Back in "the field"

In the past few weeks, I have traveled several thousand miles by land and air. I've been out of the field since mid-March and have taken the opportunity to travel to France and England, then search for (and find!) housing in Columbus, OH where I will relocate at the end of the summer in preparation for starting my PhD at The Ohio State University.
I arrived in Washington, D.C. yesterday after a two-day journey from Chicago and now I am gearing up for my latest adventure in the field: Neighborhood Nestwatch. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has been running this program for about 10 years (yay long-term data sets!) that uses "citizen scientists" to monitor birds in their backyards in terms of survivorship and reproductive success. Basically, families who are interested in watching birds learn how to record data and submit it to the Smithsonian. What I will do is facilitate this by visiting families over the course of the next three months, color band the birds in their neighborhood, and teach them as much as I can during a half-day visit. One of the great pluses of citizen science is that TONS of data can be collected efficiently and cost-effectively: only four technicians are needed to assist over 200 families- quite a lot of bang for your buck!
I've been in D.C. for less than 24 hours now and am beginning to understand the number/letter street system, proliferation of one-way streets, and all of the charm associated with driving in a major city. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to using public transportation to move around once I can park my car at our field house!
I met one of my bosses today and will be helping with various aspects (i.e. net repair, everyone's favorite) of the project until the rest of the crew arrives over the weekend. Besides that, there are friends and family to visit, food to be sampled and national sights to be seen . . . I'll keep you updated!

Winding down in the Delta

Team RUBL with a juvenile female Rusty after our last, "fun" catching day at Ferry Rd.

There is no doubt that this has been the most challenging job, physically and psychologically, that I have ever performed. As I write this, we are beginning to see the end of back-to-back 13+ hour days. At our Ferry Road site, the Rusties are migrating. We count fewer birds in the evening at the night roost, and the two birds we put transmitters on most recently (Harrison Ford and Igor) have quite literally flown the coop. We still however, have Christie. She celebrated the seventh week of her transmitter over the weekend (remember, we were told that these transmitters would last 3-4 weeks). There are some signs that her batteries are beginning to run down, but we still have had her each day for day points and each evening at the night roost, so our telemetry duties continue.
Our primary responsibility for the remaining two weeks of the season is to collect habitat data. Today we will learn how to sample vegetation at our other (to date unsuccessful) catching site, Palasini. We also have two dozen sites to visit to collect twigs and leaves for tree identification in preferred habitat of the Rusties caught over the past few years. Thus far, the best part of chasing trees is that they don’t get up with the birds, so now neither do we have to! : )

Yesterday evening, after our final(?) full day of telemetry with Christie, Team RUBL headed out to visit the families of Ferry Road who have supported us in our efforts. We stopped by Barbara and John’s first to bring them cookies and a card showing the team and one of the Rusties we had caught in the area. Barbara and John were touched by our gesture- Barbara’s comment was, “All we did was invite you to dinner!” (referring to the Wildlife Banquet). In response, we shared the sentiment that without John’s help, Anne and I would likely still be trying to figure out how to get the F150 out of the ditch. (Yep, that was me, one of our first full days of telemetry two months ago . . .) We tried to express that this couple meant much more to us: they had given us permission to track birds on their land, tolerated us driving up and down the road in front of their house in all weather and at all times of day, reminded us that the fences were electric when we went to recover Frodo’s transmitter from the night roost field. And yet they were still grateful for our generosity.

