Eagle Nest Camera!

Check out this live-streaming footage of a bald eagle nest in Southwest Florida! The two adult bald eagles, dubbed Ozzie and Harriet, are raising two chicks. One chick hatched on January 1st, and the other made it out of the shell January 3rd. Both parents will care for these babies, sharing the responsibility of hunting for food and keeping them warm. The nestlings will probably stay in the nest until March, so you'll have plenty of time to watch them grow.

Check it out!

http://www.ustream.tv/SouthwestFloridaEagleCam

Updates: Eagles, 4N, t-shirts

It's time for some updates! First off, a look at where our four GPS-tagged eagles have been hanging out.

Not much has changed in the past couple weeks. Both females, 3E and 4P, continue to spend their time along the Chilkat River. We're beginning to wonder if both of these birds might be residents. There is still plenty of time for them to leave the area and travel southward, but for now it seems as if they are both perfectly happy sticking near Klukwan.

3E:

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Trivia Question of the Week

It's time for the TQOTW!

How long do brown bears hibernate?

Hint #1: When brown bears hibernate, they're not really sleeping the entire time. They rouse themselves periodically to keep their temperatures elevated. This is particularly true with females, who give birth to and feed young while in the den.

Hint #2: Although we expect bears to hibernate throughout the winter, this isn't always true. Some bears will be active mid-winter, although most will avoid the cold temperatures and heavy snow by denning up and sleeping it out.

Hint #3: Brown bears will add six to eight inches of fat before hibernation, which acts to store energy and for insulation. That has to last them quite a long time...

Hint #4: Although bears may wake during hibernation, they usually do not feed at all during this time period. A special hormone in their blood stream, leptin, works to suppress the bear's appetite.

Hint #5: A good general rule of thumb is that bears will hibernate from mid- to late-autumn through spring.

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If you guessed November through April, you're right on! Female brown bears around Haines, monitored by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game with radio collars, have been observed hibernating, on average, between November 6th and April 29th of each year. Some bears will enter their dens later and/or emerge earlier, and hibernation times vary widely based on geographic region. Black bears usually hibernate October through March. In some temperate ecosystems that don't see much snow, some black bears won't hibernate at all.

Feast

I've been sifting through our trail camera photos, trying to pick out the best ones to share, as well as identify those that detail animal behavior. We captured a few interesting events-- bears rubbing on trees and chasing after fish in the stream, flocks of crows appearing and disappearing just as quickly-- but since we're right in the middle of the holiday season, it seemed fitting to talk about feasts! When salmon are plentiful, bears will high-grade salmon, eating only the energy rich, fatty parts of the fish: the skin, roe, and brains. When salmon decrease in numbers, however, a bear will make good work of a salmon carcass, eating everything it can.

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Eagle Update!

Although 4N's tag is out of commission, we still have four birds to follow! We're always excited to see where these eagles are moving, and we hope you are, too.

First up, the females! Both females, 3E, the adult, and 4P, the immature eagle, have been sticking around the Chilkat Valley.

3E has made a couple trips to the ridgeline south of the Chilkat, but is otherwise hanging out around the area between 19- and 21-mile on the Haines Highway-- pretty much the only region of the Chilkat River that is unfrozen this time of year:

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4N

Rigby and I are back in Santa Cruz, adjusting to things we haven't seen in a while-- stoplights, traffic, and sunshine, just to name a few. We've finally managed to get internet up and running in our new place, so it's back to blogging!

Today's entry focuses on one of the more frustrating aspects of working with wild animals: data loss. So far, we've been getting pretty reliable information from the GPS tags on our eagles, but the data are not without problems. Since the tags are solar powered, they need to have reliable sunshine to keep the battery charged and the device functioning. In southeast Alaska, where snow is a daily occurrence and daylight hours are rapidly diminishing, it's tough for the tags to get the juice they need. This is complicated by the fact that the Chilkat River is surrounded on both sides by relatively steep mountain ranges. Even when the sun does come out, much of the river is still in shadow.

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Trivia Question of the Week, and what's up next

This week's trivia question is paired with statistics for this season's fieldwork. What is the animal we saw most frequently on our trail cameras this summer?

Hint #1: This contest was pretty close, with a couple hundred pictures or so separating the first and second most frequently sighted animals.

Hint #2: In broad terms, the second most frequently sighted type of animal actually beats out the first, but in terms of species, there is one clear winner.

Hint #3: Their name starts with "B"

Hint #4: They're furry

Hint #5: If you anger them, they'll eat your face off. :)

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If you guessed Brown Bear, you're correct! You've obviously been following along with us this season. Or you know that bears will eat your face off. Either way, congratulations!

