Gone is another month in Cordova, Alaska. We finished our nest island monitoring and spent the large majority of the month performing maintenance on islands that were below project-developed standards. Ideally, the islands possess at least 30% aerial cover provided by the sweet gale shrub. If they lack the desired proportion of sweet gale, we add shrubs until the desired level is achieved. To do this, crew members search for ideal shrubs nearby and transplant these shrubs to the island. In order to make room for those incoming shrubs, crew members often remove chunks of non-crucial landscape from the artificial nest islands. Too much vegetation and land mass on these artificial islands can result in a sinking island (negative freeboard). While landscaping occupies the lion's share of our nest island maintenance time, other issues do arise from time to time. Island anchors sometimes become tangled or loose, usually resulting in a rotating, drifting, or misplaced nest island. These anchors are easily replaceable and new anchors are driven into the pond substrate using a specially crafted hand-held aluminum driver.

The crew also partook in a multi-agency goose banding effort. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game works in collaboration with members of the Forest Service and wildlife agencies in the Pacific Northwest to band dusky Canada geese on a biyearly basis. Biologists use these bands and neck-collars to capture a population estimate for the dusky Canada goose through re-sightings of neck collars and band recoveries. These geese are incapable of flight due to the timing of their mid-summer molt. The banding crew takes advantage of these flightless geese and uses a helicopter and a long funnel shaped net to usher the geese into a holding pen. The geese are then individually captured, sexed, and given a neck collar and leg band. We set a goal to band and collar 600 geese and thanks to two back-to-back days of beautiful delta weather, we easily achieved that goal.

Transplanting sweet gale during nest island maintenance. 

Artificial nest island after a successful shrub transplant. 

Funneling geese into the holding pen.

Netting geese in the holding pen for individual banding. 

Gluing on a neck collar. 

Nick and I with freshly banded geese.

You're never too busy to catch a couple of sockeye salmon.