birds feed their young bottle caps and other plastic chards, unknowingly filling their stomachs to the point that they die of starvation.

Seabird parents capture prey at sea and bring it back to their chicks. We study chick diets according to how each species feeds its young. Puffins, pigeon guillemots, common murres, and murrelets carry whole fish (or sometimes squid), in their bills to their chicks. We crouch in hidden blinds and watch the adult birds as they fly back to the colony to feed their chicks. With binoculars we can identify the fish they carry and get an estimate of its length in relation to the length of the bird’s bill. Kittiwakes and gulls feed their chicks differently. They swallow whole fish for their chicks at sea. When they return to the colony, they regurgitate this food for their chicks. We collect some of these regurgitations and analyze their contents to learn about their chick diets.