Critter Geek
Scientists on the Farallones
On Thursday night we went to the first Third Thursdays Speaker Series talk at Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO). Thursday’s talk was PRBO and the Farallon Islands: Four decades of marine research and conservation, given by Russ Bradley, a PRBO Farallon Biologist. Bradley spends 17 weeks a year on the islands, 28 miles west of San Francisco, studying seabird population ecology.
The talk covered everything from an overview of animal species present on the island to some of the human history, including interesting bits about the lives of the researchers who inhabit it today. We learned that there’s a really delightful blog kept by PRBO staff on the island, Los Farallones. And we saw troubling graphs that illustrate recent breeding failures for birds like Cassin’s Auklets. (See related story from the Point Reyes Light.)
You can bet we’ll follow the Los Farallones blog, and look forward to more Third Thursdays. Next month is Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird From Extinction by John Moir, author of the book of the same name.
I had no idea they had houses out there
There are houses, but it’s pretty barren! During the times when the island was more inhabited, people tried to plant it with trees, but only three have survived — the ones on the sheltered sides of the buildings. The second photo on this page shows you what that looks like.