April Adventures

Well, the field season is over, and I am now faced with a stack of data over 4 feet tall, much of which has to be entered and proofed within the next 3 to 4 weeks.  Precisely how this is going to happen, I’m not entirely sure!  But it was a good field season – not overly field-y for me, but I had a good crew, and we collected a lot of great data.  I repeated several of the territory-mapping plots that I did last year, which I enjoy greatly.  I love the opportunity to really observe natural history – what belongs where, developing search images for nests, plants, etc. 
 

Unfortunately, though, with a large crew (I had 12 this year) and several big deadlines within months of the end of the field season, I wasn’t able to do nearly as many point count transects as I’d like – lots of administration crap and mid-season data-proofing – so I didn’t get to hike and explore as much as I’d wish.

Training started up on the 15^th, and we all wandered around the Warm Springs Natural Area, looking at birds and running through all the plant species we passed by.  We actually had a field house just across the street from WSNA – it’s a bit barren, but there were some lilacs that this White-lined Sphinx Moth liked to pollinate, and these pallid bats roosted under the front porch roof from time to time.

This was my view in the mornings when I arrived at my Muddy River area search plot in the morning.  Typically I’d be up and working sometime between 3 and 4 in the morning, and then I’d try to get to the plot before daylight, so I could catch the dawn/pre-dawn chorus.  It was a short couple miles, unlock the big gates, and drive through, ford the Mighty Muddy, and park in the shade (or what would be the shade) of a palm tree.   On one of my visits, I had my first Common Black-Hawk!  Very exciting!

Then I’d pull out my binocs and my clipboard and aerial photo (with a UTM grid printed over it), and I’d walk a grid pattern over my plot, marking down whatever birds I saw or heard at their locations (here’s an example of one of the three maps I mark up for my Muddy River plot, that I surveyed on April 29).  The big fun is, of course, looking for nests, and this was my best year yet at finding them.  Here’s a Western Kingbird and Vermilion Flycatcher – the Kingbird is in the process of building her nest, and the Vermilion is incubating her eggs.

 

 

Anyway – that was my April!  Stay tuned for May ….