler room, on the Fourth of July. If that fails as a revealing lede, perhaps I should reconsider my life course.

Scott's absence has allowed me to integrate with the St. Paul community. His approaching return is providential; my approach to assimilation involved delegating this week's tips to poker and dancing the night (and a good chunk of the following morning) away in our vacuous rec hall. Unsurprisingly, I didn't open my eyes on Fourth of July 2015 until a luxuriously late hour. I woke to sirens--a sound I haven't heard since early May.

There were few spectators of St. Paul's parade, for the entire village was the parade. The procession, marshalled by our puke-green fire engine, wound through each street. Victim to a distinct aversion to getting dressed, I watched the proceedings through our cracked window, hot chocolate in hand, clad only in red/white/blue pants. Freedom is a great thing.

St. Paul centipede races, note the dust storm...

By 1:30 I'd finally pulled my act together, and I wandered across town towards the gravel ballfield to mingle. There, a bunch of kids bounced around on buoys while the adults supervised from the comfort of festive vehicles. I spotted some unfamiliar, friendly faces on the edge of the crowd, so I did the good tour guide thing and introduced myself. We endured small talk's banalities.

"So, what brings you to St. Paul?"
"Well you see, we're hoping to sail the northern route to Greenland, if we can make it before ice-in."

Pretty fucking cool.

Turns out that Seth (a professor) and Ellen (who writes for sailing magazines) live in Switzerland during the school year, taking off on epic sailing journeys in summer. They are a captivating duo, and eager to show their boat off. I was eager to continue our conversation, so we wandered to the harbor. Their boat was small, gorgeous, the type of craft that takes some serious balls to navigate through the Bering Sea. Inside the cabin, they regaled me with chai tea and good conversation. We discussed the similarities between fur seals and frat boys, poked fun at their dock neighbor Tyrone, up for halibut season and well into a bender.

Hunger drove us back to the ballfield. As we passed A-Dorm, I pointed.
"I live there."
Their faces were mixed shock and pity.
"We weren't sure if anyone could live there."
I take sardonic pleasure in revealing our hovel to those accustomed to cushier surroundings.

We made it back just in time to witness the flag-clad MC recruiting for the pie-eating contest.
"You can do it even if you don't have teeth!"
Three brave souls stuck their faces into the gooey melding of whipped toppings and canned fruit; one of them promptly yakked, much to the delight of the little-boy spectators.
"Is he done puking yet?"

Maybe pie-WEARING contest would be more accurate? 

Not even this spectacle could diminish our appetites. We shivered in line, backs to the wind, looking lustfully at the mountains of food. I bypassed the tray of cheese slices that by now were covered in a layer of volcanic grit and headed for the watermelon. The produce section in the AC has been barren for the last two weeks--last time I checked, we didn't even have onions or potatoes. This is the first place I've lived where I've entertained genuine concerns about scurvy...

By the time we sat down, we were all too cold to open our king crabs.
"I don't think I've ever gotten hypothermia on the Fourth before, guess there's a first time for everything."

We endured through the pinnacle of the celebration--scaling a crisco-greased pole to claim a flag and a significant cash prize. St. Paul's gang of little boys dared each other to pelt me with grass while I stood there, for the most part lost in thought.

The victor!

Today I ate reindeer for lunch, had a near-altercation with a fur seal, wrote a blog post in a boiler room. To me, St. Paul is very dissimilar to stereotypical 'Murica, but that doesn't mean we'll pass up a good reason for celebration.

Good chase/bad chase

There are many things I don't mind doing by myself, but chasing a rare bird is not one of them. Chasing is far more enjoyable when you've got a partner: another set of eyes to reassure you that your incompetency isn't the reason when the bird isn't showing; another set of feet to cut down the area that you have to cover; someone to share in the celebration--or the disappointment.

Last week, I got a text from Cory about an "unusual" golden-plover in Nova Stoshna. My group was working the kelp racks and whale carcass at Marunich--pretty much the antithesis of where you want to be when a vagrant is found elsewhere. By the time we pulled up in Nova Stoshna's foggy dunes, the bird hadn't been seen for about an hour. To add insult to injury, the "unusual" golden-plover had been photographed in flight; the bright white underwing suggested European Golden-Plover, a 3rd Alaska record.

Scott's group of photographers released him after lunch. Scott must be living his life right, because he experienced a wild streak of luck and found the bird flying down the beach northeast of Nova Stoshna. I clearly haven't been living my life right, though--by the time I could go look for the bird, I was the only person left on the island interested in trying. This meant that I was going to have to take on Nova Stoshna by myself.

I've always been too damn competitive. Although I don't really care about my ABA list, I care about my island list. Particularly, how my island list measures in comparison to the other guides. They feel the same way, too, and this friendly competition is good, because it helps everyone net more Good Birds for all.

So, I began trudging through the gray, damp, rolling tundra, spurred more from a sense of duty than from actual desire. After all, is a guide worth her salt if she doesn't give it her all to see rare birds on the island? (Never mind the fact that she'd rather be finding her own rare birds instead of chasing sloppy seconds.) I wished for someone to share the search--and the misery. My only camaraderie and help came from two avian plover-flushing machines: a sexy Parasitic Jaeger and the island's FOY Peregrine Falcon.

About 8 miles on foot later, I finally pulled out of Nova Stoshna ploverless and in a Bad Mood. Chasing is such a bizarre compulsion, demanding that you doggedly give your all to, in this case, search for a bird that (a) resembles OUR more common golden-plovers and (b) is an easy-to-find bird in many other parts of the world.

That was a sad chase.

We all like stories with happy endings though, so here's another one...

Two days ago, I was finishing up some solitary birding up Northeast. I drove sedately past Polovina, just on the brink of entering cell service when I noticed a vehicle coming towards me. Funny--it looked like our red Sequoia...it was our red Sequoia. What was Scott doing out towards Northeast? I rolled down my window.

"Have you gotten the texts?!"
Panic welled up in my throat, colliding with the dust cloud coming in the window.
"...nooooo??"
"GO TO REEF THERE'S A NEEDLETAIL."

I don't remember any further conversation, just tearing down a washboard road at a maniacal rate of speed, hoping I wouldn't encounter a police officer or a baby Rock Sandpiper. White-throated Needletail would be a first Pribilofs record; I tried not to ponder the probability of an aerial bird persisting.

At Reef, I sprinted through the Pushki towards Cory, looking intently in his scope.
"Do you still have it?"
"I'm on it. Okay...get ready...it's going left."
"Ready."

Cory stepped left and I dove in, overwhelmed in a shaky cloud of relief as I watched the massive swift foraging over the lava fields.

"How'd you first find it?"
"Well, it's a long story. I overheard seabird people talking about a petrel flying around the cliffs...a few minutes later I looked up and saw this swift. Saw the white and thought it was Fork-tailed. Then, I realized the white was on the underside."

What a flipping GREAT bird. After watching it for about a half-hour, I went home. The place was in shambles--lights on, TV on, a trail of clothes leaking out of the bathroom... Scott found out about the bird while he was showering and raced out to Reef, shampoo still in his hair. I'm sorta surprised he didn't just leave the shower running and show up to Reef in a towel.

Yeah, it was a happy chase for us all, the way it should be.