whoa, Whoa, WHOA. BIRDS!! :D

Hey Y'all!!

Sorry I've been MIA. I don't even know where to start!

Training was a trip! I just assisted 2 other biologists in training a dozen interns to identify, handle, extract, band and microage birds of the Pacific Northwest. This was my first time teaching and I think in the beginning, it showed. Hah. I vacillated between lacking confidence entirely, feeling like a complete dumb-ass to feeling like I was the female equivalent of Pyle (not really). FYI for you non-birders: Peter Pyle = bird God, who wrote what we call the bird Bible, publishing it when he was only in his mid-40's. 

Trying to talk someone through an extraction (untangling a bird from a net) when you haven't done one yourself in 6 months is an arduous task. It was almost as if I had forgotten the English language (i.e. the aforementioned dumb-ass moments). I literally could not find the words to explain what to do next, because extractions are intuitive for me at this point, and thoughts of "now, I should pull the net this way" don't really exist anymore. By the end of training, I at least felt competent in my ability to discuss bird Timelines and Molt Strategies, not to mention my ability to extract birds that are Houdinied, backpacked and double trammeled to boot. There's something extremely satisfying about getting a ridiculously tangled bird out of a net (a banders wet dream....let's be honest).

Now that my tangent is complete, the downside to not feeling confident as a teacher, was that it led me to be less confident socially. Boo. I admit that part of my social imcompetence is also due to the fact that for the past 6 months I've mostly been socializing with my family and a handful of adorable toddlers. So, me = a lil' socially inept at the moment with members of my own generation. Did I mention that I pretty much got the award for dorkiest bird jokes ever? Sarcasm? What's that again?

We were camping in Grants Pass, OR during training and had many mornings where we had to wait 2 hours for it to reach 40 degrees (our minimum temp for opening mist-nets). This brought back many memories of a former intern who often said, "This is stupid! Why are we down here? We're just freezing our asses off! We're not even catching birds!" Heh, oh how I miss you, former intern. 'Tis part of being a wildlife biologist. Harsh working conditions. And if you're lucky, harsh living conditions!

My crew will be camping all summer in a campground that resembles a refugee camp on a busy day (AKA every day between may and august). Sometimes you're lucky and you meet the most fascinating, kind people from parts of the world you didn't even know existed. Like Brunei...or Wyoming. But most of the time, people are noisy, hammered, and leave their fires burning all night - a tough environment for someone who has to wake up at 4am every day. We'll have access to showers a quarter mile down the road, and will have a bathroom with running water close by. We'll be equipped with bear boxes to store our food in (trust me, refrigeration is overrated until it hits 80 degrees) and a double-burner propane stove for cooking. As far as camping goes, it's a pretty sweet deal. 

We'll start setting up our sites this week, but will only be able to open 3/6 due to snow. Seeing that our numbers at training were particularly low this year (only 344 birds), and the snowpack is worse than last year, I predict our numbers will be low in YOSE as well. Last year we had low capture rates compared to the previous 5 years data. I think this was due to the long, harsh winter (it was an El Nino year). Looking at the data for the last ten years, there was another significant drop in numbers due to the harsh winter brought on by the El Nino of 2002-2003. The following winter was mild however, and bird numbers bounced back with a vengeance! I'm not sure what the birds exact response is to this extreme weather: perhaps migration-exhausted adults died upon arriving to their snow-covered breeding grounds; perhaps the breeding season was cut short, so birds that usually have multiple broods only had one; maybe they just shifted their range south/lower in elevation to avoid the cold, so they simply weren't at the banding stations. Maybe something's happening on their wintering grounds - deforestation coupled with heavy rains and pesticide/fertilizer use = massive toxic runoff, not to mention a lack of good wintering habitat and food sources. I hope they bounce back the next time we have a mild winter. If we EVER have another mild winter! =\ Global Climate Change: bringing everything to the EXTREME! F$#@ YEAH!!!

I'm going to write more frequently now that training is over so my posts aren't freaksihly long and untamed, like this one. Pics are coming up next!

Cheers!