ABO End-Of-Season Summary

So, Life caught up with me and got crazy (working 60 hours a week at 2 jobs will do that) and I didn't have time for posting. I'm a bad bad blogger, I know, but in the back of my mind, I sorta knew this would happen. *shrug* Here's a BRIEF summary of the rest of the season, as well as a link to ABO's official end-of-season summary report for more details on most of this stuff, written by my excellent boss, Sue.

The long and short of the seasons can be summed up in one word: Strange. Strange weather, strange numbers, strange species, strange notable absences, a few strange people ;) and a few strange events. Here is a semi-organized list of the things that happened this season. While most are slightly weird, many are also slightly awesome.

1. The Myrtle Warblers sorta never showed up. They have pretty consistently been our #1 capture over the 20 years the Creamer's Field Station's been in operation, and they didn't even make the top 5 this year, with only about 10% of what we normally catch.
2. Lots 'o rain in August. LOTS.
3. Species diversity was WAY up from previous years. 42 species when we usually only get 25-30. It was an 'on' year for species we only catch every couple of years. Examples:
  - Merlin
  - Green-Winged Teal
  - Golden-Crowned Kinglet
  - Brown Creeper
  - Black-Backed Woodpecker
  - American Three-Toed Woodpecker
  - Belted Kingfisher
  - Pine Siskin
4. Large numbers of uncommon species. The cool birds were almost becoming commonplace. E.g. The first BBWO had me in a squealing fit and, I was certain, earned me 'King of the Lab' status forever. The last one just got an "Ooo, cool!" Examples:
  - White-Winged Crossbills: 16 (fourteen of those were juveniles who were all in one net at the same time). Usually: 1-2 per year.
  - Brown Creeper: 3 (these are 'one every couple of years' birds)
  - Black-Backed Woodpecker: 4 (all male)
  - American Three-Toed Woodpecker: 4
  - Golden-Crowned Sparrow: 4 (a lovely male was our first migrant to arrive back in the spring)
  - Pine Siskin: 15 (I really missed these guys from when I was in Washington! When Dayna discovered the first one, there was panic. "Crap crap! What do baby Siskins look like?? I don't remember! That was 2 years ago and I don't think we got babies!! There's not a picture in the field guide and Pyle doesn't really say anything useful... do they still have yellow tails??" O.o;;;)
5. Irruptive year for Common Redpolls. This means that there was probably a very good crop of birch seeds this spring. We had 3 days with 100-300 redpolls (Common, Hoary, and a few Pine Siskins thrown in there just to keep us on our toes). Our total numbers for the season were about average from previous years, but if you take out all those redpolls, it was definitely on the low side.
6. Nothing nefarious happened during Fair Week, e.g. the PortaPotty was still standing up and in its rightful spot, but there was a fire extinguisher incident 2 days after Fair Week. Go figure.
7. Lots of awesome volunteers, quite a few of whom were brand-new in the spring, and several of whom got 'Trial By Fire' when the Redpoll Hoard descended.
8. Three amazing interns, Julie, Mitch, and Josh... all of whom we were/are willing to manipulate and/or blackmail and/or bribe to make them come back next year. ;)
9. Snow flurries on the last day of banding. :)
10. And last, but certainly not least: an excellent boss in Sue, and amazing co-workers in Dayna, Lila, and Tricia.

ABO Winter Newsletter. The banding station season summary is on page 3. http://www.alaskabird.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/winter2011.pdf

Week on the Denali Highway! Day 1

For those of you non-Alaskans who are unfamiliar with this little jewel of a road, let me explain the appeal. The 146-mile-long Denali Highway cuts east/west across the south-central part of the state between Fairbanks and Anchorage. It connects the Parks Highway (to Anchorage) at Cantwell and the Richardson Highway (to Valdez) at Paxson, just south of the Alaska Range. It is paved for about 10 miles on the Paxson side and about 5 miles on the Cantwell side, and the rest is a well-maintained gravel road. At Cantwell, if you go east you end up on the Denali highway, and if you go west you enter Denali National Park (Denali/Mt. McKinley is quite a bit west of the rest of the taller peaks of the Alaska Range).

The cool thing about the highway is that you’re able to camp pretty much anywhere there’s enough of a break in the willows and dwarf birch to pitch a tent. Willows are a pebble in the metaphorical hiking boot of every Alaskan field biologist. Occasionally painful but always irritating until they go away. They can also, on occasion, contain bears. Or moose. Pebbles can’t do that, metaphorical or otherwise. There are also actual campgrounds with parking areas and fire-pits and bathrooms and RV hook-up thingies scattered throughout.

