HOLA, Escape-ades, mosquitoes.

Friday, June 3: Counts, counts, more counts. Weather was cooperative today so I got a full stint of dawn-10 am in. Yay! I say cooperative, in terms of precipitation and wind, but I by no means say it was pleasant. In contrast to the start of the week, the temperature when I started counts was only about 8 degrees Celsius. I brought mittens. I heard my first Vesper Sparrow, which was a relief because I had started to worry that I was simply not hearing them, or not correctly identifying them when I did hear them. Back in May before I had started counts, I would always confuse their song with a Song Sparrow, so I thought I might be doing that in the field. However, now that I'm in the groove of point counts and have trained my ears day after day, I can't imagine how I ever confused the two of them. They now sound completely different to me :D so I haven't been missing the Vespers. Also on the interesting bird list: horned larks!! I hadn't heard any at all yet, and wasn't sure if they were common or rare in this area, so when I heard their distinctive tinkling song from the field, I at first doubted my ears.Then it came again and again, and as you'll hear if you follow this link, there's really no way to mistake them for anything else.  http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Horned_Lark/sounds
This day I heard three in total, in two different fields. I was excited that they were around, as they're something I was hoping to see; a) because I really love their song - sounds like glass falling or something -  and b) they're just so neat-looking with their little feather horns and c) their code is HOLA which makes me feel gangsta.

HOLA at ya, bro.

Saturday, June 4: Argh, rain. Drove around site to site hoping the rain would stop before I reached the next one, until I got to the end of my count territory, after which I parked and read more Sherlock Holmes on my Kobo :D. First count today wasn't until 7:25, wail. The first four I did backed onto the 401, which presented an interesting noise problem; sort of a dull roar underneath all the bird song for the whole count. We'll see if those sites are consistently lacking a species or two and blame it on the traffic. A nice man from CAA with a tow truck stopped to see if I needed assistance. I'm doing my best to look official, with my binoculars and clipboard, but apparently I'm still giving off a damsel-in-distress vibe. The thrill-of-the-day was very nearly getting the Escape stuck on a road which would be better described as the Ravenous Rocky Ravine - ravenous because it wanted to devour my vehicle whole. The story is this: I was looking for a replacement intensive agriculture site, as one of mine is being left fallow this year, and so I deliberately turned left one road too soon on my way to another site, to see if I could scout out something on the way. Well, to the right I could see this road was lovely and paved, but trees blocked my view to the left. When I turned left, this is what I saw: 

Not pictured: paved road.

Except I was at the top, heading down. I hit the brakes, but I continued to skid down another couple of meters, coming to rest with a big pine tree on my right. I didn't really know what to do. There was no way in hell I was reversing out of there, and there was no way to move forward without one of the gully-like ruts irreversibly swallowing my tires. With more fear than logic, I decided to turn around and drive out. That's right, make a point turn right there in the middle of the RRR. With a pine blocking my way to the right. Well, clearly I made it out ok, but it took about ten minutes of inching forward and backward and trying not to yell too loud when I bounced in and out of the ruts in the process. My attitude towards the roads in Northumberland County is not getting any more positive.

Sunday, June 5: I took my camera out this day to capture what a typical day is like for me. You can see those pictures here: Day in the Life, June 2011

Monday, June 6: Counts. Of course. I was going to what we call "targeted" sites - little patches of rare habitat like prairie and savanna, usually tucked away somewhere obscure. My first site was under the hydro lines, and I ran into an unexpected problem: I could barely hear the birds over the SHEEP at the neighbouring farm. 

Problem? U mad?

These sites were the more beautiful places I get to go, as they're more natural habitats and usually pretty isolated. The birds tend to come much closer and there was very little traffic noise, if any. I even saw a monarch butterfly for the first time. However, these sites do have one down-side, when I have to remain still and concentrated for a full five minutes: 

Ignoring them isn't really an option.

Needless to say, I shower in bug spray repeatedly. Mmm, love the taste of DEET in the morning.

After counts, I came home, napped, had lunch, then headed out to Little Britain to meet Kristen, Joe, and Kristen's field assistant Allison at a hay field, of which half had been mown as part of Kristen's experiment, and half was to be mown in the next ten days. It's crucial that we catch and radio-tag any bobolinks on the territory now, as she wants to evaluate what they do and where they go when their habitat is cut down. So we set up three mist nets in the field around 4:00 pm and waited...and waited...but the problem when trying to catch bobolinks is that their flight is pretty slow, unless they're engaged in a chase, and so they had plenty of time to see the net and avoid it ><. We did catch and band a savannah sparrow, so it wasn't entirely uneventful. We also flushed a wild turkey hen who was sitting on her nine eggs - she exploded up about two feet from Joe and gave us all heart attacks. We packed it up around 6:45, with plans to reconvene and try again in the morning at 6 am. I returned the Escape (after cleaning up the mosquito carnage on the inside of the windows), and went home and crashed.

Stay tuned - next post devoted to Tuesday's banding adventures :D

Sarah