One of our high-tech projects, and the reason we carried six car batteries, a battery charger, and a mile-long extension cord to the colony, involves automatically monitoring the visits a bird makes to its nest over an extended period of time. A tiny electronic tag, called a passive integrated transponder (PIT), is attached to the bird, and whenever the tagged bird comes within range of a PIT antenna, the bird’s visit is logged. It is logged repeatedly every minute until the bird leaves.
 
PIT tags in Laurel’s hand.
We currently have five active PIT nests. At these nests, we attach a PIT tag to both of the parents and place an antenna within the nest, disturbing it as little as possible. Yesterday was a momentus occasion, as the egg in nest W3 started to hatch! You could see the chick moving inside, slowly breaking its way out of the shell with its cute egg-tooth!
 
An inside look at nest W3, including the hatching egg and PIT antenna. Though a little camera shy, a parent can also be seen hiding in the back. Two of its color bands are visible: yellow over metal on right!
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Attached to each antenna is a transceiver unit where the data is logged. The units fill up with data quickly, so we go with our fancy all-weather laptop every two days to download the data.
Nina downloading PIT data in the rain.
Derek downloading PIT data in the rain, Nina recording observations in the rain, and Julia making observations in the rain.
Birds, mountains, rain and computers: what an exciting combination! I always thought my dual interests in nature and technology were mutually exclusive, but no longer do I have this antiquated mentality!
The data we download looks something like this (only there are thousands of lines from each nest every time we download):
17-07-2008 10:28:27 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:29:27 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:30:27 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:31:27 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:32:27 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:32:57 985.120020453149 17-07-2008 10:33:02 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:33:29 985.120020453149 17-07-2008 10:33:38 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:33:42 985.120020453149 17-07-2008 10:33:54 985.120014922081 17-07-2008 10:33:57 985.120020453149 17-07-2008 10:34:57 985.120020453149 17-07-2008 10:35:57 985.120020453149
I have spend some of my free time (i.e., one hour every three days), poring over these cryptic lines of data and working on a program to take these data and produce an attractive timeline to visualize when each of the parents was in the nest and when it was away. I will let you know when, if ever, this is finished and show you some timelines! I’m afraid you must remain on the edge of your seat until then! Since parents must start foraging for food for their chick once it hatches, it will be interesting to compare the length and frequency of the parents’ nest visits before hathcing to after hatching.
One major catch to this ideal combination of technology and nature is that it means we must have electricity in the wilderness. At the end of the extension cord we strung up the mountain, we installed a battery charger, but we still have to arduously carry heavy car batteries to and from the charger to the various PIT nests, some high up in precarious rock scree, every day. Word of this situation reached some mechanics and electricians at the station, and they pitied us and came up with a solution: more extension cord and a second battery charger!
 
Team Little Auk with the elauktricians.
Our improved Magic Box: one extension cord goes in, two extension cords and battery charging cables come out.
Now, thanks to their help, three of our five PIT nests are running directly off A/C power, and the two remaing nests to which we must carry batteries are both situated conveniently close to a battery charger.
In other news (literally): we have been featured in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin!
In yet other news: Julia has perfected the art of catching little auks in mid flight!
And in conclusion, here are two bird’s-eye views from the colony:
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