We continued our rounds by driving up to the catching site, to the home of Jane and Ruben. Megan and I met this couple when catching at Ferry Road was still just an idea, and were charged with receiving permission from the appropriate homeowner to put up nets in the area where we had observed the Rusties consistently feeding. That initial encounter in December went surprisingly well, considering we had (accidentally!) woken the couple up to ask for permission. Jane’s first comment to us last night was, “Well, why haven’t you come over for coffee sooner? We were looking at you out on the bayou a couple weeks ago when it was so cold thinking, ‘Those girls have got to be dedicated to be following those birds in this weather!’” Ruben expressed that he regretted that his health issues prevented him from “bothering” us more, but he had heard his nephew, Tim, was taking care of that. We gave our cookies and cards, and listened to stories of how Ruben had to stop entering the Wildlife Banquet cooking contest because his consistent winning was discouraging the competition. Last year he received a “Master Chef” plaque instead. Also, for those of you who are more adventuresome eaters, muskrat is good fried, and bobcat works well in a tomato-onion gravy. Jane shared stories of their current dog and dogs of years past, and we learned that in Mississippi there are only two types of dogs: “indoor” dogs and “yard” dogs.

Our last stop was Roger’s. Roger introduced himself early on in the season as the go-to guy for all of our seed and grain needs (he has some fabulous John Deere green and yellow business cards). He and Tim often would stop by our trucks as we were doing telemetry in the area, and chat with us about our work or where our birds were. Roger was also the emcee for the door prize giveaway at the Wildlife Banquet, and thus responsible for our acquiring of camouflage and Mississippi Ag hats. We met Roger’s mother (who loves to fish) and chatted about how he and his wife grew up just around the corner from where Anne is living in Leland. Suzie showed us where Roger likes to shoot his bow in the house- turkey season is fast approaching!- and we heard more stories of Delta life. However, Anne noted after our visit that this stop on our journey failed. It was not because Roger was not home, or allergic to one of our kinds of cookies. It was, simply put, that we walked away with more gifts and good wishes, when our intent was to bring those as a sign of gratitude for all of the things Roger had already done for us. The kindness and generosity of these Mississippians is overwhelming in every sense of the word, and we can only hope to show a little bit of our appreciation for what they have done for us in the past few months.
Tonight we will try to visit Tim and his family. Tim is one of those nice, friendly guys who would go out of his way to come say ‘hi’ to us and would always have something interesting in his truck to show us. A conversation with Tim might open with him saying, “Hey, have you ever seen a baby feral pig? Look- this one is real little, it still has it’s umbilical cord attached!” Tim and his son have all sorts of animals, from peacocks to pigs, and recently, squirrels. It certainly broke up the long days of telemetry whenever he would stop by!



Tim also is the owner of Brodie, a very sweet but dumb and occasionally annoying black lab. (Barbara told us one of her Brodie stories: he put his paws in the window of her car, then jumped on the hood, then jumped on the roof of the car and just sat there until she got out and chased him off- him leaving big dents as he hopped down.)
I’m not sure what awaits us at Tim’s tonight, but if last night was any indication, I am sure we will have a wonderful time.

More MS photos!

It has been a busy few weeks down here in Mississippi, both in terms of work and life outside of telemetry. We put out three birds at two sites on consecutive days (it was crazy), it snowed, we saw a couple of thousand geese by the side of the highway, Megan and I started taking pictures with road kill, Tim brought us a baby squirrel, Anne and I went to a “Wildlife Banquet” where Anne sampled a lot of the local wildlife and I enjoyed the candied yams . . . Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the past few weeks!






Also, here are a couple of Rusty identification photos. You can tell the age and sex classes of these birds in the winter based the presence of white feathers around the eye (juveniles have them, adults don’t) and on color (males are much darker). Take your best guess for these three birds!




As far as my existence beyond my current job, I have been accepted to the Direct-PhD program at the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University (quite the mouthful!). I just received notification that I will be funded for the next four years starting this fall . . . very exciting!
My best to everyone in all of this wacky winter weather . . . I’m hoping D.C. thaws soon so I can find out about my next great adventure.

Photos from Mississippi!

I know how much my Gram and Mom enjoy seeing pictures- so here's a few recent ones!


Trailer sweet trailer: our home in Yazoo.


There is a butterfly garden/deer exclosure in our front yard . . . complete with about a dozen park benches. The fence is there to keep the butterflies in. (Just kidding!)


Sunset at a bayou near Alligator Pond.


I can't say that I am much inclined to harass alligators . . .


