The Hollywood day

July 23, 2015.  

The day was dedicated to the filming crew. We brought them to the nest at the confluence of the Kava and the Chelomdja rivers. The nest (treated as a part of the Chelomdja river) had one chick. We managed to get a few photos of the chick, so no quadrocopter flights were necessary. I got some photos and made a short movie of one of the parents.

Some time was spent in search of the local seal rookery. Previously the seals had a rookery at the confluence, the only known rookery of its kind.  Now the rookery's whereabouts is a mystery. While searching for the seals, the crew filmed a bear.

At the end of the day I made a flight using the quadrocopter at a second (not productive this year) nest on the Chelomdja River.

Curious eagles at the evening arrival to the ranger's station

June 22, 2015, Continued.

The eagles were puzzled by the late arrival of the jet boat.

Not vegetarian bear

June 22, 2015, Continued

The second bear evidently was not vegetarian. Besides we spectacularly lost our velocity because our jet boat sucked in tons of Potamogeton sp.  grass, and stalled a few meters from the animal. Ignorant to the problems with our propulsion the bear went into the bush.

End of a hard day

July 22, 2015. Continued.

We headed back at the end of the day and returned to the range's station only at sunset. At the ranger's station we were greeted by a film crew sent to the Magadan State Reserve by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation. We have agreed to help them out.  The rangers were a bit worried by our late return, blaming our 'inadequate' bear protection. Indeed on the way back we saw 2 bears. Not a big number by local standards. One was clearly vegetarian.

We tried to photograph as many eagles as possible in an effort to detect rings/bands. Alas, no luck this time.

The weather was beautiful, but clearly indicating that the rain is around the corner...

Fake nest?

July 22, 2015. Continued.

The nest with one chick and one parent with a ring/band was not the only puzzle to solve.

On the river bank some 200 m from the active nest we found a new nest being built on a horizontal tree. The nest was not complete and probably won't survive next spring's flood. Nevertheless the question remains, why has such nest been built?

What is the ring/band number? Help needed.

July 22, 2015. Continued.

The bird definitely has a ring/band, but our attempts to read the number failed. Our tripod-supported great and trustworthy Nikon 30x scope was not of a great use, and the ring/band was a bit dirty.

The bird with the ring most probably was the ringed/banded bird reported from the same area in 2014. But this time we were more prepared and snapped a huge number of pictures. I have uploaded some of them here and we would like to hear from the followers if there any chance to enhance the photos so we can read the numbers.  The bird clearly was teasing us by hanging the foot from the branch.