"Bears" as a broad category, was actually beat out by "birds"-- we saw more birds overall on our trail cameras than bears. Whereas the "bird" category is composed of eagles, raven, magpies, crows, mergansers, blue-winged teals, varied thrushes, and others, however, the "bears" category is all brown bears. We didn't see a single black bear on our trail cameras this season.

For our trail camera work this summer and fall, we captured:

• 24,767 photographs, total
• 6,605 images of bears
• 7,841 photos of birds
• 71 photos of canids (wolves, coyotes, and domestic dogs)
• 332 mustelid photos (mink and marten)
• 59 photos of rodents (mice and red squirrels)
• 94 photos of humans (not including ourselves)
• 0 photos of lynx, wolverine, black bear, or lagamorphs (hares or rabbits), although these species all live in the area

 

Now that I'm headed back to Santa Cruz and our field season is over for the year, you may be wondering what's in store for the blog. Will I keep updating? What can you expect to see?

Well, by my calculations I've shared around 60 of our trail camera photos here on the blog. That means there are an additional 24,707 photos I could post! :)  I'll continue to post trail camera photos from time to time, in addition to videos I'm currently working on putting together that detail sequences of trail camera photographs, like bears or eagles feeding on the salmon carcasses.

And don't forget about our eagles! We'll continue to follow the movements of the five eagles we tagged with GPS/satellite transmitters, and we'll post these locations for you as we go along.

There are several other stories from the field that I haven't yet had time to put together into blog entries that I'm hoping to work in within the next couple of months. We're also working on putting together a fully-fledged website for Ecology Alaska. So among trail camera photos, eagle movement data, stories from our fieldwork in Haines, and perhaps a few entries detailing the life of a wildlife biologist outside of the field season, there should be plenty going on here on the blog. I imagine that the rate of posting will decrease come the beginning of the year, but I will attempt to continue posting at least one entry and one trivia question each week.

Stay tuned, and as always, feel free to let us know what you think, by leaving us a message in the comments or sending us an email at ecologyalaska [at] gmail (dot) com.

Trail Camera Photos: Marten Edition

Sometimes it seems like all of the photos we capture are bears and birds. But we do get a handful of other animals, too. Like marten! These members of the weasel family are omnivorous, and consume both plants and animals. They prey on squirrels, rodents, and small birds, and are excellent climbers. They're also attracted to carrion, and have made several appearances on our trail cameras. What marten can resist a free dead salmon?

Marten are closely related (and strongly resemble) another routine visitor to our trail cameras, mink. Marten are a little smaller, have more triangular faces and pointed ears, and seem to have ridiculously long legs:

In a lot of our marten photographs, the animals are looking directly at the camera. They're pretty curious! A lot of our photos are blurry, too, because they dart around so quickly. But here are a couple other marten photos that came out nicely, even if they aren't in color:

Hooray for mustelids!

More Trail Camera Photos!

This latest series of trail camera photos comes to you courtesy of the Herman Creek Chum salmon run. Coho and Chum are pretty much the only salmon running this time of year. Coho are a little harder to come by, so anything that's eating salmon is probably going to be eating Chum.

Like these bears:

Or these. How many bears do you see in this photo?

Did you count four? There are the two obvious ones, then part of a third on the right edge of the frame, and part of a sneaky fourth behind the branches along the left edge of the frame.

Here is a less sneaky adult eagle:

and some mergansers and a raven at that same site:

We had a couple coyotes in this set. Here's one of them:

Eagle party! More eagles have been arriving every day. There is a citizen science group in Haines that does weekly eagle counts. Last weekend the tally was 775. It won't be too much longer before there are thousands.

Take a look at this handsome youngster:

We also have some ravens fighting over scraps.

Another photo of a wolf!

And our first moose photo! Well, sort of, anyway.

This last one is tricky. Along the bottom part of the frame in the middle, there is another "first" camera sighting. A rodent! It's impossible to identify the species, or get much beyond "rodent-like small animal." But there it is! Maybe not quite as grand as the brown bears, wolves, and eagles, but I think it's fun to see them just the same.

Trivia Question of the Week

With plenty of eagles here already and more on the way, this week's question is appropriately eagle-themed.

What is the grip strength of an adult bald eagle?

Hint #1: The tendons in bird's legs have tiny ridges on them that interlock with the tendon sheaths when flexed, holding the talons closed without any additional effort on the part of the bird. Ever wonder why birds don't fall off branches while they're sleeping? It's because the tendons in their feet are locked in place.

Hint #2: The largest species of eagle in the world, the Harpy Eagle, has enough grip strength to crush the bones of large mammals.

Hint #3: Bald eagles may not be able to crush large mammal bones, but they can definitely do some damage to a human wrist.

Hint #4: Their grip strength allows them to pull salmon equal to their own weight from the water.

Hint #5: An eagle's grip strength is more than 10 times that of a human hand.