Anne, Megan and me freezing our butts off in 20F weather on our first day of telemetry at Ferry Road. We lost that bird for a few days but picked her up again once we found a night roost.


An adult male NOCA looking fierce, after being caught at our Palasini site.

If I survive this job, I will be invincible

There are days when this becomes my mantra. This is definitely the hardest I have ever worked either in or out of the field. Good prep for grad school, right? The combination of inconvenient internet access and long hours have taken their toll on the blog, so here’s what I’ve been up to in 2010 . . .
The goal of our research is to find out as much as we can about Rusties since they are the fastest-declining songbird species in North America. While I thoroughly enjoy the insect sampling (see previous post), the other major responsibility of my job is following Rusties. Unlike my langur following in Thailand, I won’t identify my focal animals by looking at their natural characteristics- rather, we band our birds and track them using radio telemetry. That means we have to catch these wily birds, successfully put on a transmitter, and then keep track of them!
I’m happy to say we have two active transmitters out at our Ferry Road site. After many hours of observation, we chose bait sites, cracked pecans -a favorite food- along the side of the road with our feet and the car, and came up with time-saving ways to set up nets. (When you have to be in place well before the birds wake up, you learn to be as efficient as possible, and this job is definitely challenging me to come up with creative solutions. Case in point: we now use 1” binder rings to quickly attach our nets to ropes on trees. This makes take-down much faster, which is key when we are putting out transmittered birds. Since Rusties are neophobic and sensitive to change, we also used camouflaged duct tape and nail polish to hide these shiny rings from the birds, minimizing the chances of them detecting the nets.)
Catching is incredibly stressful and testing, but ultimately rewarding. We get up ridiculously early so everything ready before the birds arrive on site. We band our birds in one of our two field trucks, a new experience for me and often awkward at best. There is never enough room in the car to have all of our necessary equipment immediately on hand, and once we decide to put a transmitter on a bird, we have to quickly change gears from banding to telemetry, with the associated negotiation of equipment. One of the hardest parts for me at this point is that I have mixed feelings about catching Rusties and putting transmitters on them because it means at least two 12+ hour days tracking our focal birds. That said, I’ve worked 40+ hours within three days twice in the past two weeks, and it is getting a little easier (at least psychologically). It didn’t help that at the same time Mississippi went into the coldest cold snap for decades and our pipes froze twice. But telemetry is what we need to do to collect the necessary data for this species. No one knows why they are declining so severely and steadily, and this winter research may highlight what Rusties need to be successful.
With two birds at Ferry Road, my days have more variability. We take at least one “day point” on each active bird every day: we try to get as close as possible without scaring the bird, take a GPS point, and record habitat data. So you don’t have any misunderstandings, I do not actually see the birds with transmitters. Once we release them, we have few opportunities for visual observations. So we listen through static for the tell-tale one second click of our birds and try to zero in on their location. In addition to the daily day points, we take one full day of telemetry on each bird each week. This involves following the bird (in our car), asking homeowers for permission to walk around their property, and GPS points/habitat data collection every five minutes. Plus we’ve still got the suite of food availability surveys, processing leaf litter samples, observing pecan orchards, and trying to figure out how to catch birds at our other site, Palasini.
Telemetry is a whole different ball game from the other research I’ve done. I’ve never done something so tech-heavy or reliant on specialized equipment. I’ve also never worked with a species so scared of people. We work in teams of two, which gives us the ability to safely track birds and drive, and have the opportunity to trade off telemetry duties to reduce fatigue (one can only listen to clicks through static for so long!). I had a gratifying experience the other day when we were attempting to follow one of our Ferry Road birds all day. At this point, we knew very little about the birds we had put out at Ferry, but I listened to our bird at the night roost before dawn, and heard her there at sunset. It didn’t matter that we had lost her multiple times during the day- what was most satisfying was that I was there when she woke up and put her to bed nine hours later.
I hope to have more illuminating experiences like that in the coming weeks . . . it makes the long hours worth it!

Happy New Year!

