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Well as more and more snow melts the more visitors I get. Today I got home from work and was getting ready to go for a run with Coho (the dog) when two very large moose just sauntered through my front yard! So to give you an idea of how large moose are... I could of limboed under them. I mean seriously we are talking some big creatures. (see moose next to greenhouse photo) Then yesterday a friend and I were coming back to my place after dinner when we saw momma brown bear and her cub chilling in Resurrection River! It was pretty awesome!!! Lets just hope they don't want to pay me a visit.
So this past Tuesday I went to Anchorage with Tasha so that I could drop her off at the airport and buy myself a car. Well ladies and gentlemen I introduce you to the Marshmallow Mobile! It is a 93 Ford Escort Wagon with under 100,000 miles on it. It made the 2.5 hour drive from Anchorage to Seward without any problems. So far it seems to be serving its purpose so I can't complain to much. Plus I got the guy to knock $250 off the price so again no complaints!
Well its been almost 3 weeks since I arrived in Alaska so I figured it was time to start filling everyone in on what’s been going on. I am living with my friends Tasha and Chuck and their amazing dog Coho! Tasha and I work together in the Avian Department at the SeaLife Center. They have a very cute cabinesque home slightly outside of town. So it’s a 3-mile bike ride to work. On the yucky days we drive in but with gas prices at $4.60 a gallon and rising its tough to make the justification sometimes. The people in my department are very nice. There is Heidi who is the Curator, then there is Tasha who is Senior Aviculturist, Gwen is the level 2 Aviculturist, Nicki and myself and level 1 Aviculturist's. Then we have Sadie who is a very awesome girl who is our Americorp volunteer and works out on Eiders with me a lot. We also have Keri who is out Seasonal Aviculturist, Kelsey who is our Avian Intern and lastly there is Janice who is from Australia and is volunteering with me on Eiders for the next two months. So that’s the whole crew. Currently, I have over two dozen Spectacled Eider eggs and about 5 Stellar Eider eggs. Right now most of the Spec. eggs have gone into incubation so in about a month I will have ducklings. So a quick play by play of my day goes as follows... Come in to work around 8am, meet in the office to get on overview of the plans for the day, head out to the Eider research area and check on the birds as well as look for any new eggs. If there are eggs I pull them for measurements and labeling. Once that’s done its food prep time followed by cleaning pens and pools. That takes me to about 11:30-12:00pm. After lunch I go back out to check on the birds and depending on the day depends on what I do. Lately, I have had some meetings as well as reorganizing the lab so I know where everything is. I also have been setting up cameras on some of the pens so I can observe the birds from inside the lab. So I think that about covers it. I miss the east coast and everyone from back home and I look forward to seeing everyone again. Cheers!
en over a month since I moved to Alaska and things have been moving right along. Last weekend was the summer solstice which is fairly traumatic here in Alaska. With the Solstice being our longest day it also means that Winter is not too far off. Since we are so far North we are actually able to notice just how rapidly we start to lose light. Anyway, this also marked the return of Tasha from the field. (yay!) I unfortunately was unable to attend the weekend festivities because I had work. I was also supposed to have 6 Spectacled Eider ducklings hatch. Unfortunately things did not go according to plan. We lost 2 ducklings early on, about a week before they were supposed to hatch. Then we slowly
started seeing issues with the remaining 4 and unfortunately none of them were able to hatch and survive. This is unfortunate on many levels specifically because I now won't have babies til mid-July and it throws a wrench into the research project. The SPEC. babies were supposed to be the baseline for a study that is going to take place next summer. The only slightly bit of good news is that since there are no ducklings I finally got a weekend which meant sleep and good times! Yesterday I went on a float trip down the Kenai River. Gwen (a fellow co-worker) and I drove to Cooper Landing about 45min from Seward and not only went rafting but found the Sun! It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny and quite the relief from the very persistent rain and chilly weather Seward has been having. The trip was great! We saw a momma 
Merganser and her babies, Harlequins, Gulls, a Kingfisher, a couple Bald Eagles and of course a big old brown bear. There is some fantastic Salmon fishing on the Kenai and so people do something called Combat Fishing. This is when tons of fishermen stand about 3 feet apart and fish along miles of the river. It is a ridiculous sight to see and of course an excellent place to see Bears. After our trip we headed back to Seward briefly stopping at Tern Lake to see Momma Loon with her baby. Later that night we had an office boat party on our boss' boat. It was a sloppy good time for all involved!
