2015 Field Season Summary is here!
It's hard to believe we've wrapped up a 26th field season already! To bring it all together, Viv, Ellen and Sara have authored another fantastic Field Season Report discussing our programs, findings and of course, our volunteers. Thank you to all who supported us this year - we cannot wait for our 27th season to begin!
Community Event Update: Make a reservation @ LBCS Office!
Just a quick update for anyone thinking of coming out to our African Stew and a World Seabird Conference Dry Run on September 19th at the QCC VIC - you can now reserve a spot at the Lakseek Bay office in Queen Charlotte City. Viv will be there from roughly 9-5 on Sept 8 - 11 and will happily add your name to our reserved list and collect the recommended donation of $10. Remember that we're limited to a max of 30 people. Hope to see you there!
Upcoming Community Event! African Peanut Stew & Keith and Viv's Presentation
As a thank you to the incredible support from the community for Viv Pattison and Keith Moore's upcoming trip to the World Seabird Conference in South Africa, we'd like to invite everyone out to an evening of African peanut stew! Maureen from the Queen Charlotte Visitor's Centre has a fantastic recipe and we hope others will bring treats that we can all enjoy together while listening to Keith and Viv run through their presentations on the Ancient Murrelet, citizen science and 26 years of work at Laskeek Bay Conservation Society!
We're asking for a $10 donation that will go towards the trip, and we will begin serving food around 6:30pm. Please bring your own bowls! The presentation will begin at 7pm, and if you want to skip the stew, show up around 7 and your entry will be by a donation of your choice.
Space is limited to about 30 people, so show up early! We will do our best to accommodate everyone who RSVPs "attending" on our Facebook event, but we will not be formally selling tickets.
The Details:
- Date: Saturday September 19, 2015
- Time: Stew will be served at 6:30pm, and the presentations will begin at 7pm.
- Location: Queen Charlotte Visitor's Information Centre
- Cost: $10 if you'd like stew, and by donation if you don't
Spread the word and we hope to see you there!
A huge loonie-toonie success!
We have to say that we are TOTALLY blown away by the local support we've received over the past few weeks for our trip to the World Seabird Conference in South Africa! Our loonie-toonie auction was a gigantic success, raising over $2400 in support of Viv and Keith! We had a lot of fun manning booths at the Credit Union, the Visitor's Centre and the Tlell Fall Fair and want to send a giant thank you to all who bought tickets! We did our draw for the prizes last week at the unveiling of the new whale sculpture, and have been excitedly awarding prizes in the days since.
We want to send an extra special thank you out to all the local businesses and artists who donated a collection of fantastic prizes for auction. Be sure to check them out around town!
- Kara Seivewright
- Maureen Weddle
- Penny Richardson
- Betsy Cardell
- Linda Rowbotham
- Dawn Neault
- Nancy Hett
- Benita Sanders Lambert
- Barb Roswell
- Kathy Pick
- Laura Smith
- Kiki van de Heiden
- The Haida House
- Ranch Feeds
- Isabel Creek
- Rocky's
- Funk It
- Kitgoro Kayaking
- U-Brew
- Moresby Explorers
- Skidegate Inlet Construction
Thank you all again - and stay tuned for an opportunity to hear a dry run of Keith and Viv's presentation in the fall!
We're heading to Cape Town with the World Seabird Conference!
We're excited to announce that in just a few months, Viv Pattison and Keith Moore will be heading off to Cape Town, South Africa to make presentations about the Ancient Murrelets of East Limestone Island at the 2nd World Seabird Conference. The two will be speaking to our 26 years of experience, and all that we have learned in partnership with over 1200 citizen scientists! It is an absolute honour to have been invited, and we cannot wait to speak about the global significance of our local seabird populations, and the threats that they face.
As an organization, we are working hard to raise the funds needed to support Viv's trip. Viv was born in Queen Charlotte and first went to Limestone as a young student with the Living and Learning School. She spent summers volunteering with us before taking on the role of biologist and field camp supervisor. Viv has spent the last few months on Limestone Island as our camp supervisor, where she worked with volunteers, school groups and teachers as they participated in the research and monitoring of seabirds, marine mammals and other wildlife in Laskeek Bay. Viv has been a devoted supporter of the organization over the years, and her passion for conservation are what we hope to inspire in all youth. We couldn't be more thrilled to have her involved in our delegation in South Africa!
