The Making of a Raptor Biologist
I was tired. Not an unusual feeling during a field season, but this exhaustion was something different. I hadn’t slept in two days. I peered blearily ahead of me where the graduate student, Bryce, was trudging steadily forward, as he had throughout the research project. He hadn’t spoken much that afternoon; each of us were in our own separate fog.
Our destination loomed ahead, a mound of crumbling splinters of rock that could barely be called a mountain in the middle of nowhere, Seward Peninsula, Alaska. It was our lucky field site thirteen, the last gyrfalcon nest selected to receive one of Bryce’s trail cameras for nest observation. By the thirteenth nest, we had a routine: we’d identify the location of the nest from the ground and determine if we could access it on foot or by rope. If it was on an inaccessible cliff, we would then scramble over loose rock and steep slopes to try to position ourselves above it to rappel down to it.
I carried four pieces of heavy rebar in my pack, and Bryce and I each carried coils of climbing rope. My pack weight often approached 60 pounds or more; Bryce, with his camera equipment, hauled even more. My first task was to set up the rebar anchors by pounding them 2-3 feet deep into soil or permafrost, if available, or directly into the shattered rocks if not. Sometimes the rebar crumbled immediately out of the loose rock, unable to hold anyone’s weight. I would have to start over and move the anchor farther and farther back from the edge. Because we were above treeline on the tundra, there were no natural tree or shrub anchors we could use. Nor were there solid cliffs or rocks to drill an anchor. The rebar was a brilliant solution, and it actually worked quite well, even if it looked terrifying.
While I whacked away at the rebar with a heavy mallet, Bryce prepared his equipment for nest entry. If the nest was extremely tall, or too dangerous to try rappelling all the way to the ground, he would have to install the camera while hanging on the rope below precarious rocks. He would clean the route as best he could while rappelling over the side, but he couldn’t kick loose teetering rocks above the gyrfalcon nest and risk destroying the eggs. Instead he’d move his long, lanky limbs as delicately as he could down the cliff face, while I watched with nail-biting anxiety from above. I often couldn’t see or hear Bryce after I lost sight of him going over the edge. I sat for interminably long minutes at the top, keeping one eye on our rebar anchor to make sure nothing was pulling loose, and my other eye out for brown bears.
For coastal Alaska, it was a lovely day: clear, sunny, and gently windy. I was doing the most incredible work I could have imagined when I started on the wildlife biology path, and in the most beautiful, remote place. But my spirits were low as I plodded after Bryce.
We had tent camped the last two nights and I had not slept. The sun glowed through my tent walls, through my eyelids, bright almost all night, here during the longest days of the year. The mosquitoes were intense; they provided a white-noise kind of constant buzzing outside the tent, waiting to get me. All night I fought the urge to run out of my tent and do something. No sleep. No sleep.
After finishing four rounds of interviews, I took my exams early, skipped my graduation ceremony, and hopped three flights to arrived in Nome in early May 2015. I was beyond excited, but when the wheels of the plane touched down at the tiny airport, I had a sense of finality. This job was my first after university, and my first time working with raptors. This job was going to be the start of everything, and could define the rest of my life.
As my friends back in Montana celebrated with barbecues and T-shirts, I stepped off the plane into frigid air. The day they walked the stage during commencement, I snow-shoed across a sweeping, treeless ridge, both exhilarated and frightened. As ptarmigan calls drifted in with the snow, I reminded myself of the justification many of us in the wildlife field use: these jobs pay in experience. And in life, experiences are everything.
I prided myself on being willing to do anything for the job. I had done hard field work with long days and difficult miles before. I wouldn’t say no to anything, even if I grumbled inside. But upon meeting me in Nome, my supervisor–who’d interviewed me over the phone–seemed alarmed at my appearance. He frequently reminded me how lucky I was to have the job, and that I’d have to prove myself. On a cold day with a sideways blowing snow, he took me out to the tundra to test me on compass and navigation skills. I felt cold and somehow numb, and although the navigation test went fine, he seemed more and more concerned. Back in the truck, he smacked a glove down on the dashboard. “I’m throwing down the gauntlet,” he said. “I was criticized for hiring you. My superiors didn’t think a woman could do this job. So it’s up to you to prove they can.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. During the interview he asked if I would have the strength to pull Bryce up the cliff if something went wrong.