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If you guessed 400 pounds per square inch (psi), then you are a true ornithology nerd champion and know far more about bald eagles than is healthy anyone else. The grip strength of the average adult human, by comparison, is only about 20 psi.

Trail Camera Photos: Bear Edition

Hey everyone! Over the past few weeks I've been working hard at sifting through our collection of trail camera photos and tagging them all-- adding digital labels to identify what was recorded in the image. Most weeks we download anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand photographs off our cameras, so sometimes it takes a while to get through them. We have nearly 15,000 photographs already from this field season, with about five weeks remaining to collect data.

Each photo must be properly tagged with information about the date and location the photo was taken, along with whatever critter(s) may have shown up, in order for us to be able to analyze the data later on. It can be a tedious and time-consuming process, but it's nice to have a searchable database of images. Once tagged, I can easily go back and locate every single photo we have of a marten, a canid, a crow, etc.

So instead of sharing photos from a specific location, this week I decided to share photos of a specific subgroup of subjects: brown bears! We have so many images of bears that it was hard to decide which to share. This is just a sampling of some of the bear pictures we've taken the past couple months:

This was a nice closeup we got at one of our first trapping locations, at the end of August. This is the same place we saw the bear cub and the wolf I posted earlier. This camera had great placement-- just about every photo we got off it was crisp, clear, and in focus.

 

Here's another earlier image. This is one of two female brown bears that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game monitors-- see her radio collar?

 

This image is more recent, from a set of cameras we have on a run of Chum salmon up Herman Creek.

  

Another more recent image taken at the same location. This is one of the better nighttime images we have of a brown bear.

Although this one isn't bad, either. But I just realized the clock somehow got reset on this camera, and the time stamp isn't right. Dangit! :\

 

This bear doesn't look particularly happy to have its photo taken.

Neither does this one. And it has backup!

This bear, however, is pretty fluffy. Not nearly as intimidating.

So many bears!

Trail Camera Photos!

These are some of the last of the photos from the cameras we set on the Sockeye runs. Since the Sockeye are tapering off and the run is at its end, there are fewer fish, fewer carcasses, and thus fewer animals coming to visit our cameras. Nevertheless, I found a few photos from our final set of Sockeye cameras worth sharing:

Hey look! A marten! In daylight! Almost all of the marten (and mink) photos we get are at night, with the infrared flash. It's really nice to see them in color.

Crow party!

Here's a new one: This is a varied thrush. Varied thrushes are more or less all over the place out here. They are striking birds, with a very distinct grey and orange pattern accented with black and white. They have little interest in our carcasses, but like all thrushes often feed on the ground. You've probably all seen a thrush before-- American Robin are in the thrush family.

Yet another bear photo. We saw very few bears in this last set of images. Most of the photos of were us (setting the cameras) and of mink and marten, with the occasional red squirrel or thrush thrown in the mix. But we did see a couple of bears, this being one of them.

 

Aaaaaaaaand another wolf photo! I'm very pleased to be seeing wolves in different areas around Haines. The first two photos of wolves I posted were from an area near the confluence of the Kelsall and Chilkat Rivers. This photo was taken near Chilkoot Lake. This appears to be a fairly young animal.

 

Wolves have a tough time living around Haines. There are no deer or elk here. The only large game for packs to hunt is moose, and most of the available moose habitat is much farther up the Chilkat and Chilkoot Rivers and up at higher elevations. Moose are hunted here, and although the moose population is managed to sustain hunting, it is not managed to sustain wolf packs. There is also a lengthy wolf hunting season-- nearly year-round, with a three-month hiatus during summer-- with a limit of five animals. Dedicated wolf hunters could easily disrupt an entire pack.

Many people in the United States are still strong advocates of predator control, and would prefer that wolves aren't around. Some of this is anti-wolf sentiment is interest-based (many game hunters believe that wolves kill a lot of the available prey in an area, meaning fewer animals available for harvest in the fall). Some is likely symbolic (wolves have been portrayed for centuries as something to be feared and destroyed).

Whatever the case, I'm happy to be seeing wolves on our trail cameras. Wolves help sustain healthy populations of their prey, which in turn impacts the vegetation on which herbivores feed. Wolves are often called keystone species-- species which have a disproportionally large impact on their environment, and whose presence helps to balance food webs. A large part of our research involves better understanding the impacts large carnivores, like bears and wolves, have on the environment, and why they are important.

Autumn

This past Saturday, the 22nd, was the official first day of autumn. Having grown up in Colorado, autumn has long been my favorite season. Autumn days in the Rockies are mild, sunny, and warm, a wonderful relief from the blisteringly hot days of summer. Nights are crisp and cool. And the colors! Aspen, cottonwood, willow, and maple turning stunning shades of yellow. I missed autumn a lot when I moved to California.

