Off the island(s)!

I've been back in civilization (currently Wolfville, NS) for a little over a week now, getting caught up on things that mostly get forgotten about while one is living in the wilds, looking at birds for most of the day, every day. That means it's time for a blog post as it has been far too long! I think I will do something similar to last year, with a summary, seawatch and rarities post - I will leave out the petrels (as cute as they are) and shorebirds since I did a pretty good job of summing those up last year. Anyway, here goes.

I was out on Bon Portage from August 11 - September 15 and again October 14 - November 4, and out on Seal Island from September 15 - October 13 with a brief visit on November 4. While I was out on Seal there was still a crew on Bon Portage running things so we had good coverage of both islands! This year, the Atlantic Bird Observatory was not operating at full capacity due to a lack of funding, however, we had a fairly large crew of experienced birders out there as part of a study on Blackpoll Warbler stopover ecology on the two islands. Our banding and species totals are perhaps not quite as high as they could have been had we been running a regular season, but we still did extremely well!

Number of species: 253 (223 on BP and 204 on Seal)
Number of individuals: Not sure as the eBird totals are duplicating shared checklists! My personal checklist total is 172 016, it is probably safe to add another 30-40 000 for BP from when I was on Seal.
Number of species banded: 78
Number of individuals banded: 1731 (1545 on BP, 186 on Seal)
ABA lifers: 2 (Common Ringed Plover and Great Skua)
Canada lifers: 6 (above plus Blue Grosbeak, White-winged Dove, Audubon's Shearwater and Clapper Rail)
Number of steps walked: ~1.9 million or ~1 700km - the increase over last year was mainly due to Seal, which is much larger and requires more walking! My highest single-day was about 35km.
Number of times I swam in the ocean: 4 - I wanted to go in November but it was too stormy!

Now on to the photos...