There's Work to Be Done!

 Being a relief eco-guardian at Race Rocks comes with a few responsibilities. There are two houses (the eco-guardian's residence and the student/researcher house), and several accessory buildings including a generator building, desalinator, and others that house the equipment needed to run the island. Of course there's also a lighthouse tower, but that is primarily the responsibility of the Federal government. There is always something that needs to be monitored, cleaned, or fixed.

Student/Reseach house on the left, eco-guardian's house on the right.

Keeping the power going is one of the main duties when you stay on the island.  This is a combination of keeping your electrical consumption low, ensuring that the solar panels are clean, topping up the batteries about once a week, and running the generator when necessary. There is a monitoring app on the computer, so it's easy to keep an eye on things, but you need to remember to check it regularly. The houses don't have any high-energy appliances like microwaves or electric tea kettles, but you need to run the generator to operate the desalinator and the washer/dryer. The eco-guardian before me filled up the water tanks, so I didn't have to learn desalination techniques, but I did get a chance to top up the huge batteries that keep the lights and other power going on the island.  Let the voltage drop too low, and everything shuts down!  Just like new electric vehicle owners have range anxiety, I will admit to having voltage anxiety for the first few days, but by the end of the week, I felt I had a pretty good handle on how the batteries were doing.

Batteries need to be topped up with distilled water every week.

Once a week, the eco-guardian conducts a general census of wildlife in the area. The best way to get a look at the seals and sea lions on the surrounding islets is to go to the top of the lighthouse, and if the wind is calm, outside the light room through a small door in the wall. The view is spectacular!

Great views of the islets where marine mammals haul out!

Looking down the spiral staircase in the tower.

Counting moving objects is always a challenge, so with hundreds of gulls, a little "clicker" is handy. The census lasts the entire day and sightings of passing marine mammals get added to the list. 

General cleanliness is an important consideration, too. You are walking through droppings everywhere you go, so you really don't want to be tracking that through the houses.  Despite being more or less a wilderness location, it's also a "shoes-off" situation before going into the living quarters in the houses, which are very clean and pleasant!

Main living area in the eco-guardian's house

Every bedroom has a view!

And then there's the composting toilet. Needless to say, there is no septic tank or sewer system on Race Rocks. The composting toilets mean that you can have indoor "plumbing" without having indoor plumbing, so that's a big plus. The eco-guardian's house has a state of the art toilet with two chambers: one for liquid and another primed with peat moss and sawdust for solids. Virtually no odor, which is amazing. But what goes in, must come out, and that means that it really is more like a high-tech chamber pot rather than an outhouse (that someone else gets to clean!) This translates to at least a couple of trips outside a week to deal with the contents.

The toilet even has a crank to mix the solids for faster composting.

Outside, the windows are washed frequently, and the siding periodically. Windy days definitely pepper the buildings with flying gull droppings. I made a little thermoplastic scraper to get some of more stuck poop off the solar panels and windows. 

Thermoplastics can be molded into any number of useful objects in a place like this!

A gas-powered washer is used for the siding and the sidewalks--tasks that I didn't have to do during my stay. 

This side of the house really bears the brunt of the westerly winds.

Strategically, waiting for the nesting gulls to leave and the rains to come makes sense for cleaning the sidewalks

Other responsibilities include making a daily weather report to Pedder Bay early in the morning. While there is equipment to tell you the speed and direction of the wind, and some standards for visibility, you have to make a judgement call on the "sea state" or intensity of the waves.  I had to look this one up!  There is an official scale that requires you to estimate the height of the waves from a good distance.  I really didn't feel confident about that, but felt pretty good about an alternative system I came up with:

1. Looks good out there!

2. Hmmm...  I wouldn't go out in that

3. Are you kidding me?

4. Don't expect me to come and get you. I'm not even looking...

Etc. 

Just kidding!  Thankfully, the sea state at dawn the rest of the week was calm, a description that I could manage.

How would you describe this sea state?

