And . . . I'm back!

Into the field that is! The past six months have been a roller coaster: I came home from Thailand, spent lots of time with the Mom unit after she broke her leg and tore her ACL skiing, visited Colby friends on the East Coast, went to OK briefly (insert shoutout to "Colby West" here), and then volunteered at a sweet place called Black Swamp Bird Observatory (check out bsbo.org). My five weeks there mistnetting and banding were a blast and I find myself inexplicably happy when handling birds (especially pulling them out of nets). To read more about bird banding at BSBO, check out Julie's blog at http://bsbobirdbander.blogspot.com/. Basically, a great group of people and TONS (over 10,000) birds was the perfect combination for me this spring. Then came summer- time at Falcon Camp running Woodslore and weekend activities, finding a field job for the fall, getting engaged . . . it's been busy!

So that puts me here, in Gulf Shores, AL with a Master's student from the University of Southern Mississippi who is running a banding station near Fort Morgan. Someone from USM has been banding at this site for many years now, and this year is Jaci's turn. She's also doing some radio telemetry with Swainson's Thrushes.

I'm living in an awesome beach house on the Coast with Jaci, Mason, Joanna and Nakita, a visiting researcher from Russia who has great stories. Jaci also has a sweet mutt named Cooper who is living with us for the time being. Today after work I swam in the ocean for the first time since Thailand and saw some rays and dolphins.

This banding station runs around 30 nets from before sunrise until the temperature in the sun is 90F- after that it is too hot for the birds- seven days a week. We finished setting up yesterday so today was our first bird-catching day. While our abundance was low (13 new captures), the diversity was great: yellow breasted chat, yellow bellied flycatcher, downy woodpecker, northern mockingbird, yellow warblers, red eyed vireo, carolina chickadee and a young male prothonotary . . . so it was a good day. I also saw a bobcat in the field, too, which is likely the craziest "cat" sightings I've had considering it was within 10 feet!