I’m writing this post offline on the first and hoping that I’ll get the chance to put it up in the next few days. I hope everyone had a great evening of revelry. Megan and I went to a dinner party with some other Forest Service employees near Greenville, but left well before midnight because we had an hour drive home and work this morning. Lucky for us, this morning went splendidly, and our boss gave us the rest of the day off (which means we had the chance to go back to bed around 9:30 am!). I’m by writing this on the steps of our trailer- the day is clear and the sun is great! We work long hours and spend a lot of time in the car driving and observing, so it is nice to have a chance to be outside during the day, epecially when the weather is nice.
We’ve been pretty busy since I came back from Chicago last weekend. We sample “food availability” at 15 or 20 sites in this area. These are places where my boss has caught Rusties in previous years, so we know that at least at one time they were good habitat for the species. While our food availability surveys involve A LOT of driving and several days to complete because some of the sites are so far apart, I really enjoy it. We go out to a site and count pecans and acorns, plus we take leaf litter samples.
Processing has two parts: finding the food and identifying it. First, we go through the leaves, turning them over “just like a Rusty” as my boss would say, and pick out all of the invertebrates. Important note: spiders run really, really fast. But I guess I would too if I had 8 legs and someone was chasing me with a pair of forceps! After dropping all of the insects, spiders, snails, worms, ticks, etc. into alcohol (sorry, Evan!), we look at each individual under a microscope to identify it to species. We have a working “library” of every invertebrate we’ve found, but it is growing significantly considering this is only the second year of this sampling method. Getting the samples from a bag of leaves to an Excel file of invertebrates can take two hours or more, and considering we sample the sites every 10 days, this occupies a good chunk of our time. We can “pre-process” the dead inverts at the trailer with a small dissecting microscope, but we need the big ‘scope at Stoneville to identify some of the smaller stuff and to take pictures to add to the library if we find something new.
All in all, though, I have a secret love of processing the leaf litter sampling. For one thing, I really enjoy catching animals of any kind, and fast-moving insects in a plastic tub are no exception. I never know what we are going to find in any given sample, and it probably is influenced by time of day and local weather, so even knowing what might be a site from previous experience doesn’t guarantee that you won’t find something new. I’m also excited too see all of these tiny critters under a ‘scope. They look completely different up close, and the high-resolution equipment with the camera up at Stoneville is incredible. What looks like a speck with some antennae to the naked eye reveals itself to be an awesome collembolan (springtail) . . . yeah, I’m a science nerd. It’s great to be able to develop insect identification skills, though, and since the whole team has a history of invertebrate sampling from school and other jobs, I think we’ll be able to improve the library and the sorting protocol.
Besides the “bugs” we’ve still got some wily Rusties to contend with. At this stage in the season, we are searching for sites to catch Rusties, and have found three that we feed daily. This morning Megan and I were observing at the Ferry Road site, where we know Rusties are present, but where they haven’t been eating the bait. Rusties are known to be one of the more neophobic species of blackbirds- they are afraid of new things- but they can also be pretty curious. By observing them in the mornings, we can figure out where they like to feed and what their flight paths are, giving us a better idea of possible net locations. They are certainly tricky to catch as we learned earlier this week at Anguilla! Plus, we need calm days for netting because wind catches the mist nets so easily, and, naturally, once the Rusties realize the net is there they won’t go in it.
Megan and I had a great morning at Ferry Road with a couple of dozen Rusties present and feeding. We’ve got some new ideas of where to bait and put up nets, and if the weather cooperates we should be able to try to catch some birds later this week. At Anne’s suggestion, Megan and I are also trying to read the significance of our first bird of the new year. What does it mean that we saw a female Rusty first? With Rusties being the fastest declining songbird species on this continent, is the year all downhill from here? Will our year be characterized by neophobia and inquisitiveness? These might be hard traits to maintain as a field technician . . . but I’ll keep you updated!

A little more info on Rusties

(This photo is from the Fish and Wildlife Service.)

