gbentall's Favourites

A green chiton attached to a half crab. We observed this alien looking commensal beast while undertaking an intertidal survey on the reefs off Hawera. It made us jump when we first turned over the rock.

This is one of three Lesser Yellowlegs (on the right) seen at the pond this day with a Greater Yellowlegs to the left. This gives a nice comparison of their sizes and the respective lengths and shapes of their bills.

A complete checklist of birds seen at the pond can be found here:

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S38940882

This was a project that trapped and released flying squirrels. Ordinarily, you wouldn't see them out flying around during the day.

This squirrel was released, climbed a tree and flew twice, landed on the ground, dug up a truffle and ate most of it, then climbed a tree again and ate the rest.

Quite a show!

This selfie was taken BY THE OCTOPUS, who also took a 90-second mostly-dark video of the inside of its den (with a muffled soundtrack of Alison Young and I laughing hysterically). The octopus grabbed my camera with three tentacles, and grabbed rocks with the others. After a determined tug-of-war that snapped the nylon wrist strap, it carried the camera deep into its den and started pressing buttons with its tentacles. Alison braved beak and tentacles to rescue the camera (the octo was still holding it) - is there anything she won't do for Citizen Science? Thank you Alison!

The alternate photo is the last one I took before the battle - you can see the first tentacle snaking towards the shiny camera...

The target of the trip. We probably saw about 20 Ross's Gulls this afternoon in the 2.5 hours of light we had after we arrived. Most were flying very high and quite far away but we have high hopes for closer and better images tomorrow. Several images will be posted here. I was surprised that many of the birds still showed rather pink plumage even at this time of year.

Barrow!? What am I doing in Barrow, Alaska, you ask. Well…it’s like this. I have a friend in Austin named Isaac who is a crazy bird photographer like I am. A couple of months ago he sent me an email saying he wanted to go to Barrow for a long weekend to try to photograph Ross’s Gull, one of the rarest gulls in North America. Apparently the species migrates from Siberia across parts of the Arctic Ocean in early October and sometimes can be seen in numbers in Barrow. I had seen the species once before, in Canada in 1988:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/151409
but I thought, what the heck. Sounds like an adventure. Very few birds will be around in Barrow, but we might see some Ross’s Gulls which is a super fine bird. So, to make a long story short, we left Austin at 7 PM October 8 and 18 hours of airplanes and airports later found ourselves in Barrow, Alaska where it was 24 degrees F., with a 20 mph north wind. Just balmy conditions. We will have two and a half days here before heading home. Yeah, I know…totally insane!