Chick Banding

Yay!  I have been wanting to band the chicks as an excuse to touch them and finally we got to do it.  So great.  We gave them temporary bands which will then be replaced by permanent bands when they get a little older and bigger.  We had to give them these temporaries because they are staring to wander and it's hard to associate which nests are for which chicks if the chick has wandered from its nest bowl.  Twice a week we have 6 plots to check to track the reproductive success of the Laysan Albatrosses and the Black Footed Albatrosses.  Each plot has a stake at each nest with the nest number and we go around and record if there's a chick, a dead chick or if there's an adult bird on the chick we gently poke the bird on the belly and it'll stand so then we can see it's leg band and record which parent it is since all the adults in the plot have been banded. 

Here Peter is recording the info, RJ has the poker and Nik is supervising.

This albatross is trying to figure out what Nik is.

Obviously nest 56 didn't make it.

Sometimes there's still just an egg which probably has been abandoned either because one of the parents died or because the parent sensed something was wrong with the egg and so left it.  There are still some birds sitting on eggs but those will most likely not hatch this late in the season but the parents still have a deluded faith and keep on sitting on it. 

In the heat sometimes the chicks will wander and you'll have two chicks sitting behind a plant for shade and not know which nest each came from.  Like this little guy is trying to hide but now with the band we can see he's from nest #3.

Here I am banding a little chick who's reacting quite nicely to it.  Most were fairly easy to do if you just went in slowly enough.  You just had to stretch out the plastic and then fit it over the leg and it would coil back into itself onto the leg.  Peter and RJ had a few chicks vomit on them but none of mine got that stressed.

Mostly they did this super cute thing of coyly looking away and then every once in a while leaning over to try to give a quick nip if it was taking too long and then coyly looking away again.  I love them.

I have to admit that I did cop a feel a few times of their breast or tail feathers and some weren't happy about that.  No pay no play.