But of course, a trip to South Africa is no small endeavor. Our fundraising campaign was generously kicked off with a donation from the Credit Union. A private donor has since helped with the cost of Viv's flight, but we're still working to collect funding for registration and other travel costs. To support Viv, swing by the Queen Charlotte Visitors Center or the Credit Union to participate in a loonie-toonie drive, supported by TONS of great prizes from local artists and businesses. We will be selling tickets until July 31st, and will host the draw the following week on August 3rd! You can also make straight donations to us online, at our office or at the Credit Union.
The 26th field season on East Limestone Island is brought to a close with more sunshine and seabirds!
The second to last week of our season was spent in Gwaii Haanas around the Hotsprings Island area completing our second survey of Black Oystercatchers (BLOY). We were very lucky to have extremely calm waters and sunny skies, allowing us to get to everywhere we needed to go – it was even hot too! During this survey we scan the shoreline for Black Oystercatchers, looking for both breeding pairs and non-breeding birds. Having completed this same survey route earlier in the season, we were aware of lots of breeding adult pairs with eggs; now it was time to search for chicks! The chicks are difficult to find: fast and sneaky, they know how to find the best cracks to hide in and boulders to hide under when predators fly over-head, or walk into their territories! Much of our time was spent searching for these chicks in known territories, watching and listening for clues from the adults as to where their chicks might be.
We discovered 43 chicks and 27 eggs, and two new territories. During the first survey this year, we had found 177 eggs, but not all eggs hatch to become chicks and not all chicks survive, due to predation by Bald Eagles and Common Ravens. Luckily BLOY are long-lived, and always willing to try again next year! At one territory on Faraday Island that had not been used for 6 years, a breeding pair had built a new scrape. One member of the pair had a blue band on its right leg, indicating that it was banded in 2006 as a chick, so is now 9 years old. We were also excited to see the same two banded Laskeek Bay BLOY that we had sighted on the first survey. E4 was seen again with a big group of non-breeding birds on Murchison Island, and A6 (a 2 year old bird who had been building a scrape last survey!) was seen on the opposite side of Alder Island to its territory, but still apparently paired up.
Beautiful weather to accompany rewarding monitoring!
Most of the chicks in wildlife trees at East Limestone Island have fledged and we have been enjoying watching cavity nester chicks. The Red-breasted Sapsuckers and Hairy Woodpecker chicks follow behind their parents, learning how to hunt for invertebrates and eating insects from holes their parents have made. Interestingly, woodpeckers find prey within wood by listening. Wildlife tree 109 is the only wildlife tree we are still monitoring on the island, where Red-breasted Sapsuckers are feeding their chicks. However, they now feed their chicks more infrequently; although you can hear them peeping, the adults may not come to feed the chicks for periods of a half hour or more. Wildlife tree 109 was first active in 2006, and has been active every year since 2011 with nesting Red-breasted Sapsuckers!
This year we completed a Cassin’s Auklet Census, a survey conducted every four years to count the number of active burrows on East Limestone Island. We found 101 active Cassin’s Auklet burrows! We also have 4 chicks in nestboxes at Lookout Point and the East Coast. This is lower than last year (7 chicks in nestboxes), but the number has varied a lot since the nestboxes were built in 2010 (1 chick in 2010, 6 in 2011, 2 in 2012, 7 in 2013). It is good to see that there are still some adults raising young on Limestone after the deaths of so many Cassin’s Auklets this winter, likely due to changes in food availability from warmer than average sea surface temperatures.
With the Ancient Murrelet season over we have completed our last gathering ground count and packed up the funnels for another year. We continue to monitor for raccoons using remote cameras (4 at various locations around the island), but since finding a headless Ancient Murrelet in Crow Valley, we have not found any other evidence of raccoon presence on ELI. We are now fairly certain that what we thought might be raccoon predation was actually predation by river otters, which are a common sight along the shorelines of ELI.
An update on chicks in Laskeek Bay, and in Gwaii Haanas too!
On the night of June 8th, we completed our Ancient Murrelet monitoring with a total of 42 chicks. This was a disappointingly low number of chicks as the last few years there have been over 100 chicks (112 in 2014, 136 in 2013, 110 in 2012). We are not sure why the numbers are so much lower this season, but monitoring next season will hopefully give us an indication as to whether it is just a one-year anomaly (possibly due to warm ocean temperatures) or if the habitat around the cabins on ELI is no longer suitable for breeding Ancient Murrelets. Our evening gathering ground counts and nightly point counts indicate that there were still many adult Ancient Murrelets coming to the island at night. Maybe they have not be able to breed this year, but it is good to see that they are still in the colony, socializing and making plans for next year! At Funnel 4 in North Cove, our infrared cameras captured 11 chicks, a similar number to last year (10 chicks), but much lower than 2013 (41 chicks). It will be interesting to explore why these low numbers have occurred and to see if the chick numbers will recover next year.
