I now have four-count-’em-FOUR nests to update you on! (Of course my plan was to have twenty or so, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.)
New nestlings! Read on for more. Photo by M. LaBarbera.
Giant nest update: unhatched eggs, new nests
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Category Archives: field work
5 bad-but-good things about field work
No food that you can’t cook by adding boiling water or wrapping it in aluminum foil and sticking it in a campfire. On the one hand, you’d be surprised what turns out to be delicious wrapped in foil and cooked in a campfire—mushrooms, tomatoes, peaches, spinach—and you get to eat a lot of s’mores and Nutella.* And you gain a real, passionate appreciation for kitchen-cooked food; my field assistants and I can spend hours rhapsodizing about the food we wish we were eating. On the other hand, we make ourselves desperately hungry for pesto and pizza and Homeroom mac&cheese, and then have to eat dehydrated black bean soup. And the food appreciation never seems to last long enough for us to appreciate it when we actually have kitchens. Case in point: I’m at home now, capable of making all sorts of delicious things that I’ve craved while in the field, and I’m having a root beer float for breakfast.
*Unless you’re doing really serious, backpacking-type field work, in which case no fresh fruits or Nutella for you! Dehydrated soup all day, every day. That’s pretty rough.
Nest update: OLLA’s fledgling(s)
I stayed away from OLLA’s nest for several days, as I promised, so as not to scare the chicks into fledging early; but finally I just had to know if they had fledged yet. As I approached the nest both OLLA and ALGE scolded me—but the nest was empty. I looked around to see why they were angry at me and caught sight of a fledgling in a nearby tree: BABY! I didn’t see BABY’s siblings, but there were lots of trees around, and fledglings can be cryptic if they stay still. BABY was the smallest of the three so if she is fledged and okay, it’s very likely that YAYN and MAYO are doing well too.
YAYN or BABY, from before she fledged.
Primary-colored bycatch
The most colorful of last trip’s bycatch…
Male Cassin’s Finch:
[with Hillary] What’s happening?
Disheveled bycatch
I’m getting behind on my bycatch posts! These birds were all accidentally caught on the last trip, not the current one.
Mountain Chickadee:
I’m so angry at you that my wing and my tail are becoming one! This is my superpower!
The happy couple– er, trio
A few days ago, we had a very good day: we caught two females! This brings our total banded females up to… five. Females are elusive.
ABBY
The two females we caught aren’t interesting only for their sex, however.
Nest update: OLLA’s chicks!
Remember how OLLA and ALGE had three eggs? They’re not eggs any more!
YAYN (left) and BABY, in my hat
Nests and eggs!
We found nests! And they have eggs in them!
The first nest we found belongs to OLLA (female) and ALGE (male). Or, we assume it belongs to ALGE too, since he and OLLA are mates; only genetic testing can tell us if the eventual chicks are really his.
Mom OLLA
LOLA
Meet LOLA (Lime – Orange – Lime – Aluminum). She is one of only two juncos we have caught so far that I feel completely confident is female.
LOLA
Surprisssssse…
My field work involves frequently putting up and taking down my tent. Last time I was at one of my low-elevation sites, I did as I always do: took the fly off and folded it up, knelt in the tent to pack up my thermarest and sleeping bag, put the poles and tent away. Finally just the footprint remained, the waterproof ground cloth that goes under the tent. I almost folded this up where it lay, but decided to shake it off in case there were spiders on it, as is often the case. I whisked it off the ground—and saw this:
Tough Little Birds 