The thirteenth nest was among the most difficult we had done. The approach was a hands-and-feet scramble on loose, shifting talus above an exposed drop. I moved like an inchworm up the slope, and at the top, I was so slow setting up the anchor that Bryce took over and set it up himself. I could see that he was nervous to rappel in these conditions, but we didn’t talk. As he disappeared over the edge, I wished I could do the risky thing, or help at all, instead of being dead weight. I watched the anchor, and I struggled to keep my eyes open.
We had already done an entire day’s work. We had driven for hours, ridden an ATV across difficult terrain for hours more, and then hiked miles across impossible, ankle-turning, lumpy tundra. I longed for regular ground to walk on after even a few feet of tundra, which formed hard balls of vegetation interspersed with soft, watery bog. There was no good way to walk on this stuff. I tried stepping across on top of the hard balls, but found it impossible to stay on top of their rounded shapes. I must have looked a comical sight wobbling my way through this terrain, like one of those inflatable tube creatures that car dealers use in advertising, constantly bent over and snapping back up again. We ended up using every mode of transport Alaska offers to reach nests, including packrafting across cold, snow-runoff rivers, and eventually helicopters for the most far-reaching sites.
We had arrived at our original destination, the twelfth nest, that afternoon and found it destroyed. The camera revealed the culprit: a brown blur of a wolverine coming in and eating all the eggs. This event was valuable data. But it also meant more work: we would have to move the camera to a much more difficult site miles away, doubling our day’s work. We had begrudgingly turned and begun our second journey of the day to the thirteenth nest.
When Bryce finished installing the camera and climbed back up to me, I was relieved. But we still had the return journey to go. I packed up and followed him back down the slope. My limbs were made of brick, and I couldn’t seem to propel myself any faster.
The last part of the hike was a steep uphill climb, and I had nothing left, not even fumes. I was downwind from Bryce and didn’t think he could hear me crying. I thought I was up for anything, but I was exhausted. We had worked for weeks without a day off, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I was failing myself and who I thought I could be. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this after all. My supervisor and everyone else who had shown doubts about me were right.
Perhaps Bryce did hear me, because he reached the ATV first and started driving it back toward me to pick me up. I was immediately ashamed, but Bryce was back to cracking jokes. The last nest was installed, and our work was done for the day.
On the drive back, we saw a rare bird which only breeds on the Seward Peninsula: the Bristle-thighed Curlew. They must have had a nest nearby, because they swooped close to us in effort to scare us away. In the long evening light, Bryce stopped to take photos and observations–his own reward for a hard day’s work. I snapped photos of the incredible birds when they flew close. Then I lay down in the middle of the jeep track and, without conscious decision, fell deeply asleep.
The pace of work slowed after that day. The cameras wouldn’t need attention for a few weeks while the eggs hatched, and we had free time—or at least I did. While Bryce was absorbed in work on his computer, I jogged or walked around Nome to entertain myself. I was fascinated by the town composed of multicolored houses on stilts. I walked by the ocean front one day and saw that the waves were turned dark with fish. Locals were out with buckets catching the numerous capelin, which they referred to as “cigarfish”, by the fistfuls out of the waves. I waded in and soaked my jeans, delighted to help fill their buckets. Another day, I heard music near our apartment and found a community dance in front of the school. I was intensely lonely and didn’t know anyone in town, and somehow I ended up joining in. I joined in the circle, holding hands with strangers, before I became too shy and left.