Fall weather in northern California is nice, too. Sunny, not as much fog in the mornings, and warm. But most deciduous trees there keep their leaves year-round, the evenings aren't cool, and there is no nip in the air that suggests impending snow. It's just doesn't feel right. :\

Luckily for me, Alaskan autumns are a lot like Colorado (except with more clouds, humidity, and rain). Gorgeous colors, blankets of yellow, orange, and the occasional red, have spread across the landscape these past few weeks. Temperatures have dropped. Some afternoons, when the breeze is right, you can stand in a shower of gold as leaves falling from trees catch the pale sunlight.

I love autumn.

The eagles are arriving! Each day more and more eagles appear along the Chilkat, staked out on the river flats to feed on the first of the Chum. What makes for a better photograph than golden cottonwood leaves, blue mountains, and an eagle?

For a couple weeks, the weather here was overcast and rainy almost every day. We literally did not see the sun shine for ten days or more. A bit depressing, and a sure sign of the winter to come. Luckily, late September has been kind to us, and we've hit a string of wonderfully sunny days. It's nice to see some blue sky again!

Before the snow travels low enough in altitude to make mountain travel tricky, we decided to make one last trip up to the alpine tundra. Here is a view of the Klehini River from Flower Mountain. Autumn colors make their way into the highest reaches here-- just look at those deep reds of the low-growing plants. Tundra soils are thin (four inches or less in some places), but vegetation still manages to take hold. Alpine berries, willow, lichens, and scraggly, stunted spruce make their homes here, providing food for mountain goats, moose, songbirds, and alpine ground squirrels.

Quite a view, eh?

With a string of sunny days, we've also been making good use of the raft. Rafting down the Klehini affords us opportunities to set trail cameras south and west of the Chilkat, where we see evidence in tracks of moose, wolves, and the ever-present bear. There are plenty of eagles on the Klehini as well!

Mountains, river, blue sky, and birch, cottonwood, alder, and willow changing colors? Alaska, you are wonderful.

And eagles! More and more eagles! The yellow background of these cottonwood leaves may be a bit distracting in this photo, but the colors sure do make it stand out.

Alaska isn't the only pretty place this time of year. Canada has its fair share of gorgeous locales, too. How about this view of Dezadeash Lake, in the Yukon Territory?

Or this lovely little trail, on the route back from St. Elias Lake in Kluane National Park?

Not enough autumn for you? Oh, all right. Here's one last picture: The Tatshenshini Valley.

Be honest now-- who's in the mood for pumpkins, cider, sweaters, or a bit of Halloween fun? Butternut squash ravioli? Homemade applesauce? Pumpkin-spice latte?

Or how about, for those of you lucky enough to live in places where there's an actual autumn, a bit of time spent outdoors enjoying the leaves.

Another batch of trail camera photos

Who doesn't like looking at these awesome photographs of Alaskan wildlife? Our third week of camera trapping has come and gone. Check out this set of photos we've captured over the last couple weeks:

Coyote! The first one we've seen on our trail cameras this year, but coyotes are everywhere around this area. Why? Well, for one thing, there aren't many wolves here. Wolf packs usually keep coyote densities low. Without wolves, coyote populations explode.

Remember in an earlier post when we discussed high-grading? That's when animals focus on only the highest-grade feed available, ignoring the rest. That's what this bear is doing here: high-grading the sockeye by eating only the skin. The raven is waiting around for the scraps, and won't be disappointed. This bear will leave the remainder of the sockeye carcass, muscle tissue and all, behind and go off to search for more fish brains, roe, and skin, leaving the rest to the scavengers.

This is one of the few photos we've taken of a mustelid (member of the weasel family) in daylight. Not a bad little profile, eh? (As with all the images on our blog, you can click on them to see a larger size.)

These two young bears, probably male siblings, have shown up in several of our trail cameras. Brown bear cubs remain with their mother for two to four years, but don't become sexually mature until they are several years older. Males, in particular, must often wait until they are large and powerful enough to compete with other large males for mates. A large male bear can easily kill a young male, which is why its still safest for these two to stick together.

 

Raven in-flight! Just a neat little image I thought I'd share.

 

 

The final image in this post was actually captured a couple weeks ago, but at the time, we were unable to check the photos on the camera-- we walked up on another camera nearby and found that a bear had been feeding there just a few minutes prior to our arrival. Look at the timestamps (in the lower right-hand corner) on these two images:

Fewer than six minutes elapsed before the bear completely disappeared from the field of view of the camera and the first image the camera took of us walking up to the area. With no way of knowing which direction the bear had gone, we decided it was best to leave without checking the last camera that week. Better to risk losing some images than walking back in brushy area on a wary bear.

For that reason, we missed this photo last week. Remember the image of the wolf from the last set of trail camera photos I posted? Turns out it (or another member of the same pack) had visited another one of our cameras in the area a few days earlier. This time, we were lucky enough to capture a much clearer image.