MSI Update!! The 2024 crew arrived in mid May for an exiting and productive field season at MSI! To date, we have been working hard checking puffin and razor burrows, murre caves and monitoring our Arctic tern nests!! The season has been fruitful so far with chicks coming soon

Here’s a few crew fav pics from the season so far! #seabirds #puffins #birds #ecology #razorbill

It’s been quite sunny here at MSI the last four days. We think the puffins miss the rain and wind! Here’s a video from our last rainy day! #puffin #seabirds #oceans

The season is ramping up!! The crews been hard at work checking burrows for early signs of razorbill and puffin eggs hatching!! We got our first chicks earlier this week with many more to come! #puffin #razorbill #seabirds

When we’re in the blind resighting birds we often hear the tip taps of puffins and razorbills on the roof! Here’s a visual of what looks like 🐧😂 Quite curious little birds aren’t they?! #puffin #seabirds #razorbill #MSI

It’s called Machias SEAL island for a reason! Aside from the awesome birds here we have some wonderful seals that will often follow us around the island making sure we’re not up to any funny business. Check out this funny grey seal peeping!🦭🦭 #seal #greyseal #marinemammals

Sunsets at MSI😍😍 Nothing beats a puffin in the evening light! #seabird #puffins #razorbills #MSI

Chick update!! Some of our lovely Razorbill chicks are getting so big so fast!! They’ve turned from adorable chicks to squealing little ostrich dinosaur things🤣 The crews been hard at work measuring and banding these guys before they leave us and hit the open ocean 🌊 #birds

MSI chicks have been growing and growing! Food thus far has been steady and many of our razorbill and murre chicks are in the process of fledging!! The puffin chicks are also steadily growing, however heavy rainfall in the past week may lower our survival rates:( #MSI #seabirds

Sometimes we have to come up with clever solutions to keep the chicks cool🥶 Today we provided the murre chicks with some shade using a portable blind while we banded and measured them!😅 For many, it’s the last we’ll see of them before they fledge!Good luck murres! #seabirds

WOAH! Our puffin chicks have grown a FAST! Today we banded our very first puffin chicks of the season!!! So exiting! These guys will continue to grow and leave the island soon! We hope to band and measure many more in the coming weeks as they prepare to fledge!! #puffin #sea

Today we happened to grub a 27 year old puffin banded as a chick in 1997!! If you’re ever wondering what a 27 year old band looks like, here ya go! (We replaces the old worn out band with a new one!)

Night work fun! In the coming days the crew will be spending lots of time out at night to collect blood samples from 20 Atlantic puffins! The samples collected from this work is part of a larger collaborative project! All birds/samples are handled/taken under approved permits.

WOAH! Our puffin chicks are getting big!! This guy is ready to leave! Soon we’ll be staying up and catching fledgers to measure and band before they go out to sea! We can wait! #seabirds #puffin #ocean

Our puffin chicks are fledging!! Here on the island we’ll find puffin chicks at night that come up to our grassy areas! We measure & band them then send them on their way closer to the ocean! It’s remarkable to see them take their first steps out to sea! #seabirds #puffins

And just like that the 2024 field season comes to an end!! It’s been an AMAZING summer here at MSI and we can’t wait for next year! We collected valuable data that will contribute to several projects within the lab and with collaborators! Till next time MSI We’ll be back soon;)

Congrats Quinn Carvey, ALAR - Atlantic laboratory for Avian Research & colleagues on their recent publication in Conservation Genetics! link.springer.com/article/10.100… #Puffins breeding on Machias Seal Island, NB are genetically distinct from Newfoundland & Québec 🐧🧬 UNB Research Graduate Studies #conservation #genetics

New science alert! PhD student Quinn Carvey and collaborators recently published a new article on genetic structure of Atlantic puffins!! Check out the link below! Fascinating new findings! dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10592… #science #puffins #seabirds