Also, and most importantly: the Denali Highway and the bits of the Parks and Richardson Highways leading into it are the most beautiful stretches of road in Interior Alaska. Ask anybody.

I drove down on Sunday afternoon. I made pretty good time (4 hours exactly), stopping only once to fight with my computer about why my iPod only contained the first dozen parts of the audiobook I was listening to, instead of all 60 or so. Sue and her crew were set up near the McLaren River Lodge (mile 42 from Paxson), so I took the Richardson Highway through Delta Junction. I’d made that drive before, in 2007 when I was working for the Mammalogy department of the UA Museum of the North but I wasn’t driving, so I was most likely asleep in the back of the van and missed a good portion of the scenery. It was fun to drive past those old field sites and wonder if the pikas were still there.

The crew had set up camp right across the road from the McLaren River Lodge. The lodge is right next to the McLaren River bridge, and if you look up the river valley, you can see the McLaren Glacier that feeds the river. On a clear day, you can also see the Alaska Range (most notably, Mt. Hayes), but Sunday was not one of those days. Neither was today. The lodge owners were kind enough to let the crew use their bathrooms, showers, and WiFi in exchange for small favors during the summer.

I discovered around this point that my camera batteries were as good as dead and I didn’t have any replacements. The remaining photos are mostly from other folks’ cameras.

I decided that the best-looking spot to camp (fewest plants to deal with) was down right next to the river. This is my tent’s maiden voyage, so hopefully the river won’t rush up and carry it off. By the time I’d gotten situated, it was about 8pm and definitely time for bed. I had a hard time finding a happy medium between covering my head and eyes with my sleeping bag to block out the light and not suffocating myself. The constant light is a bit harder to deal with when you don’t have a window you can just throw a blanket over to create bedroom darkness.

The 2:30am alarm on my cell phone came rudely early. In the summer at these latitudes, dusk and dawn run right into each other, so this was just an undefined partial light. Get up, put shoes on, stumble blearily (without glasses, left them in the car) to the bathroom for contacts and morning ablutions, walk back to tent, get dressed, pack the vehicles, grab breakfast and coffee for the road. We were pulling out of camp at 3:30.

The Denali Highway crew includes Sue, 2 field techs (Harley and Cassandra) and 2 interns (Dan and Mitch), as well as Harley’s wife and 4 children (ages 18-months-ish to 10-ish), and Sue’s very sweet black Lab-ish dog named Phoebe. Sue had been doing target netting and color banding while the techs and interns did nest searching and monitoring and a few other things. I went with Sue to help her with the banding.

Target netting was a new experience for me. It involves listening for where the birds are active, picking a spot, setting up one or two portable mist nets, and playing calls and songs to encourage the birds into the net. At this point in the season when the females are incubating eggs or brooding young and the males are actively guarding their territories, simulating a trespasser or invader is a pretty sure-fire way to get at least the males to come close enough to investigate.

The point of color-banding is to aid in the recognition of individuals without needing to capture them. It also helps to sex monomorphic species when breeding characters aren’t visible without capture. A numbered aluminum band can only be read when the bird is in hand, while a 3-color combination plus the aluminum band is recognizable from far away. For example, that Savannah Sparrow over there has a red band over his aluminum one on his right leg and green over yellow on his left leg, while his neighbor across the way has red over aluminum on his right leg (also) and orange over blue on his left leg. These bright colors are easily visible with binoculars. This can also help identify which nest belongs to which female and which male is feeding her and how far his territory extends. All of this is dependent upon being able to differentiate individuals (and sex) at a distance.

Our first morning (on Study Plot #3) was quite successful. We caught 4 at the first place we stopped, 5 more at the second, and another 4 at the third for a grand total of 13 birds (all male) of 6 species: SAVS, ATSP, GWCS, WIWA, BLPW, and ARWA. This was very exciting because the crew had just started hearing Arctic Warblers on any of the plots on Friday, and we caught 2 of them. ARWA’s winter in the Philippines and are the last migrants to arrive in the Interior... they’re also the first to leave, with the females building nests, mating, laying and incubating the eggs, feeding, brooding and fledging the young and getting them ready to migrate, all in as little as 6 weeks. Very little is known about their breeding ecology, which is what this project is designed to rectify.

Week of Data Entry

An important and necessary part of the scientific process...

