I arrived at the Cambie Nest just as the parents were switching out their duties – and I spotted some tiny chicks, no more than a few days old. Worried that the adult would immediately start brooding, I unpacked my camera as quickly as I could. There’s still one unhatched egg – the egg in the background is broken, almost certainly the remains of the egg one of these two chicks emerged from.
Fortunately, the newly arrived gull stayed off the nest and tried to feed the chicks…
Walking home from work last week, I saw that the west side of the Cambie Street Bridge was no longer closed for repairs. This morning I was able to visit Cambie Nest. This nest is one of the closest and most visible nests, making for many great observations in the past years.
I found the nest in the same location as previous years, with a gull brooding in the morning sun.
This year I’ve started using QGIS instead of google maps to keep track of gull nest data. QGIS is a free and incredibly powerful geographic information system. I’m a novice user but I’m using this opportunity to start learning. Click on the above image to be taken to an interactive map – you can click on each nest and see the information I’ve gathered so far.
June 8th, Sunday morning, was my first official round of gull nest monitoring. As I mentioned in a previous post, the route I’ve taken for the last few years is inaccessible in a few places. But I went where I could.
I didn’t grasp it at the time, but these footprints I found on an inexplicably sand-covered sidewalk summarized my state that day: disorientation. After ten months, I feel bewildered and disconnected from the gulls. It will take a few more weeks to get myself closer to them, for their lives to intertwine with mine.
