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Seabirds Thriving on Volcanic Slopes
To an auklet, a volcano is home sweet home.
© Isaac Sanchez
In August 2008, Kasatochi Island erupted in the middle of auklet breeding season, burying tens of thousands of chicks in hot ash. At first, the auklets’ future on the island appeared bleak. But in just a few years, the birds had returned in force. Thousands nested within the innumerable chambers left behind by sea-cooled lava.
BirdNote®
Seabirds Thriving on Volcanic Slopes
Written by Jonathan Feakins
This is BirdNote.
[Least Auklet colony sounds]
Millions of seabirds known as auklets call the Aleutian Islands home — but this volcanic, Bering Sea archipelago can be a treacherous landscape.
[Volcano eruption]
In August 2008, Kasatochi Island erupted in the middle of auklet breeding season, burying tens of thousands of chicks in hot ash. At first, the auklets’ future on the island appeared bleak. But in just a few years, the birds had returned in force. Thousands nested within the innumerable chambers left behind by sea-cooled lava.
Volcanic islands are perhaps the only places that provide the complex of cozy cavities that can host copious amounts of fist-sized auklets. And the largest threat to these auklets’ roosts isn’t actually geological, but gastrointestinal.
Over the years, poop from millions of breeding seabirds acts as fertilizer for thick mats of vegetation that slowly cover the volcanic terrain, choking off access to their nest sites. Eventually, the colonies abandon the island entirely, to seek out less-green pastures.
Today, Kasatochi Island is as popular an auklet breeding ground as ever. And it will likely stay that way until transformed again by countless tons of poop or lava — or both.
[Least Auklet colony sounds]
For Birdnote, I’m Ariana Remmel.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Least Auklet ML132025 recorded by Sampath Seneviratne.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote May 2023
Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID# kasatochi-01-2023-07-10 kasatochi-01
Ariana Remmel
Narrator