Below is a link to an article written by my boss. It should give you a good idea of what it will be like for me to track Rusties.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/MigratoryBirds/Science_Article/default.cfm?id=25

So far my experience has been pretty positive. I came down here via Nashville on Monday, and have spent the last few days getting to know the rest of the team and training. Turns out the other field tech, Megan, was on OTS South Africa in the spring of '07, the semester after I was there! The world certainly seems smaller.

Yazoo is a very beautiful refuge, established in 1936. It is also very remote, and there are only 2 other people in the refuge! I had a chance to take a walk yesterday afternoon, and there is plenty of wildlife around. This week we've seen deer, alligators, a whole lot of birds, and my boss even spotted a bobcat the other night. There is a lot of hunting in the area (a whole other story), but we've been pretty safe in our orange.

I hope to get the chance to update this blog about once a week, but there's no internet nearby to where we live so forgive me if my posts are few and far between! I'm headed back home for a few days for Christmas and will post some more information then when I have more time with internet access.

Yazoo- ooooooooo!

I like to say "Yazoo" like those old Yahoo search engine commercials. It makes my next place of residency and employment sound even more fun than wearing hunter orange so I don't get shot (another perk of my upcoming job).

This winter I'll be working in the Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge Complex (quite the mouthful!) on a winter demography study of Rusty Blackbirds. Rusty Blackbirds spend their winters in Mississippi, so that's where I'm headed in a few weeks. Specifically, I'll be living in the Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge. My favorite part thus far is that the satellite view from Google makes the area look like a quilt- shout out to Elvira and Margaret of the CQC here : )



So what will I be doing besides wearing hunter orange and trying not to get shot? Following birds! In Thailand it was monkeys who weren't individually marked. In Mississippi it will be rusties tagged with radio transmitters. We'll catch birds and then follow them around. Clearly I have a sweet job.

There'll be other aspects of the job as well. In terms of winter demography, we want to know not only where these birds go (i.e. habitat) which we'll get from the telemetry and GPS locations, but also information on what food is around. So I'll be insect collecting and sorting as well.

I leave in two weeks so watch the blog for more info!

PS New address on the left side bar. I heart mail . . .

Fort Morgan by the numbers

Left to right: Nikita, Arlow, Joanna, Tom (with Cooper), me, Jaci and Mason

Greetings from Cleveland in the post-field season! Sorry I've neglected this final update . . . we finished in Fort Morgan on Halloween and I've enjoyed some R&R since then. It looks like I'll be going back into the field soon, but I'll post details as they come in.

Here's an overview of the fall field season:
1824 new captures
530 recaptures
11 foreign recaptures
86 species
2365 birds handled
10 new species (for me!)
7000+ net hours
2 rain days
2 birthdays
2 catamaran adventures
plus countless mosquitoes!

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

A crash course in telemetry: a photo guide

Jaci's project looks at movement of individual Swainson's Thrushes as a function of age and fat classes. She is interested to see which individuals move South and which individuals don't. The assumption is that birds must have sufficient fat to cross the Gulf, so fatter birds are expected to fly South. In terms of age, birds hatched this year may be less liable to fly South because the water is such a great barrier. For a bird who has never migrated before, this might be enough of a deterrent to cross-Gulf migration, so hatch-year birds may instead follow the coast to Mexico.


Jaci ordered about 70 transmitter this season for various research projects. Besides thrushes, we are also radiotagging Gray Catbirds and Red-eyed Vireos. Each transmitter has a specific radio frequency (it's radio signal is distinctive in length of "beeps" and time between beeps) and weight. The transmitters are stored attached to magnets, which turn off the transmitters to prevent the batteries from running down and prevent us from detecting the transmitters when they aren't attached to birds.


Attaching Transmitters To Birds

In order to follow the movements of individual birds, Jaci attaches radio transmitters. The process looks something like this:


1. Before attaching a transmitter, it is a good idea to make sure it works! Jaci uses a radio tuned in to the transmitter's frequency and removes the magnet to test it.


