A slug party and bird bycatch

6 min read

I was shocked to see *these* 2 animals in the song sparrow traps this week. And if it weren’t for the sunsets, rainbows, and birds of prey, I would never have gotten over the emotionally scarring experience I had with a slug. 




The weather has really been warming up, and while we had tons of great sunny days, we recently had a classic rainy day. Which begs the question: what do we do on a rainy day? We took inventory of supplies, organized, practised tying knots for the boat, and attempted data entry. You feel a little stuck and sedentary all day- my step count dropped from 20,000 to 6,000 that day. Here is something I never have to think about in my normal life: we charge our devices on the island using solar power. My laptop was dead, and it had been clouded over for so long that I wasn’t able to get any charge! However, I was NOT complaining that I got to read my book instead of doing data entry. When fieldwork slows down mid-summer, we have several years- and I swear a million pages- worth of data on sheets of paper in the cabin that we can enter into our online database.

My favourite part of the week was right at the end when I was super tired and decided to get out after dinner and play around with my camera during sunset. I sat with thousands of gulls and tried to capture their chaos. I walked up to the tallest point to see the view- just when I thought it couldn’t get much better, I turned around and saw a rainbow. It was an awesome and much-needed reminder of how great it is to spend time in nature.

Fieldwork

You know how on Animal Planet, you see male lions fighting off other males to defend ownership of a territory and the females in the pack? Well, song sparrows are tennis ball-sized versions of that! Song sparrows are extremely territorial. Male song sparrows settle in specific areas of the island we call their territories. By spring, they each have specific “song posts” they sing on and shrubs they search for food in. They establish territories by chasing away other males at song posts. Rarely birds won’t have a territory by spring; in this case, they’re called floaters. This week’s big focus was finding the floater that has been zipping around the island. By looking at his band combination and our data, we figured out he was a 1-year-old, and this is his first spring establishing a territory- not off to a good start. Luckily at the end of this week, we noticed he had finally settled down! That’s a total of 13 males to 1 female…. Jeez.

Male Song Sparrow singing on his song post

(Side note: this is a decline from last year’s 3 females)

We also set up traps and nets to catch song and fox sparrows. We are constantly re-measuring birds to fact-check any variation in a researcher’s measurements and measurements between researchers. From my experience with the traps and nets, we mostly just catch sparrows…. But this time, we caught 2 animals we DID NOT mean to catch.

The accidental catch in the trap

There’s only one type of mammal on this island. Can you think of what it could be? At around 8 am, I went to check a trap for birds, and as I approached it, I heard movement- indicating something was trapped inside the cage. I was so excited and bent down to see what we got and was SHOCKED to see a mouse in the trap. How interesting that it was out searching for food in the morning! They are much bolder this year; I see them running around the stove and countertops every night in the cabin. The cool winter could have reduced some of their food supply. In order to let her out, I had to duck into a bush and pull out the cage. She would not stop running around and nibbling on the liner. She ran right up to my hands whenever I tried to open the door. It was all so unexpected, so it took me a few seconds to find the courage to open the door. As soon as that door opened, she took off.

Admittedly, she was a cute mouse, but I was a little freaked out by how she kept running by my hand

The accidental catch in the net

We set up a net to catch single male sparrows. My coworker, Ebba, asked, “Do the blackbirds ever go into the nets?” I quickly responded, “No, never.” Sure enough, an hour later, I saw a blackbird viciously trying to escape the net. I’m used to holding smaller birds. Blackbirds are at least double the size of song sparrows. Their bites and kicks were also much stronger – and more painful than sparrows’. I snapped a quick pic before untangling him because those colours are so gorgeous, especially up close! A cool thing about male red-winged blackbirds is that they can choose whether to display these coloured feathers and usually do it while singing.



Banana. Slugs. Are. Everywhere. Admittedly they are cool creatures to look at, but sharing an island with them is an entirely different story. The species has only been resident on the island for 5 years. How did they get here? No idea. They’re active in the dewy mornings, cool evenings and rainy days. The rain recently has made each day a full-on slug party. They cover the grassy trails making it really difficult not to step on them. A coworker and I coined “slug anxiety”: The fear of stepping on a slug. They are some of the largest slugs in the world, and it’s a horrible, slippery feeling when one accidentally gets squished under your boot. Not only are they on the ground- they maneuver their lumpy bodies up thin tree branches, they sneak into the bird traps for seed; one was even crawling on the wall beside me while I was in the outhouse the other day. But by far, my WORST experience with a slug was a face-to-face encounter. I was walking down the trail, and Ebba yelled, “Oh my God”! I turned quickly and followed her gaze. Between us, a slug was hanging at face level by its own slime from a branch above us. It was swinging back and forth because – Ebba informed me- I had just run straight into it! Luckily, I was wearing a hat. Here’s a slug fact for you: they have a long tongue covered in about 27,000 teeth. Now it makes sense how they manage to eat literally everything!

Just around face level: I ran right into this slug hanging from its own slime

Adult and juvenile eagles have been making regular appearances on the island. The gulls are incredible indicators of when an eagle is nearby. In an attempt to avoid depredation, all the gulls mob the eagle. They are extremely loud and seem to chase eagles as they hover around, looking for chicks. I’ve grown such an appreciation for how impressive eagles are. I’m always remarking on the size of chunky gulls compared to tennis ball sparrows. But the gulls are nothing compared to eagles with wingspans up to 8ft long!

A bald eagle stole everyone’s favourite perch
Gulls mobbing a bald eagle

“We don’t inherit earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children”

-chief seattle

Last Updated on July 8, 2023 by Megan Duchesne