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Winter Whales Linger On

While the winter season here at Southeast Farallon Island usually focuses on the soap-opera-esque, high stakes drama of elephant seal pupping and mating season, there are many other marine mammals that utilize the high productivity and unique location of the Farallon islands in their ocean travels.   These islands are a regular stopover for other seals

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Blue-footed Booby Invasion Finds The Farallones

On August 25th, some tourists visiting the east side of the Sierras took a photograph of a strange bird on the shoreline of Mono Lake. Later that day, they showed it to Max Henkels, an intern who was leading a bird walk for the Mono Lake Committee. He immediately recognized the bird in the photograph

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Bird Photography: Beyond Just the Subject

Words by RJ Roush Over the last three and a half months I’ve spent on the Southeast Farallon Islands I have had countless opportunities to take amazing photographs and have done my best to take advantage of all of them. With all life and death on the island I feel like I could spend an

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Lighthouses and Migrants

For the first few decades that PRBO worked on the Farallones, a powerful rotating light on the lighthouse acted as a beacon to lost ships, birds, and bats.  An analysis of 38 years of hoary bat arrivals on the island revealed that nights during the dark phases of the moon had a greater likelihood of

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Another Fogged-in Day On The Farallones

Our 2012 Fall crew is just getting settled in here on Southeast Farallon Island.  After two weeks, September has arrived, and so have lots of migrating landbirds, shorebirds, and even our first shark attack of the fall! As you might have guessed, we have had some fairly foggy weather up to this point, (socked in

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What is that MUSKY smell?

SEFI is bustling with many smells… the fragrance of blooming weeds, the fetid whiff of marine mammals, the ambrosial scents of a Sunday brunch, the putrid smells of seabird guano, the tantalizing aroma of Jen’s fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, and many more. But, of all the myriad smells we experience daily on this island, my

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