On June 7th, we found a beheaded Ancient Murrelet in Crow Valley, on the south shoreline of ELI. This could indicate predation from a raccoon, as raccoons will often only eat the head of their bird prey. Since then, we have searched Crow Valley for other evidence of raccoon predation and have found a few other Ancient Murrelets that we suspect were eaten by a raccoon. We have also completed a night-time low tide spotlight survey and have set up a second baited raccoon camera in Crow valley, but have not located a raccoon on East Limestone Island thus far.
In full swing with Ancient Murrelets, Cassin's Auklets and Project Limestone!
We have been monitoring the Cabin Cove ANMU funnels since the night of May 7th, as we do each year. We also have a camera set up in funnel 4 again, to monitor the last remaining funnel that survived the blowdown in North Cove. Unfortunately, our ANMU chick numbers at the funnels have been very low to date. As of the night of May 28th, we have a total of 39 chicks in Cabin Cove; last year we had 104 chicks on this same date. The camera in North Cove has captured pictures of 10 chicks so far. Information from biologists with the Canadian Wildlife Service suggests that Ancient Murrelets in other colonies in Haida Gwaii are nesting later than usual, so we are interested to see how long the chicks continue to arrive at our funnels this year. Each year we continue monitoring until there are two nights in a row with zero chicks; this usually happens around the beginning of June, but the date varies quite a bit, and one year the crew was still staying up at night waiting for chicks until the 22th of June!
Whether last winter’s die-off of Cassin’s Auklets, thought to be caused by above average sea temperatures along the west coast of North America that decreased their food supplies, affected Ancient Murrelet populations is not known. However, there are similar foods found in both Cassin Auklet and Ancient Murrelet diets. We have done the first check in our Cassin’s Auklet nestboxes, and found that there are a similar number of eggs and chicks to last year. Last year there were 7 chicks; this year so far we found 2 chicks and 4 eggs.
Welcome to another season of news as we begin our 26th year of research and monitoring on East Limestone Island!
On May 1st, we headed to East Limestone Island by skiff and Jeremie Hyatt’s sail boat, the Kode Isle. Boating alongside the Reef Skiff on a sunny, calm morning, it was an awesome start to the field sea-son! We were lucky to set up our camp and Ancient Murrelet funnels in remarkably good weather. The camp is still in good shape after the winter, and the few trees that came down in Cabin Cove missed all the major infrastructure once again
Volunteer director Keith Moore was the first to see an ANMU chick this season! It came down funnel 6 on May 11th at 12:25 am, and weighed 27 grams. With a few quick calculations, Keith learned that over the last 26 years of monitoring, May 11th is the most common night for first chick arrival. In fact, last year, our first chick was also very timely on May 11th! However, we were surprised to find that a camera lens was actually the first to catch sight of a chick in our monitoring season. At 4:49 am on the night of May 9th/ 10th, an infrared camera captured a photo of a chick in funnel 6.
The winner of our AGM gift card is...!
The winner of our 50$ MEC gift card is Carolin Margraf. Congratulations!
In case you missed some of the information that Stu Crawford talked about (it was alot of information!!!), the presentation on lichens will be available for download on this site in a jiffy! Stay tuned!
Haawa to all who attended our Annual General Meeting.
We had a successful and well attended AGM on Tuesday April 7th at the Queen Charlotte Visitors Centre. Stu Crawford came and gave an interesting presentation on Lichens of Laskeek Bay. That was followed by our directors presenting a review of 2014, our financials, acknowledgements to our supporters and partners and election/re-election of board members. We are happy to be welcoming Brad Yonkman and Dan McNeil to our board! Haawa for every one who attended, helped organize and are involved with our organization.
In order to express our gratitude, we will be drawing a 50$ MEC gift card amongst our supporters who came out to the AGM. Results will be posted here and on our Facebook tomorrow so stay tuned! The winner will be advised by phone or email.
LBCS is hiring!
Laskeek Bay Conservation Society is looking for a highly organized, self-motivated person to fill the temporary position of Field Camp Coordinator. This position is 20 hours / week for 12 weeks, based out of the LBCS office in Queen Charlotte.