Monday: meeting with Sue, to-do lists made. Proof and enter banding and phenology data, repair nets and replace the ones too damaged to fix, adjust support ropes, trim net-lanes, catalogue and fix chest-waders, set up fall nets (8-10, 12, 14-16, 22), fix trail to nets 8-10, put together banding kits #2 & #3, set up data binders for fall, print fall data sheets (banding, summary, phenology). I will be going to the Denali Highway to help Sue the week of June 13-17, and Dayna will be gone doing point-counts for the last week of June.

Done: 7 data sheets (0A)

Tuesday: went for sushi lunch with Sue, Dayna, and Tricia for Dayna’s birthday. Serious yum happened.

Done: 7 data sheets (0A, 0, 1)

Female White-Winged Crossbill!

Wednesday: banding! Slow-ish, fairly normal day, a bit rainy during closing. Around the middle of the day, two of my volunteers came back to the tent after a net run, handed me some bird bags, and immediately started pouring over the field guides. “We’re pretty sure we’ve got something cool, but we anted to check first.” Much to my nerd-ish glee, I pulled a White-Winged Crossbill (WWCR) out of the indicated bird bag. Awesome-bird-cookies to Paige and Karen! It was a female (generally yellow, males are generally red) with a nice-looking brood patch. We tried valiantly to find her man-friend, but to no avail. Her upper mandible crossed to the left. I heard somewhere that crossbills’ bills can cross either direction. They use the crossed-ness to pry open conifer cones (Black and White Spruce here in Fairbanks) for the seeds. White-Winged Crossbill was a new bird for me, both for banding and in-hand. ^__^

(Wednesday 8 June) Banding Summary: 17 birds, 8 species (AMRO, SCJU, CORE, YWAR, MYWA, HAFL, NOWA, BCCH, WWCR).

Thursday: more data entry.

Done: 8 data sheets (1, 1B, 1A, 2, Recap)

Friday: more data entry and Denali Highway packing lists. I am a compulsive list-maker.

Done: 6 data sheets (0A, Recap)

Saturday: banding again! Very slow and nothing much of interest.

(Saturday 11 June) Banding Summary: 10 birds, 8 species (NOWA, AMRO, BCCH, HAFL, OCWA, LISP, MYWAY, SCJU).

Last Week of Spring Banding!

Swainson's Thrush wants to
know what you're doing.
Photo by Barbara Logan.

(Tuesday 31 May) Banding Summary: 19 birds, 7 species


(Wednesday 1 June) Banding Summary: 12 birds, 5 species

On Wednesday, nets 27 and 28 were closed down with trammel issues, so I fixed those on Thursday. Net 18 was closed on Wednesday as well for a possible predation. I left it closed for both Thursday and Friday just so Mister Squirrel doesn't get any more ideas.

American Robin.
Photo by Barbara Logan.

It rained briefly and lightly around 7:00, and other than the clouds of mosquitoes, the day ran pretty smoothly.

(Thursday 2 June) Banding Summary: 15 birds, 7 species

On Friday, Aunt Judy was back at the station, and it was good to catch up with her! It got pretty windy later in the day, so we closed down nets 7 and 11.

Baby Gray Jay!

Cool/awesome/amazing bird of the day: BABY GRAY JAY. 'nuff said. We also had a male Rusty Blackbird and a Solitary Sandpiper at closing while a visitor was at the station. I love having awesome birds for visitors! ...when it's slow, I love having any birds for visitors, actually... ;)

*GLARE* Photo by Barbara Logan.

We age corvids (the family that includes jays, crows, ravens, and magpies) by the color of the inside of their mouths. Adults are the same slate-gray on the inside as on the outside. Babies' (and young-of-the-year that are out of their distinctive juvenal plumage) mouths are varying degrees of Barbie-pink on the inside. This guy was in full-on juvenal plumage (the solid dark gray), and his mouth was an embarrassing color of bright pink. In response to a texted photo, Virginia said he looked like a shoe-brush. I can only assume that this was in reference to his uber-fluffiness, not an actual resemblance.

Pink mouth!

Biting Cheyanna.

My volunteers bring me the best presents! ^____^

(Friday 3 June) Banding Summary: 14 birds, 12 species

Dayna wasn't feeling well and it looked like rain was imminent (it did rain about an hour later), so we cancelled banding on Saturday.

And now she doesn't want to leave!
Photo by Barbara Logan

During the summer, we operate on 5-day periods so we don't bug the brooding females and babies more than is necessary. This means that we'll band once within each of our 5-day periods, but not necessarily every 5 days. Our schedule will depend on Dayna's and my schedules for various other projects.

