Pigeon guillemots off Patos Island.
On Tuesday April 14 at 7 p.m., Thor Hanson, biologist and writer from Friday Harbo, will give a free public lecture on pigeon guillemots for the Orcas Island Marine Lecture Series.
The pigeon guillemot is a black-and-white seabird that spends its entire life in and around the San Juan Islands. Although this small, pigeon-like water bird has strikingly red-colored, powerful feet, it primarily uses its wings to propel itself as it dives under water to catch fish. The birds can dive up to 100 feet deep as they catch gunnels, sculpins, sand lance and smelt.
“We have nine alcid species in the region,” says Joe Gaydos, Regional Director of the SeaDoc Society, “but of all these penguin relatives, the pigeon guillemot is the only one that spends its entire bird life right here.” “It’s our bird.” Spending most of their life on the water, pigeon guillemots come ashore to nest in rock cliff crevices of cliffs or holes in sand or clay bluffs.
Most seabirds catch bill-fulls of fish and fly back to their burrows to feed their young late in the evenings. This is probably to avoid having gulls steal their catch, Gaydos explains. “Pigeon guillemots have a different strategy. They catch and transport only one fish at a time to their young which seems to work just fine; their chicks fledge faster than equivalent sized seabirds that are only fed once at night.”
To learn more about these amazing birds, the SeaDoc Society invites the public to the program, beginning at 7 p.m. at the Camp Orkila Marine Salmon Center. The lecture is free. Visitors are asked to park in the upper parking lot at Camp Orkila. Shuttle service from the parking lot to the talk is available before and after the lecture.
The 2008-2009 Marine Science Lecture Series is presented by program partners The SeaDoc Society and YMCA Camp Orkila. It has been made possible through generous sponsorship by Tom Averna (Deer Harbor Charters), Barbara Brown, The Gould Family Foundation and co-sponsorship by Shearwater Kayaks and Jim and Kathy Youngren.
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