I frequently picked up care packages at the post office. My parents were delighted to send mail to such an exotic location as Nome, Alaska. They shipped me heavy boxes of fruit, which often took so long to arrive that they gave off a distinctly fermented smell when I picked them up. The clerk knew they were mine before she checked the tag. I carried the packages out to the sidewalk and tore them open right away, not waiting until I got home. Even the rotten fruit smelled sweet, and I felt loved.
While in line at the post office in early July, Nome’s head librarian, Marguerite, greeted me warmly. She saw me often at the Kegoayah Kozga library. I liked to visit the historical section and page through old photo albums of Nome. There were photos of subsistence ways of life, and discomforting pictures, such as a man standing next to a snow machine with his small children. He was later found halfway between Nome and the village of Teller on his way to get groceries, frozen with his children. 1982. Freezing to death while on a grocery run, the mild tone of the caption suggested, was not uncommon.
Marguerite mentioned the upcoming 4th of July parade, and that they needed volunteers to wear costumes on behalf of the library. She and her husband both had a dry, hilarious wit, and I wasn’t sure if she was joking. I committed Bryce to wearing a costume, and in good sportsmanship, myself as well. I thought it was a great prank, but the prank was on me all along. Bryce embraced his role as a giant walking blueberry, running along the parade route, giving kids high fives. Meanwhile, I was stuck in a full-body seal costume which immediately heated up to a sweaty furnace inside. Any regret I had didn’t last long. We gathered with the library volunteers for a group photo afterward. As silly as it was, by dressing up in costumes for their parade, we had given back a little bit to the community that had welcomed us.
Immediately following the parade, we shed our costumes and hiked out to a nest. The chicks had hatched, and it was time to get back to work. When I held my first gyrfalcon chick, which screamed bloody murder and did its best to tear the flesh off my hands, I fell in love. Their big, dark eyes were intelligent and furious. They knew that they were kings of the sky and weren’t supposed to be manhandled this way.
As with any animal that lives in the arctic, they will be affected by climate change early. Even now, approximately half of these nestlings wouldn’t survive past their first year, and life would be challenging every year after. While dozens of mosquitos bit my arms and hands until they were grotesquely swollen, I collected blood samples from the birds’ delicate veins with steady hands. We banded them, then put them back in the nest under the worried eyes of their mothers. With the handling of the chicks came new resolve. I will do anything for you, I thought.
Bryce and I eventuallly returned to the thirteenth nest to weigh and band the chicks, and I was apprehensive. But this time, Bryce told me I was going to rappel into the nest. “Once you’ve done that, you’re a true raptor biologist,” he had been telling me all summer. But as the graduate student whose career and research was at stake, Bryce had always entered the nests.
I put on my harness and prepared myself while Bryce built the anchor. And then it was time. I lowered myself slowly, slowly, down into the nest, where bright-eyed, fuzzy white nestlings were very surprised to see me. I rappelled down until my knees touched a ledge that I could lean against while doing my work. The chicks crowded the opposite end of the ledge to escape me.
The entire time I felt like I was holding my breath. Anything could go wrong. A chick could get frightened enough to jump out, far too early to fly.I took my time and willed my hands not to shake, willed myself not to see how far the ground was below me.
Afterward, we celebrated with a bottle of wine. All had gone well, and we had not caused the loss of a single chick due to our nest entries. Bryce had gained valuable data and insights into the diet and prey composition of arctic Alaskan gyrfalcons during the nesting period, something never studied before.
I left Nome at the end of the summer, when the fireweed was in full bloom and frantic young birds had gathered on the coast for migration. For me, it was a triumphant finish. My supervisor always had a hint of that disappointment in me, I’m not sure there is anything I could have done to persuade him otherwise. I would guess that he didn’t think I’d lived up to the challenge he had thrown down that day. If I hoped for affirmation, I never received it. The next year, they hired two men to do the job and didn’t ask me back.
I didn’t feel I needed his affirmation anymore. Bryce had his data, and we’d had no accidents, no injuries, no loss of bird life. Although I have not become a raptor biologist, somewhere out there on the tundra, my birds are still flying.
