I have a goal for this season to be considered a success. Part of that goal is to find the nests for the birds Garrett and I saw in Chile. When we were there in January, we were trying to find the birds that have been banded on my study plots to get data on them on the non-breeding grounds. The goal was to see as many green flags as we could. Now I want the opposite. For those birds I got data on in Chile, I want their nests and all the data that comes with a nest, and I want them bad.
We saw 6 AK banded Godwits in Chile. We’ve seen almost all of them here in Alaska again - through resights. Best of all, we’ve found one of their nests!
Male 1PE was seen in Chile on the 15th of January at Caulin - a major site for non-breeding godwits in the northern part of the island. It was a site we had surveyed before but never felt like we had gotten good looks at all the birds before something would flush them away. We found ourselves with an extra day to scan in the northern part of the island (the tides were going to keep us from getting to the bay off the island that I wanted to survey that day), so we decided to survey Caulin again. We sure we’re glad we did!
That day the tides worked in our favor - there was a very small change between high and low tides so the birds stayed close to us. We got good looks at higher numbers of godwits that day and walking around the edge of the water was 1PE. our last day of surveys had paid off.
The reason I want the nests so bad for those birds I saw in Chile has to do with a hypothesis called seasonal carry-over effects. The hypothesis is simple - events that occur in one stage of the annual cycle will influence the following stage - hence seasonal carry-over effects because one season will carry over to the next. It makes intuitive sense, but it’s proved difficult to test. For instance, a migratory bird gets grounded by a big storm on its way north. It arrives late to the breeding grounds. Now the event during migration pretty clearly will influence the breeding season. Since it arrived late all the preferred habitats could be filled already and it will have to breed in subpar habitat or there won’t be a good condition mate or even if you get a territory and mate your nest may hatch too late and the seasonal food peak will have passed already.
The classic example actually comes from the American Redstart project Garrett and I worked on. They’ve shown that makes that winter in the less preferred habitat with less food depart for the breeding grounds later in poorer condition and that affects their reproductive success. It’s the classic study but it was done with some correlative work and remote genetic-like analyses. They didn’t actually follow those males to the breeding grounds.
Paragraph explains seasonal carry over effects
I’m in a unique position because I know where my breeding birds spend our winters. There are only a handful of other systems that can say that (though as technology keeps getting smaller, cheaper, and more robust this will change quickly). I’m trying to test the hypothesis by tracking individuals and building full annual cycle models with the data from the nest, the adult’s body condition, their survival, and the data from Chile. Without the nest I lose half of that.
A few days ago, I captured 1PE on the nest ( more on that later hopefully). Appropriately, Garrett was helping me that day with captures - everyone has a chance to come out with me and learn some new things and take a break from area searching for nests - but Garrett was the one who spotted 1PE in Chile. So, we reminisced on our Chile trip - how good it was to see 1PE down south, that bay and day, funny stories and complaining about the food - as we took standard measurements to compute body condition and fixed his color band that had fallen off. It was nice that we both got a chance to see him up close and wish him another good migration. As the woodpecker crew at Hastings always say after they band birds - Live long and prosper!
Update. Since I started writing this post I confirmed (by capturing) that we have the nests of two other males seen in Chile! CX who was seen once at Ten Ten near Castro and EA who was repeatedly seen at Pullao - arguably one of the most important sites for godwits on the island. That’s three hopefully we can the others soon - out nests are starting to hatch!
We saw 6 AK banded Godwits in Chile. We’ve seen almost all of them here in Alaska again - through resights. Best of all, we’ve found one of their nests!
Male 1PE was seen in Chile on the 15th of January at Caulin - a major site for non-breeding godwits in the northern part of the island. It was a site we had surveyed before but never felt like we had gotten good looks at all the birds before something would flush them away. We found ourselves with an extra day to scan in the northern part of the island (the tides were going to keep us from getting to the bay off the island that I wanted to survey that day), so we decided to survey Caulin again. We sure we’re glad we did!
That day the tides worked in our favor - there was a very small change between high and low tides so the birds stayed close to us. We got good looks at higher numbers of godwits that day and walking around the edge of the water was 1PE. our last day of surveys had paid off.
The reason I want the nests so bad for those birds I saw in Chile has to do with a hypothesis called seasonal carry-over effects. The hypothesis is simple - events that occur in one stage of the annual cycle will influence the following stage - hence seasonal carry-over effects because one season will carry over to the next. It makes intuitive sense, but it’s proved difficult to test. For instance, a migratory bird gets grounded by a big storm on its way north. It arrives late to the breeding grounds. Now the event during migration pretty clearly will influence the breeding season. Since it arrived late all the preferred habitats could be filled already and it will have to breed in subpar habitat or there won’t be a good condition mate or even if you get a territory and mate your nest may hatch too late and the seasonal food peak will have passed already.
The classic example actually comes from the American Redstart project Garrett and I worked on. They’ve shown that makes that winter in the less preferred habitat with less food depart for the breeding grounds later in poorer condition and that affects their reproductive success. It’s the classic study but it was done with some correlative work and remote genetic-like analyses. They didn’t actually follow those males to the breeding grounds.
Paragraph explains seasonal carry over effects
I’m in a unique position because I know where my breeding birds spend our winters. There are only a handful of other systems that can say that (though as technology keeps getting smaller, cheaper, and more robust this will change quickly). I’m trying to test the hypothesis by tracking individuals and building full annual cycle models with the data from the nest, the adult’s body condition, their survival, and the data from Chile. Without the nest I lose half of that.
A few days ago, I captured 1PE on the nest ( more on that later hopefully). Appropriately, Garrett was helping me that day with captures - everyone has a chance to come out with me and learn some new things and take a break from area searching for nests - but Garrett was the one who spotted 1PE in Chile. So, we reminisced on our Chile trip - how good it was to see 1PE down south, that bay and day, funny stories and complaining about the food - as we took standard measurements to compute body condition and fixed his color band that had fallen off. It was nice that we both got a chance to see him up close and wish him another good migration. As the woodpecker crew at Hastings always say after they band birds - Live long and prosper!
Update. Since I started writing this post I confirmed (by capturing) that we have the nests of two other males seen in Chile! CX who was seen once at Ten Ten near Castro and EA who was repeatedly seen at Pullao - arguably one of the most important sites for godwits on the island. That’s three hopefully we can the others soon - out nests are starting to hatch!