And so begins Summer banding... and Summer office work and net repair and various preparations for the craziness that is Fall banding!

Week of Sarah Trying to Wear Knee-Boots

Nice male Myrtle Warbler. Photo by Barbara Logan.

Thursday was slow and not very exciting. I kid you not, the thing that went in the 'cool birds' column on the whiteboard was "Moose".

There was a moose at the banding station. And at nets 24 and 25.

There were also Robins carrying nesting material near net 25 and a Horned Grebe nest near net 11.

I wore my knee boots out of a sense of misplaced optimism. This led to me being wet.

(Thursday 26 May) Banding Summary: 13 birds, 7 species (OCWA, AMRO, SWTH, BCCH, CORE, SCJU, MYWA).

I had an awesome idea to fix the wet from Thursday. The water wasn't much over my boots, so I figured that if I wore rain pants, that would fix the problem. Wrong. My littany while sloshing to net 23 was "Please, PLEASE make it worth getting wet!" It didn't.

OMG Mosquitos. DEEEEEET.

Pile of dead mosquitos.

It's started to get a bit too warm in the afternoons. 81 in the shade is not acceptable.

Cool birds: tiniest Redpoll baby EVER.

(Friday 27 May) Banding Summary: 14 birds, 7 species (CORE, YWAR, SCJU, AMRO, MYWA, OCWA, LISP).

Saturday was business as usual. Our Savannah Sparrow and Lincoln's Sparrow were cool and our Black-Capped Chickadee was nice to see after awhile not seeing them.

We think we might have had a squirrel predation, so we'll keep a very close eye on nets 18 and 19 where he hangs out.

Common Redpoll baby!!

(Saturday 28 May) Banding Summary: 17 birds, 9 species (SCJU, OCWA, LISP, AMRO, CORE, YWAR, BCCH, MYWA, SAVS).

Sunday was the beginning of the baby Redpoll hoard (we had 9 with 2 adult chaperones). It was breezy by mid-morning, which kept the mosquitos down, but caused the closing of nets 4, 6, and 7. Sandy and Dayna were able to do the front gully in knee-boots. I'd learned my lesson by this point, sucked it up and wore the chest waders.

(Sunday 29 May) Banding Summary: 19 birds, 4 species (CORE, MYWA, YWAR, AMRO).

Taking measurements on a Hammond's Flycatcher.
Photo by Barbara Logan.

By Monday, the hoard had become an army. 20 Redpoll babies. Apparently it was Mom's day at the spa or something because all 3 of the adult Redpolls we caught with the babies were male.

(Monday 30 May) Banding Summary: 32 birds, 8 species (CORE, AMRO, SWTH, MYWA, YWAR, NOWA, HAFL, SAVS).

More from the Week of Fire

Looking for molt limits on the Yellow Warbler.
Photo by Barbara Logan.

Sorry about the long wait... life got crazy but I'll try to do a few big updates over the next few days. Not having internet at my cabin doesn't help. ;)

Tomboy Blackpoll Warbeler female.

Sunday the 22nd is up next, I believe. We had a tree fall on net 18 overnight... luckily it wasn't very big, so Gabriel and I got it moved out of the way without much trouble. We also had a very tomboy-feminist Blackpoll Warbler (see photo). She had lots of black on her head and lots of white in her tail... She had to be pretty darned old to be looking quite that good. Two redpoll babies, a Yellow Warbler and a Savannah Sparrow were the extent of the cool birds for  the day.

(Sunday 22 May) Banding Summary: 36 birds, 10 species (MYWA, OCWA, CORE, SWTH, BLPW, NOWA, AMRO, SAVS, SCJU, YWAR).

Trying to age the Solitary Sandpiper. Photo by Barbara Logan.

Solitary Sandpiper. Photo by Barbara Logan.

Monday was a bit rainy, and then it was a bit windy. I didn't open 11 or 13 for the rain early (they're pretty exposed) and then was able to open 13 around 8:00. Net 11 got left closed because of the wind later in the day.

Also, there's something completely awesome about having something in your hand that can tear out your eyeballs. And wants to. Badly. ^____^

Cool Birds: Sharp-Shinned Hawk (immature male), Solitary Sandpipers (x2), Grey-Cheeked Thrush.

I will eat your SOUL.

(Monday 23 May) Banding Summary: 31 birds, 12 species (SWTH, BLPW, YWAR, CORE, SCJU, AMRO, OCWA, SOSA, HAFL, MYWA, GCTH, SSHA).

