Hurricane's Hummingbirds

I first started noticing these ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) feeding on a large patch of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) in early September. This species of hummingbird beats its wings about 53 times a second and weighs between 2-6 grams (for comparison, 2 nickels weigh 10 grams). You can read more about hummingbirds here.

Check out this computer simulation of a hummingbird in flight, the red indicates vortices of air. Haoxiang Luo, a professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt, built this simulation from slow motion videos of the hummingbirds flying. This cool science blog from NPR talks more about this simulation and how hummingbirds fly.

Tracking Lobster Movement Through Traps

Lizzie's GoPro setup

Lizzie Morris, an undergraduate student majoring in neuroscience at Middlebury College, stepped out of the traditional bounds of her major and dove headfirst into the world of lobsters as our inaugural summer intern on Hurricane. Using our demonstration lobster traps, Lizzie captured and marked both sublegal- and legal-size lobsters and staged them in a monitoring trap rigged with GoPro video cameras in order to track their movement and intraspecies trap dynamics over a two-hour deployment off Hurricane’s pier. Lizzie poured over hours of video footage and found that there was a lot of trap traffic-- a surprisingly high number of lobsters (both sublegal- and legal-size) staged in each test round were able to escape the traps within two hours. Two hours was also enough time to attract new entrants, mostly sublegal females. Her summer concluded with more questions and possible avenues for this experiment, and we are excited to turn this pilot study into a longer-term project that involves our participants in the future!

Citizen Science

There are tons of citizen science initiatives in the world, but I wanted to highlight a few that are particularly a) cool, and b) relevant to coastal Maine. 

Project Noah The premise of Project Noah is to create an online community of amateur naturalists who report their "spottings"  via a simple online form that includes the date spotted, location, a photograph, and any additional description or anecdotal information the spotter wishes to share. I have created a profile, and have been uploading spottings from around Hurricane this summer if you'd like to check it out. Project Noah also has a "missions" feature where you cater the spottings for a particular cause. 

eBird eBird is an initiative put on by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (an organization that has created a myriad of other citizen science initiatives as well) that encourages amateur naturalists to submit bird sightings. What is REALLY COOL about the data that you submit is that it helps Cornell create these "occurrence maps" showing different birds movements across the US over the course of the year. Check our this white-throated sparrow occurrence map.

GoBotany GoBotany is a New England online plant field guide which has an incredible database and dichotomous key to help you identify an unfamiliar plant.  Within this website there is a feature called plant share, where you can upload and track your plant sightings. To be honest, I am more of a generalist, and prefer Project Noah's easy upload format, but if you are strictly into botany, this is your site.

Hurricane Past and Present

I thought it would be fun to take a look at a few before and after shots of Hurricane Island. Check them out!

This historic photo was taken of Hurricane's main pier, which we still use as the main pier today. I was able to locate this image based on the unique joints in the granite ledge in the foreground. This photo is taken looking down the hill from the classroom to the Galley

It is pretty cool to recognize distinct large granite boulders around the island when looking at old photographs--can you figure out which rock I used in this picture to place the historic image? What major thing do you notice that has changed in the landscape from then and now?

You can read more about Hurricane Island's history here.

Algae on the Ice Pond

Well, I've finally taken the time to do some time-lapse photography of the algae blooms that grow, change colors, and shift on the ice pond.  Check it out: 

Time lapse footage of algae being blown across the surface of the Ice Pond on Hurricane Island, Vinalhaven, Maine.