Mike Harris did this morning’s one-hour plenary session on “Common Murres” and proceeded to spend much of his time struggling not to call them Guillemots. As ever, Mike was lucid and interesting to listen to, his slides easy and quick to understand. During the talk, Rik texted me to inform me of the final score in which Scotland beat Wales in the rugby (Mike is an avid Wales rugby fan – in his vast collection and library of bird books at home is one non-bird book – Barry John’s autobiography).
After this, I took a bit of a break and did some birding with George along the shore towards Point Pinos. One of the first things we saw was a Belted Kingfisher among the rock pools. In the bays were a few Sea Otters, some wrapping themselves in kelp so they didn’t drift away while trying to sleep. They are the cutest creatures on earth, and possibly they know it. There were some Western Sandpipers feeding along the shoreline. I tried to have a go at separating them all from Semipalmated Sandpiper, to which they are almost identical. Not easy, as they seemed to lack the fine breast streaks typical of this species at this time of year. I could just about see that the bill tips were too fine for the latter species though. Just offshore were a couple of winter adult Rhinocerous Auklets. Difficult to see, but the bill was too long to be Cassin’s Auklet, and also the latter species suffered a huge crash in the last couple of years, so is very difficult to see in their typically offshore habitat. On the way back to the room at Asilomar, we saw a Hermit Thrush next to the road.
After lunch, I went to a few more talks and got chatting to Doug Forsell, who was one of the original Alaska seabirds-at-sea crew. He’s nearing retirement and wants to sell the house, buy a boat and use it to travel the world. I can understand that. It chucked it down with rain in the afternoon.
There was a Mexican banquet in the evening, which served great food, followed by awards for best student talk and poster and two awards – one for outstanding achievement to Ed Melvin, who has done so much work to get fishermen to change their practices to stop mortality of seabirds in gill nets, and now doing the same thing for longline fishing. Quite humbling really. The lifetime achievement award went to Mike Harris. Overall, the whole awards thing went on a bit long as rather too many people seemed to want to get in on the act. As soon as this was over, the tables were cleared and a latino band played some great music, and lots of people were up dancing. What an excellent end to the conference.
After this, I took a bit of a break and did some birding with George along the shore towards Point Pinos. One of the first things we saw was a Belted Kingfisher among the rock pools. In the bays were a few Sea Otters, some wrapping themselves in kelp so they didn’t drift away while trying to sleep. They are the cutest creatures on earth, and possibly they know it. There were some Western Sandpipers feeding along the shoreline. I tried to have a go at separating them all from Semipalmated Sandpiper, to which they are almost identical. Not easy, as they seemed to lack the fine breast streaks typical of this species at this time of year. I could just about see that the bill tips were too fine for the latter species though. Just offshore were a couple of winter adult Rhinocerous Auklets. Difficult to see, but the bill was too long to be Cassin’s Auklet, and also the latter species suffered a huge crash in the last couple of years, so is very difficult to see in their typically offshore habitat. On the way back to the room at Asilomar, we saw a Hermit Thrush next to the road.After lunch, I went to a few more talks and got chatting to Doug Forsell, who was one of the original Alaska seabirds-at-sea crew. He’s nearing retirement and wants to sell the house, buy a boat and use it to travel the world. I can understand that. It chucked it down with rain in the afternoon.
There was a Mexican banquet in the evening, which served great food, followed by awards for best student talk and poster and two awards – one for outstanding achievement to Ed Melvin, who has done so much work to get fishermen to change their practices to stop mortality of seabirds in gill nets, and now doing the same thing for longline fishing. Quite humbling really. The lifetime achievement award went to Mike Harris. Overall, the whole awards thing went on a bit long as rather too many people seemed to want to get in on the act. As soon as this was over, the tables were cleared and a latino band played some great music, and lots of people were up dancing. What an excellent end to the conference.
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