Saturday, May 20, 2006

Wild Goose Chase...

Our first real project for the expedition was to conduct a waterfowl survey of the lakes and waterways of Southern Lanin. The purpose was to assess the impact of the introduced American mink on the populations of ground nesting waterfowl.

We trekked for 10 days counting birds at nominated survey sites. Most of the trekking was along established trails, but many had not been used for some seasons and were well overgrown.

We didn´t see another person the entire time.
The weather was perfect and the scenery was stunning. The lakes and rivers were thick with trout.



The only downside was that we didn´t see many birds.
Either the American mink is cleaning up .... or the birds have headed North for the Winter.

I do hope it´s the latter.....