One of our projects is monitoring chick growth to see how it changes from year to year. Every three days, Derek, Laurel and I pick up the bucket with our chick growth equipment take off up the hill to visit the nests.
Of the thousands of nests in the colony, we have been able to find only about 50 that we can reach in to remove the chick. We take turns squeezing our hands through narrow entrances or stretching our arms to the back of deep passageways.
Once we have the chick in hand we begin our measuring routine. Using calipers, first I measure the head and bill.
Next I pass the chick to Laurel, so she can measure the wings. When we first started measuring chicks, the primary feathers were tiny stubs. As the chicks get bigger it’s fun to watch the primaries grow into something they will eventually use to fly.
After that it’s Derek’s turn to measure their little webbed feet.
Finally we weigh the chick. We put the scale in a bucket to block the wind and balance the bucket on the best flat spot we can find. To keep the little guys from running off the scale, we sit them in a high-tech container made from an empty mineral water bottle.
Since the Arctic summer here is so brief, the little auks only have a short time to raise their chicks. Generally the eggs hatch around the same time, but chicks a few days apart in age look very different. When the chicks first break out of the egg, they are tiny and wet. Before long, their feathers dry off and they puff up into little black fur balls.
These fast growing chicks are changing their feathers so fast, they often seem to have dandruff. The fluffy black feathers are first replaced by fluffy grey feathers on the belly. Below is a photo of the largest chick we measured. It’s starting to look more like the adults with its white feathers.
The patchy feathers give this big chick what we think of as an aukward teenage look.
With all of these growing chicks in the colony, adult little auks are constantly flying in from the sea with meals of copepods to feed the chicks. After they feed, they linger on the rocks to socialize. Whenever the glaucous gull flies too close, the little auks take to the air.
Little auks aren’t the only birds raising their young here in Hornsund. There is a snow bunting nest along our path to the colony. When we walk past this certain hole in the rock, we often hear the chicks in the nest calling like cicadas and see the adult flying in to feed. The barnacle geese sometimes wander up to the mossy area around our colony with their gosslings.