2. After catching a Swainson's Thrush and determining its age/fat class, Jaci prepares to attach a transmitter by cutting feathers along the spine. The top of the transmitter should line up with the birds elbow, so she uses this bone as reference when cutting feathers. As a safety measure, birds must be at least 24 grams to carry a transmitter (we are permitted to attach transmitters that are 3-5% of the bird's weight).


3. Jaci cuts a section of feathers on the bird's back. When a bird's feathers are cut, they don't grow back like they would if they were pulled. Also, the transmitter adheres better to the leftover feather bases than just skin, and the feather tracts are visible, making it easier to center the transmitter. For obvious reasons, it is important to cut only body feathers and not flight feathers!


4. Eyelash glue is put along the bird's spine. This glue provides a flexible attachment from bird to transmitter.


5. The transmitter pack (transmitter + battery + fabric base), with superglue around the edges, is placed over the eyelash glue. Scissors are used to push the edges down around the transmitter, essentially supergluing the fabric to the bird.


6. The transmitter pack only needs a few minutes to adhere. Jaci also checks that there are no sticky parts of the transmitter pack that could get in the way of the wings. If necessary, she cuts more body feathers.


7. After obtaining a bird+transmitter mass and making sure it doesn't exceed 5% of the bird's original mass, the thrush is released. The transmitters and glue weigh 1.2 grams on average- and most of this weight is from the battery. The battery will only last two weeks at the most, so the next step is to make sure we get all the data we can in that time.


Tracking Birds: A Passive Approach

Jaci's data collection relies primarily on three radio towers she put up near the site last year. This passive data collect requires a fair amount of work up in advance, i.e Jaci had to get permission from the Army to borrow the towers, permission from Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge and Fort Morgan Historical Site to put up the towers, and then come down early last year to set them up, but once the towers are in place they are relatively easy to maintain.


Jaci and Tom Radzio go out to check on the tower closest to our house. If a bird is above the canopy, the tower can collect information within a 25 kilometer radius.


There are six directional antennae on the top of the tower, pointing N, S, NE, SE, NW and SW. Whichever of these antennae detects the strongest signal from the bird is the direction the bird is traveling. Each antennae is also color-coded for easy reference.


The tower is powered by a lawnmower battery, which is in turn charged by a solar panel at the base of the tower. The colored cords at the top of the picture correspond to the different antennae. The tower must be programmed with which frequencies to "listen" for, but there is only so much memory in the system. To listen to a larger number of frequencies, you have to sacrifice how often the tower listens for those frequencies. So when we know a bird has gone South for good, or if it has been over two weeks since we released the bird (and therefore it is unlikely that the battery is still working even if the bird is still around), those frequencies are removed from the queue.


Tom Radzio checks the tower's clock. It is important that all of the towers are synchronized in their data collection. Data also is periodically downloaded to a computer for archiving and future analysis. The data collected from the tower takes the form of a graph with time along the bottom axis, and different colored lines to indicate the signal strength for a given frequency (yep, the same colors as those antennae!).

Tracking Birds: An Active Approach

Some people don't want to have a tower collect the data for them. Arlow is one of those people.


Arlow follows our birds over land. When the weather is good, he and Jaci can also fly to check in on our birds. He has an antenna on his car (locals and police give the car a lot of strange looks), and tunes into the frequencies of the birds we have tagged in the evening. Especially if our tower data indicates that one of our birds didn't fly straight South, Arlow tries to figure out where they've gone. He does most of his work at night because that's when birds tend to migrate. (With eating during the day and flying at night, there is a big question of when these birds sleep, or even whether they sleep at all! One idea is that they let half of their brain go to sleep when flying . . .). So Arlow comes to our house in the afternoon, collects the transmitter frequencies of birds we tagged in the morning, and goes out at dusk to find them. Arlow is also perpetually accompanied by three dogs he has rescued. When he lets them run, he puts a radio collar on the ring leader so he can find them if they get lost or go too far.


