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?"