There were no students or researchers on the island when I was there, but in addition to cleaning the windows, I managed to find another task over there. With all the gulls and other wildlife on the island, we've already determined that there is a fair amount of excrement. As with any colonies, there are also nest failures, injuries and other reasons that some of the birds don't make it. With all of this organic debris, there are also a lot of flies, and when you go into a building, you can easily let a few in. Over time, the numbers can build. Fly strips catch the unlucky, but I was looking for more immediate gratification.  Armed with a trusty hand vacuum, I went flybusting!  Surprisingly, this is a catch and release program.  The flies are amazingly resilient, and a small whirly ride doesn't seem to have any effect on them.  I roamed from window to window and caught all that I could before restoring them to a more nutrient-rich habitat.

Catch and release flies!

At the end of the day, the eco-guardians are encouraged to write a blog post. It doesn't always happen, and it can take quite a bit of time to do if you've foolishly taken hundreds of pictures to go through! My official eco-guardian posts can be found for the week of Aug 7-13 here:  https://racerocks.ca/category/ecoguardians-log/

Another amazing sunset at Race Rocks.

Life among the Gulls

Note: for a day by day report on my stay on Race Rocks, please visit the official Ecoguardian Log.

There is no question who is in charge of Race Rocks in mid-August. It's the colony of Glaucous-winged Gulls. Given the age of most of the offspring, I can only imagine what it must be like in mid-July.

Glaucous-winged Gull defending turf.

One day, I walked around the main island with a clicker, and individually counted more than 640 Glaucous-winged Gulls on the ground. This would mean that there were easily more than 700 present given that many were out gathering food. While we're not talking a lot of diversity here, I was privileged to get a chance to learn a lot more about their behaviour. 

The adults were mostly still in pairs defending territories, some of which were in very inconvenient places--like the main sidewalk. It was really interesting watching the bonding behaviours of the pairs, even those with no chicks. They made me think of mini-albatrosses! Many of the pairs had from 1 to 3 chicks which they vigorously defended.  This gull was guarding one chick. Every time I walked down the sidewalk, it would threaten me, but only from behind. If I turned and looked at it, it would look away as if it hadn't been doing anything. It became a bit of a game over the course of the week.

Looking nonchalant now, this gull would charge me from behind every time I walked down the sidewalk.

Great Race is a small island, approximately 4.5 acres in area. The density of gulls, even in mid-August means that there is a lot of bickering, some more bluster than bite, but some quite serious.  Adults will viciously attack other gulls, even chicks, that cross the imaginary lines of their territories. Some of the attacks are lethal. I found it quite interesting that there were fully flighted young gulls as well as a few that were very young. I even found a random egg one night that was gone a couple days later. While I did my best to not disturb them, basically any movement would set the off, and just like dogs howling in a neighbourhood, a good portion of them would start yelling. 

Gull youngsters checking out an Elephant Seal in THEIR territory.

The youngsters all had their secret hiding spaces, so if you moved slowly enough, they'd run and tuck in while their parents came after you. 

One young gull had figured out that it could swim. It's the only one I saw in the water, but it went swimming every day.

Where there are gulls, there is gull excrement, and plenty of it. Keeping the solar panels clean was a priority, as they provide a good amount of the energy for the island.  Depending on the wind, the windows of the buildings became the landing places for what the birds dropped. 

The whole side of the house was splattered. My job was to keep the windows clean. The rest would be handled by occasional powerwashing.

Most of the solar panels had bird spikes to discourage roosting, but some of the birds were clever enough to figure out how to deal with them.

"I got this."

Can you see the band on the gull above?  For the full story, check out the Race Rocks Ecoguardian Log for August 12.

One of the most entertaining things was to watch the older chicks learning to fly. Watch a video here.

In addition to the Glaucous-winged Gull colony, on several mornings, California Gulls were present in the hundreds, feasting on krill that was in the area. Most had moved on by mid-morning, leaving only several dozen on the perimeter of the island.  They were smart enough not to enter the breeding colony.

Most days, there were also one or more Heermann's Gulls in the mix, and the occasional Herring Gull, but I wasn't able to find anything more unusual, despite picking through the flocks frequently.

Breeding will soon be over, just in time for the arrival of hundreds of seals!

An Adventure Close to Home!

 I have been fortunate to be able to visit some very remote places such as Antarctica and Attu. Over the years, I've had the privilege of working on restricted lands managed by the Department of National Defence and others. This week I'm having a wish fulfilled by getting to spend a week at another place that few have been. I am on Race Rocks, within spitting distance (if you are a very, very proficient spitter) of Rocky Point Bird Observatory's Rocky Point site. 

