Angry Birds On Matinicus Rock

Another day out on the water. I went with two of the staff from the refuge, one Friends board member (my supervisor's husband), and a volunteer first to Metinic Island to fix the tern sound system. It plays a loop of a tern colony in hopes of encouraging them to return to the island. The two research interns staying on the island for the summer came with us to Matinicus Rock for the bird census. We would do exactly what we did during the Metinic census, but I had no idea just how different it would be.

To start, Matinicus Rocks' terrain is completely opposite of Metinics. Metinic is a rather big unpopulated island that is forested in the center and blanketed in tall grass and sharp thistles everywhere else, with high, steep, rocky intertidal separating the island from the water. Matinicus Rock is about a third of Metinic's size and completely overtaken by rocks and birds. The only vegetation comes up much higher than my waist and is wedged low between some of the tall rocky cliffs. That's where the eiders were, and the only way to know that one was there was to nearly step on a nest! Their eggs must be incubated all the time so when there's a nest there's an eider. When one of us would come close enough to one, the eider would defecate all over the eggs for protection (who wants to mess with poopy eggs?) and clumsily stumble by us to fly to safety. No matter how many times it happened, it startled us just as much as it did the first few times it happened.

That was a difficult census. There were so many species of unhappy birds because we were treading all over their nesting territories; they were constantly swooping down towards us, screaming, and pooping. We pretty much all got poop on us one way or another. The worst part about that - no running water. There's no way to even thoroughly clean it off for the rest of the day! Luckily there was hand sanitizer readily available when we got back to the lighthouse. Poop or no poop though, the census went on. Terns, laughing gulls, and herring and black-backed gulls continued to let us know how unwelcome we were.

We also had to deal with the pungent smell of Annibelle the decaying seal. That was a smell that even the toughest of us could barely stomach. You know when you kind of adjust to a certain stench because you've spent some time around it? That didn't happen. No matter how long we had to stand by her or how much we had to walk past her it was just as bad, if not worse than the first time we came across her. It was quite the sight too to see all the maggots taking over her body. =/

Eventually the census did come to an end. My adventures didn't though! As I was walking down to the boat house I got attacked by a tern! They're so vicious! Especially on the walk to the boat house. They hover right next to your head and scream in your ears, and if you ignore them I guess they figure they aren't doing enough, so they attack! This one got me by complete surprise too. It came from behind me and grabbed a chunk of my face! Probably one of the most startling experiences I've had in a while.

Oh wow I almost forgot to mention that Matinicus Rock was the first place I ever got to see puffins or razorbills! It was an amazing sight as we dropped anchor in front of the island. They were all perched along the rocky cliffs and flying around like little torpedos with wings. Their wings are so small that they are much better swimmers than they are flyers. They flap those little wings as hard and fast as they can to stay airborne.