That's it in a nutshell. Perhaps the most exciting part of this research is that this season a few US researchers have set up towers like ours on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico . . . and they've heard our birds arrive! This is great news on several accounts, not the least being proof that the radio transmitters do not hamper the birds so much that they cannot make the Gulf crossing. Data from this pilot study is likely going to be incorporated into greater research and soon we can figure out the answer to fun questions like, "How long does it take the birds to fly over the Gulf?"

The end of migration? Week 8 in review

Hi all,

We had a busy weekend of visitors here so sorry this is late. Jaci and Tom invited some friends who are catsitting for them to come visit with their kids and we had a great time on Saturday playing on the beach. Cooper enjoyed chasing the shorebirds as always!

Cooper, our house mutt who is always always always excited to see us when we come home. (Gotta love a dog!)

Sunday we had visitors from other USM labs. Caitlin and Susan study testosterone in Northern Cardinals, and Laura and Jen work with snapping shrimp and crabs, respectively. It was great to have some extra pairs of hands around, because we had a 100+ bird day! To date, we've put in over 6,000 net hours to capture 1600+ birds, beating last year's totals. (Granted, they had 2 hurricanes to contend with . . . which prompted a late start and a hiatus in the middle of the season when the site was flooded.) It was slow before Sunday though, so I had a chance to take a few shots of the site, including one of our "bonsai tree" below. It's actually a Slash Pine, but it is useful as a landmark when orientating yourself within the site.



A flock of white pelicans flying over the site.


This adult male American Redstart doesn't change into duller plumage for the fall migration. The orange tips to the feathers suggest that this male may be 2+ years old.


The American Redstart also has prominent rictal bristles. These specialized feathers on either side of the bill are found on many insectivorous birds and may help funnel flying insects into an open mouth.


Which one of these is not like the others? This hatch-year Worm-eating Warbler is regrowing its outermost right tail feather. The hatch-year tail feathers are pointed, but tail feathers grown after birds leave the nest are blunt-tipped, a useful characteristic for ageing hatch-year birds.

Why did I say migration was ending? It was pretty slow this week (except for Sunday), but also we are seeing a different suite of species. Instead of migrants, we are getting a lot of birds that will winter here, or birds that don't have to go too much further South to get to their wintering grounds. Our recent species composition has been dominated by Myrtle Warblers (one of the first migrants I encountered this spring at BSBO), Hermit Thrushes, Tennessee Warblers, and Swamp Sparrows. Today we caught a Grasshopper Sparrow, a new species for me.

A Grasshopper Sparrow with a bill deformity (crossed bill).

We also are catching a fair amount of Kinglets. We get two species down here, Golden Crowned and Ruby Crowned. All male Ruby Crowned Kinglets have some red head feathers, so the RCKI on the right is a male. The GCKI on the left is a female; males would have orange and yellow head feathers instead of only the yellow ones shown here.


Alright, it is getting past my bedtime and time to wrap up this post. I'll try to fill you in with a guide to Jaci's Swainson Thrush telemetry project in the next entry!

Bizzare 'Bama: Week #7 in review

Mary headed back up to Oberlin Monday to get back to teaching, but we offered to continue collecting samples for her if we get a big catbird day. Mary wants to compare the uropygial gland secretions of adult and hatch year catbirds, but it has been difficult for her to get samples from adult birds because they migrate so early. We're hoping that on a day when we catch a lot of catbirds, a few of them will be after hatch year birds that we can sample for her. Then we'll send the samples on ice via same day FedEx up to Ohio.

We've had some bad weather and even had to delay opening the nets twice this week because of the rain. It was nice for a chance to sleep in, though! We've also had some crazy winds. Ideally, we'd like some North winds to bring us birds from the North flying South. Lately we've been getting some REALLY strong (15- 20 mph) North winds. This causes two problems: birds don't stop at our site because they have the right wind to fly across the Gulf and we can't open all of our nets in that strong wind.