As luck would have it (and I am a firm believer in luck), I found out that they were looking for a relief Eco-guardian for a week. Emails sent, zoom meeting held, paperwork filed, and here I am! That island that we look at daily from Rocky Point is my home for the week, and I have been encouraged to share some of my experiences.

Greg Dickinson (Pearson College) and Garry Fletcher brought me to Race Rocks on the Second Nature on Saturday, August 7. After a quick tour of the facilities, instructions on the duties of the Eco-guardian, and the handing over of the Standard Operating Procedures binder, Greg, Garry and the previous relief Eco-guardian's group all got aboard the Second Nature and headed away, leaving me with gulls, Pigeon Guillemots and a very large male Elephant Seal. 

Garry Fletcher and Greg Dickinson

It was pretty windy the first afternoon and evening as I got used to my surroundings.  By far the most numerous and messiest residents are the Glaucous-winged Gulls.  Several of them are still raising their young, and are fiercely protective. Be careful where you walk!  Everyone tries to be as careful as possible to not disrupt the birds, but you literally can't go from one point to another without causing agitation. As noted by previous relief Eco-guardian Joan Rosenberg, if young gulls tread into another bird's territory, it is likely to be attacked by one or more adults, so you have to work hard to not scare them out of their own turf.

Very young Glaucous-winged Gulls

There are several buildings on Race Rocks: The Eco-guardian's house (3 bedrooms, everything you need in the house), the student/researcher house (2 bunk rooms plus a single room for the teacher), and several outbuildings for things like the generator, desalination equipment,  winch control, workshop, and boathouse. Power is supplied by a large array of solar panels and a diesel generator. Water is supplied by the desalination plant. Oh yeah, and there's a lighthouse!  One of my forays the first afternoon was to the top of the tower. 110 stairs from ground and then a short ladder through a door in the floor of the lamp room.  It's got a 360 degree view, but not much room to move around.  There's also a small door to go outside, but it's been sufficiently windy when I've been up there that I haven't tried that adventure yet.

Student/researcher residence

The last few steps to the top

The Eco-guardian's residence from the top of the tower

Here are a few of the things a relief Eco-guardian does:

Wash windows and solar panels daily (did I mention there are a LOT of gulls?)

Solar panels on the generator building.  I discovered another array towards the water from this building!

Manage the power level requirements by running the generator as needed.

Write a daily blog post for http://racerocks.com

Monitor boat activity around the ecological reserve , warning boats of infractions (mostly getting too close to the wildlife)

One of many vessels in the reserve on Sunday.

Census the animals and birds on the islands

The full-time Eco-guardians have other longer-term tasks they do as well, including programs with Pearson College students.

Of course, the birder in me is hoping that some rare bird might stop by. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed for that one.  If it did, it's likely that one of the gulls would see it as a nice light snack--unless it was something big like a pelican or booby.

Along with the gulls, there are good numbers of Pigeon Guillemots here.  So far, all have been adults, and they gather in groups of up to 40 on various spots on the island. But I have seen one sneaking a fish into a crevice, so it is possible that they are still nesting. I'm not surprised if few of the chicks on the island survive the Gluttonous-wily Gulls.

Pigeon Guillemots

Gotta love those red boots!

There are also a number of shorebirds: Black Oystercatcher, Black Turnstone, Surfbirds and both Western and Least Sandpipers have been here over the weekend. 

Black Oystercatcher chick and bodyguard

The most dominant mammal on the island is the Elephant Seal.  He lies wherever he wants, and right now that is adjacent to the sidewalk. More on him in my next post.  California Sea Lions, Steller's (Northern) Sea Lions and many Harbour Seals also come ashore on the main island, but for the most part can be found on the various islets of Race Rocks.

Molting male Elephant Seal

I am here just until Friday.  There will be others coming to do work on the island in the next few days, so most of my alone time will be in the early mornings and later in the day, but getting to experience living out here by myself for the first few days has been pretty amazing! The window/solar panel washing takes a fair amount of time, and I'm just working out the best way to allocate that so that I can spend more time looking out to sea! More to follow!