I'm told that at least one barn owl is a commonly observed winter resident on the Farallones, possibly feasting on seabirds in a inconspicuous location during the summer months and emerging once the noise of the breeding western gulls subsides in the fall. This owl was regularly roosting on one of the three trees on the island outside my bedroom window before I left for Fairbanks.
It's August /
Change is in the air on this wind swept heap of rock. Warm moist air from the south has been pushing the fog offshore and replacing it with rolling waves of stratus clouds, creating some contrasting pastels in the morning light. To provide a bit of context for this photo, on the left is the "PRBO House", where we live and work. On the right is the "Coast Guard House", an identical twin to the PRBO House used sporadically by the Fish and Wildlife Service when on island.
Catch Of The Day /
Part of the work we do includes monitoring the diet of several seabird species that serve as indicators of fish populations in the Gulf of the Farallones. This involves sitting in arm chairs near nesting areas or in blinds with a pair of binoculars and watching birds fly in with bill loads of fish. Species such as pigeon guillemots and common murres deliver a single fish held in their bill with every foraging trip, so we can identify the type and size of each prey item fed to the awaiting chick. Earlier in the season, we were seeing a lot of juvenile rockfish in their diet, and it turns out pinnipeds like to take the adults too. This Steller's sea lion was seen tossing a vermillion rockfish at the surface, shredding it into more manageable pieces while the western gulls snatched up the smaller bits.
Natural Fireworks /
We do a fare bit of night work out here on the Farallones, from banding Ashy Storm-petrels to access population trends to netting Rhinoceros Auklets to collect diet samples. On this particular night, on our way back to the house after conducting cave surveys for an endemic cricket species, we noticed the waves in Maintop Bay were giving off tiny flashes of bright blue-green light. It was bioluminescence, a natural emission of light produced by living organisms, in this case by microscopic phytoplankton called dinoflagellates. The agitation of the surf causes them to give off this glow, lighting up the shoreline with a natural display of fireworks. Although not visible in this photo, I can assure you the sparkling waves evoked several "wows".