Tasks include:
- Coordinating field camp logistics – scheduling people, boats, purchasing groceries and equipment management;
- Basic accounting including payroll, billing and banking;
- Responding to phone and email inquiries;
- Outreach in schools and community events
Email applications (cover letter and resume) to: laskeekbay@gmail.com
Application deadline: 5pm, Sunday March 22, 2015
Start date: April 27, 2015
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Laskeek Bay Conservation Society is looking to hire an Executive Director on a 20 hour per week basis. Duties include:
- Overall administration of the Society
- Fundraising, grant writing, and related reporting
- Project management of scientific / educational programs
- Financial management including budgeting, bookkeeping and payroll
- Organizing field camp logistics (scheduling staff, volunteers, boats, ordering food, managing equipment)
- Providing strategic advice to the board
- Working with partners, government agencies, other NGOs
- Outreach in schools and in the community
Email applications (cover letter and resume) to: laskeekbay@gmail.com
Application deadline: March 22, 2015 at 5pm
Start date: April 22, 2015
Apply for an internship!
We are seeking student interns for the upcoming field season, which starts in May and runs through to early July. LBCS is offering three 4 to 6-week field-intensive research/conservation internships from May to July, 2015. The internships include a 3 to 5-week field component at the research camp on East Limestone Island (just north of the Gwaii Hanaas boundary) and some include a 1-week stay in the Village of Queen Charlotte. Interns stay on the Island and participate in a variety of studies on birds, marine mammals and plants. For more information, please look at Internship page in the Get Involved section on our website.
We're looking for volunteers!
Looking for an amazing trip idea for this summer? Consider joining us on Limestone Island for a week between May and July! Our volunteers work alongside biologists while learning many valuable skills related to conservation and research. Learn more about the opportunity here.
If you - or your friends - are interested, be sure to get in touch with us by email or phone (250-559-2345). And, please share the opportunity and poster with friends!
Fall 2014 Newsletter
Our 2014 field season is all wrapped up! Thanks to everyone for a great 25th season of research, monitoring, conservation and education!
Highlights of this past season:
- We welcomed 19 volunteers and 104 visitors to the island including 34 students from local schools
- Ancient Murrelet chick departures were slightly lower than last season, but comparable to the 2 previous years
- No raccoons were detected on the island and we expanded our monitoring program to include other islands in LB
- We conducted Black Oystercatcher surveys in both Laskeek Bay and in Gwaii Haanas.
For details on what we’ve been up to, please find our 2014 Field Season Summary attached to this newsletter.
Our 25th season comes to a close
During the last two weeks of the season we spent most of our good-weather days out on the water scanning shorelines looking for Black Oystercatchers and stopping in to check on their eggs and chicks. Last week, we headed to Gwaii Haanas for the second BLOY survey in the Hotsprings Island area. Unfortunately, the weather was not as cooperative as it has been in the past, and we were only able to complete three days of surveying, in between southeast storms. We were able to visit 68 territories that we had visited earlier in June. Many territories now had chicks, which makes our task a little harder as the chicks are well camouflaged and can look just like rocks! We have to search the area, and watch and listen to the adult birds for clues as to where their chicks might be hiding. Before the chicks can fly, they are fed small intertidal invertebrates. We find the shells scattered on the rocks, and collect these to see what the chicks have been eating. We mostly find limpits, mussels, and chitons, but sometimes abalone and whelks. We have also been surveying the Laskeek Bay BLOY, so our days have been full of loud BLOY parents and fluffy grey chicks. On July 9th we saw our first fledged BLOY chick of the season, at the territory by Crow Valley on ELI.
A Fantastic 2014!
Our 2014 field season has come to an end. Thank you to all the volunteers, staff, service providers, funders and partners who helped make it all happen.
Come see us at the Tlell Fall Fair (August 2nd) and Edge of the World Music Festival (August 8-9-10) for news from our 25th field season and/or to participate in our fun educational activities!
Summer is off to a wet start!
Only one wildlife tree is still active with a clutch of Hairy Woodpecker chicks. Located conveniently close to the main trail in WT #149, this group of noisy chicks will likely be fledging soon, as have the other cavity nester that we monitored through May and June. A total of 14 wildlife trees were re-corded active this season. As usual, Redbreasted Sapsuckers were the dominant species (10 nests), followed by Hairy Woodpeckers (2), Chestnut-backed Chickadee (1), and Red-breasted Nuthatch (1). A Northern Flicker was seen entering a nesthole on multiple occasions in May but we never heard or saw any young
Ancient Murrelet season wraps up and Black Oystercatcher season is in full swing!
We have completed another season of Ancient Murrelet monitoring work. The last chick was weighed and sent on its way in Cabin Cove on June 2. Monitoring ended on June 4, after two nights with no chicks captured in the cabin funnels. We left the funnels set up for another week to see if we could capture any photos of late chicks using our infrared wildlife cameras, but not more chicks showed up. The total number of chicks caught and weighed in the Cabin Cove funnels this season was 112. This is fewer than last year (136), but comparable to 2012 (110) and 2011 (106).