Point Blue

Life and times of Morfydd and her weaner

One of the many joys of living on the Farallon Islands during the winter season is following the day to day lives of our northern elephant seals during their time hauled out. When I arrived midway through the season, things were in full swing and cows and pups already littered the beaches. It took me

Adopt an Auklet!!

The Farallon Gallery

The Farallon Gallery Peruse the archive of this blog and you’ll quickly realize the importance of the research done by Point Blue, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and their partners here at Farallon National Wildlife Refuge. Like everyone lucky enough to visit the Farallones, I am continually awestruck by the abundance

Going Pro with Pinnipeds

To me, it seems unfair to only experience the elephant seal world while they are hauled out on land. They spend the majority of their life in a completely different medium: water. While on land, elephant seals seem awkward, clunky, bulky, strange, sluggish, and silly, but in the water they are beautiful and possess a

Island Entomology

Mike Valainis and Bret Robinson, SJSU Entomology students My name is Bret Robinson and I am a graduate student at San Jose State University. I have been taking multiple boat trips out to the bone, guano, and insect covered South East Farallon Island for almost a year now. I, along with Mike Valainis – another

Farallonathon Wrap-up

Day 2 (Oct 5th) – The day after our big wave, we awoke to fairly gusty east winds. Although east winds do not typically bring large numbers of birds, they can bring interesting birds that don’t normally cross large bodies of water. So we were hoping for raptors, especially for a hawk or an eagle.

Farallonathon update for Day 1 – The Big Wave

The Farallonathon kicked off this year with a bang on Friday, October 4th. Although we were going to start our week-long bio-blitz fundraiser this day anyway, we did not anticipate that ten knot winds out of the west combined with 60 miles of visibility would produce one of the largest bird waves of the decade.

Farallonathon is ON!!!

It’s Bird-A-Thon season at Point Blue Conservation Science – our biggest fundraiser. On the Farallones, we count all of the animals we find including birds, fish, marine mammals, insects, and any other wildlife. We even assign points for rare and interesting wildlife events such as shark attacks and birds never before seen on the Farallones.

A Dependency on Glass

As some of you may or may not know, we seabird biologists here on SEFI tend to spend a lot of our time working in the various blinds around the island. For a quick description on the different blinds around the island, check out this blog post from 2007. What do we do in these

What do gulls eat?

Western Gulls. Photo: RJ Roush ‘Much that is good and all that is evil has gathered itself up into the Western Gull.…cruel of beak and bottomless of maw…this gull asks only two question of any other living thing: First, “Am I hungry?” (Ans. “Yes”) Second, “Can I get away with it?” (Ans. “I’ll try).’ So

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