The most colorful of last trip’s bycatch…
Male Cassin’s Finch:
[with Hillary] What’s happening?
Primary-colored bycatch
Reply
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
Where’s the research?
You might—or, by this point, might not—recall that I’m supposed to be doing research that will be the basis of a PhD here. Based on the actual content of the blog, you’d be forgiven if you thought that the point of all of this was to take photos of various annoyed birds held in the photographer’s grip.
Go away! I am not a PhD!
So where’s the research part?
SOMA, MANI, & NOLA: funny-colored juncos
Color abnormalities don’t seem to be very unusual in juncos. There is a junco who sings outside my work building who has white splotches all over him! None of the juncos we’ve caught have been that extreme, but we have found a few with unusual spots of color on them.
SOMA has a white spot above his right eye:
SOMA
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
Eyes
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 