Seeing Through the Noise / August 15, 2018 by Michael Johns

With some minor adjustments in Lightroom, one can really make the Milky Way pop. Take away the noise of the atmosphere, and this is what the night sky on the Farallones would look like.

Listers / July 25, 2018 by Michael Johns

The Farallon Islands are uniquely situated for people interested in the hobby of finding and identifying birds, otherwise known as "birding". The cluster of jagged rocks are located just far enough offshore to provide a stable platform for spotting rare pelagic species like the Cook's petrel, and close enough to the mainland to catch vagrant song birds and other terrestrial species lost in the fog at sea. Over the course of 50 years of research out on the Farallones, some biologists and staff have been keeping a detailed list of all of the different bird species they've encountered while out on the island, a record known as "The Faralist". This figure is a graphical interpretation of that list, modified from R code for a similar graphic depicting the number of days spent on island by various people over the years. Collectively, a total of 429 different species have been seen from the Farallones; not bad for a small collection of guano-covered rocks with only 3 trees.

Download a high resolution file of this figure HERE.

Final Chicks of the Season / July 20, 2018 by Michael Johns

Ashy storm-petrels are endemic to the California Current System, which means their entire population occurs in the offshore waters of the California coast. Half of the world's estimated 10,000 individuals breed on Southeast Farallon Island, their chattery calls a regular sound after the sun goes down in the summer. They are amazing swallow-sized seabirds that spend much of their lives exposed to harsh winds and rough seas, thriving on small planktonic items they pluck from the productive surface waters of the Pacific. These enigmatic relatives of the albatrosses have a more prolonged occupation on the Farallones compared to the other breeding seabird species, extending chick provisioning efforts well into early October. They are generally the last chicks to hatch on the island, small grey puff balls that can be viewed on occasion in shallow crevices if you look hard enough.

Evening Attack / July 7, 2018 by Michael Johns

A guano-covered path beneath the pastel colors of a summer sunset, after another long day out here on the Farallones. Yes, that gull was swooping me...as they do.

Rabbit Cave / June 25, 2018 by Michael Johns

We monitor the breeding population of Rhinoceros auklets on the Farallones by checking artificial wooden nest boxes distributed across the island. These boxes are visited on a regular basis to note which ones contain an active breeding pair, whether those pairs are successful at hatching an egg, and ultimately how many pairs end up fledging a chick; giving us an estimate of the annual breeding success for this species. In addition to the nest boxes, we also monitor breeding activity in Rabbit Cave, a large vestige of the islands geologic past that acts as a kind of massive burrow for Rhinoceros auklets. The entrance to Rabbit Cave starts out as a narrow crawl space that opens up into a cavernous amphitheatre at the back.