The day after the last post about banding, we went back to the same field to try and get more bobolinks, but no luck. We caught some more savannah sparrows, including ones we had already banded (one guy a total of three times over the two days - poor bugger) but that's it. I did get to do my first extraction though, on a savannah sparrow that was very cleanly caught and so was a good beginner one. I had no problems in handling the bird, but the physics of the mist net itself are tricky. When you think you need to move it one way to free a wing, it ends up having to go the opposite way. The fine string also loses itself in the feathers so you have to blow on the bird every so often to expose it again. Joe was very helpful in giving me tips on what to tackle first and how to move the string. One thing I would never have done without his advice was to put my thumb on the end of the sparrow's bill while trying to free its head. It seems counter-intuitive as it blocked my vision a bit and I had to navigate the string around my thumb now. However, as I was pulling the string over the bird's head I took my thumb away, and the head immediately drooped backwards, making it impossible to move the string off. Bird's necks are very flexible, and if I didn't leave my thumb there, its head just moved around with the string and I would never have gotten it free.
Since then, I've been out doing counts every morning. Of interest this week: an Upland Sandpiper, which aren't that common, stalking around a corn field. Lifer for me. Also some eastern bluebirds, which were also lifers for me.
Eastern Bluebird
Upland Sandpiper - not what I expected in an agricultural field
Also some pretty sunrises:
Even with the hydro lines.
Same site, different morning.
And probably the most interesting thing was turning a corner and seeing this on the road:
My brain: cat? dead cat?! mobile rock?!! OH.
That's a snapping turtle, and it's the biggest turtle I've ever personally seen, but I don't think she was necessarily big for the species. Hard to give a scale, as I was not about to stick my head close enough to be in the picture, but if you look closely you can see tire tread marks on the gravel, and extrapolate from the width of a tire to how big this mama must be. I say mama because it's most likely that she is a female in search of a spot to lay her eggs, as that's usually the only reason they leave the water. They like to lay in gravelly areas, so hopefully she didn't just lay them on the road.
Although I think she'll lay eggs wherever she damn well wants to.
I dithered around trying to decide whether I wanted to risk my fingers in an attempt to move her off the road - I didn't. The road she was on was a quiet back road, and there was plenty of room for people to go around her. I have since learned that to move them, you should get them to bite down on a branch then use it to pull them off the road. Or if you want to do it Moragh-Jang-style, use a rope to haul them off. Not sure how you attach a rope without getting chomped but she does it.After counts, I've been meeting up with Kristen and sometimes Joe in the afternoon to help out wherever I can with Kristen's project. She has a lot on her plate, and her field assistant is away in Guelph for this week, so I'm trying to make it a bit easier on her. I am getting good netting experience out of it as well as some human company :D. She snapped this one of me on the Tuesday, from the previous post:
Squeeee I'm a real birder now :3
I spent one afternoon/evening (it might have been two days ago, or four, I have no idea any more) helping Kristen count bug samples. On all her fields she has a series of cups planted in the ground with a water/soap mixture in the bottom, and once a week she collects what's in the cups, to eventually be able to say something about how haying affects what bugs are available for the birds to eat. Every cup has to be gone through, and every bug identified to an order or other taxonomic group, and counted. I'm not squeamish about stuff like that generally, but I will admit that I am not very fond of the smell of these samples. Some of them have had small frogs get trapped, or even mice, and they've been rotting in the field for a week. Slugs are the worst - they make everything like a goopy mass. But it's gotta be done, and I would never want her to have to do it all by herself all the time. We put on movies and tv shows in the background for entertainment - that day was Modern Family, The Office, Willow, and Mars Attacks. It was a pretty enjoyable time, except for my last sample, which had a total of 715 isopods in it (sow bugs). That was just tedious lol.
So picture these guys. Only times 51. And rotting. You're welcome.
Yesterday, we tried netting at another farm where they've been having trouble getting any bobolinks to tag, and unfortunately we weren't any more successful :( we had the net up for three hours and only caught one song sparrow and one black-capped chickadee. Chickadees have a bad habit of pumping their feet open and closed when they get caught, which makes them incredibly tangled. But Joe is an expert so we got her out no problem. After we furled the nets, Kristen and I tried some radio telemetry to see if we could locate the bobolinks that have already been tagged. It's so frustrating. The receiver is a $12,000 piece of equipment, and she has never been able to detect a bird more than 200m away; less if they're deep in the grass or behind trees etc. The idea behind tagging them was to figure out where they go after a hay field is mown, but they could fly kilometers, and the only way to try and track them is to drive the surrounding roads with the antenna mounted on the truck, or what we did yesterday, which was her driving and me holding it out the window. When fields are routinely upwards of 20 acres, only being able to detect a bird to 200m is as good as useless for finding them. We could find 3 of 5, but that's because those three were right on her field, right in front of us. God only knows where the others flew to, but hopes aren't high for finding them.
The Devil. Despair sold separately. Blood, sweat, and tears not included.
She didn't need my help in the field this afternoon, but I might go count bugs again tonight; waiting on her word. I really hope her telemetry went better today :(.
Forever a birdnerd, and still loving field work,
Sarah
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