We did have some bizarre happenings at the site this week. The indigo bunting below has a crazy bill deformity- and she is missing her left eye! She was in good condition; e.g. her fat score on a scale of 5 was a 3, so she's obviously figured out how to work around her disabilities.




I caught my favorite insect, a weevil, in one of our nets. This guy was about half the size of my thumb!



We caught our first hawk on the 13th. This male Cooper's Hawk was hatched this summer, and had been banded down the road at another station closer to Fort Morgan. He's been making rounds at both of the stations- he was recaptured three times in two days! I've never held a hawk before, so this was pretty exciting for me. Nikita extracted him from the net, and the trick is to keep the feet restrained. Everyone tells me the beaks are a smaller problem, but I'm still pretty afraid of that hooked bill! As my dad would say, "Once again, Jenn doing dangerous things . . ." (Other photos in this category include me holding bats and a 3' land monitor lizard).



We also caught our first Painted Bunting this week, adding yet another species to my life list. Here's Jaci holding this hatch-year male.



We had our first two Yellow-Throated Warblers of the season, too. These are both hatch-year males.



Today has been fabulous so far. We had some strong North winds but we were able to open 17 of our 30 nets this morning, and we're going out again in a few minutes. What has been more incredible is the raptor migration. We've seen Broad-Winged Hawks, Cooper Hawks, a Swainson Hawk, an immature Bald Eagle, American Kestrels and Turkey Vultures, among others. I'll try to figure out posting videos so you can see what it was like at the site.



Another highlight of today was a scissor-tailed flycatcher! (not my photo)

1000th bird and a notable visitor from the North

Thursday we captured our 1000th bird, a Blue Grosbeak that hatched this summer:

It's impossible to tell whether this bird is male or female at this age, so we simply write "unknown" in our band summary. In contrast, the adult male Blue Grosbeaks look like this in the fall:

This guy wasn't thrilled to be photographed, but he is the bluest Blue Grosbeak I've seen all fall (or ever, since I hadn't seen species before coming down to Alabama!). Hitting quadruple digits at this point in the season puts us ahead of the team last year at this time. Granted, they had two hurricanes to deal with and they managed to band about 1700 new birds, so I am hopeful we will band more than that by the time we close on Halloween.

Today we captured a White-eyed Vireo with a bill deformity. It always amazes me how animals can survive (and thrive) with physical challenges like deformities or injuries. This guy had middle scores for fat and muscle, so he's doing just fine finding food. Interestingly enough, his uropygial (preen) gland was huge! This glad is located on the dorsal side of the bird at the base of the tail and is a reservoir for the oil birds use to waterproof their feathers. With this bill deformity, this vireo can't preen the way other birds would.



We also captured our first Brown-headed Nuthatch today, too. These resident birds forage high in the pine trees around the site, so they are notoriously difficult to capture in ground-level nets. I think nuthatches have a lot of character, especially the Red-breasted ones I would see in Maine while I was capturing Black-capped Chickadees for an independent project in the spring of 2008. Brown-headed Nuthatches are smaller than the White- and Red-breasted species of the north; this one was only 9.1 grams.



Our "notable visitor from the North" came Thursday via airplane versus feathered wings. We are currently hosting Mary Garvin, a professor from Oberlin College (and long-time friend of Julie from Black Swamp. Small world, right?). Mary studies relationships between avian hosts and arthropod vectors of disease. Right now she is working on a project that concerns the volatile compounds in preen oil from the uropygial gland. She wants to see if these compounds act like an insect repellent, so she has come down to the site to sample Gray Catbirds.

Here's Mary spreading the feathers around a catbird's uropygial gland.


Then she takes a sample of the oil using a capillary tube. The sample will be weighed and then stored on dry ice until it is analyzed by a chemist back in Ohio.

It's a busy weekend down here at Fort Morgan- nearby Gulf Shores is throwing its annual Shrimp Fest, three of Jaci's sisters have come to visit, and another banding station is opening just down the road from ours, so there is plenty to do.

Happy holiday weekend- get out and enjoy the weather!