My weekend: Belted Kingfisher. 'Nuff said. Well, and the Spruce Grouse that Cheyanna almost caught. I told her that she should practice her linebacker tackle for next time. ;)

(Tuesday 24 May) Banding Summary: 38 birds, 14 species (CORE, SCJU, NOWA, YWAR, MYWA, OCWA AMRO, SWTH, GCTH, BCCH, HAFL, DOWO, RUBL, BEKI).


(Wednesday 25 May) Banding Summary: 24 birds, 11 species (SWTH, AMRO, OCWA, MYWA, YWAR, NOWA, SAVS, LISP, GWCS, SCJU, SPGR)

Sharp-Shinned Hawk, juv. male.

Handsome Yellow Warbler. Photo by Barbara Logan.

Week of FIRE, Part 2

Ok, so Friday. Not as many birds, and certainly nothing as exciting as a Yellowlegs... there was another Solitary Sandpiper though, and those are always cool. Friday was also our first rainy day. We delayed opening until 7:00, and by then it had mostly stopped. Unfortunately, it got windy later and we had to close nets 7 and 11 at 10:00.

Blackpoll Warbler female.

Also my hip-waders flooded. Not leaked, like the chest-waders. Flooded. Luckily, there was an extra pair of XtraTuffs in the tent that I appropriated. They were huge. I had Gabriel of the non-leaky-waders check the deep nets (23, 13, and 11), and it worked out alright.

 Also, this lovely Northern Waterthrush (see photo below) has the trashy-est feathers ever. No self-respecting After Second Year bird would be caught dead in feathers like that! For SHAME. Those central tail feathers aren't even feathers anymore!

Northern Waterthrush with Trash Feathers.

Cool birds of the day: Yellow Warbler male who was exceptionally pretty, and a Blackpoll Warbler female. When I pulled her out of the net, I didn't know what she was. I had 2 scenarios in my head: a) she was something very cool and very lost, or b) she was something silly that I wasn't thinking of and I'd feel stupid later. Turned out that she was cool and not-lost, because Blackpoll females look nothing like the males.

(Friday 20 May) Banding Summary: 24 birds, 10 species (OCWA, MYWA, SCJU, HAFL, NOWA, SOSA, CORE, AMRO, BLPW, YWAR).

NOWA Trash Tail.

I called in sick on Saturday. I woke up at 4:30 as usual, and started to sit up... physically started to sit up, not just thought about it... and woke up at 5:25 with a lot of confusion and absolutely no voice.This was the start of what Dayna and I are now lovingly calling the Gully Water Plague.

I might also mention that Friday afternoon was the start of Alaska-Is-Burning season. It was windy on Friday (as I mentioned), and the wind only got worse as the afternoon progressed. Partway through my shift at Barnes & Noble (I was zoning, so I was tucked away in between 2 shelves where nobody could see me), I started smelling smoke coming through the doors. I assumed that it was left-overs from the proscribed burn on the Creamer's front field. Finally, when I'd clocked out and was leaving, I overheard someone saying that there was actually a wildfire up on Goldstream hill near Ivory Jack's. This got me worried because not only is my cabin on that side of town, The Boy's cabin is actually about a mile from Ivory Jack's and that was a bit too close for comfort. I spent the night with one ear and eye open in case he knocked on my door needing a place to stay for the night. He didn't (they got the fire contained and under control sometime around midnight), but I slept rather badly anyway. And woke up very sick.

(Saturday 21 May) Banding Summary: 20 birds, 10 species (MYWA, SWTH, SCJU, HAFL, GCTH, OCWA, NOWA, SAVS, WCSP, LISP)

Week of FIRE, Part 1

Lovely Savannah Sparrow!

On Thursday, they did proscribed burns in the front fields. The birds all went away because fo the smoke. :(

It started out a lot warmer than previous mornings, which was nice (52). Our newest volunteer, Gabriel, helped Dayna with the 122 birds in the gully with his non-leaky hip-waders. He was extremely helpful, since the gully is now down low enough for hip waders. My chest waders, however, just to spite me, rubbed my calf raw and then there was nasty gully-water and yuck. Just yuck. And ouch.

The ACTUAL Lesser Yellowlegs!

We've also started getting thrushes, and Dayna got a Grey-Cheeked Thrush, which I'd never seen before. I panicked and made myself a cheat-sheet for thrushes. This turned out to not be necessary up here, as our three thrushes are actually pretty distinct. OUR Swainson's Thrushes DON'T have red butts and our Hermit Thrushes DO. Eat your hearts out, you poor Pacific Northwest suckers! ;)

Northern Waterthrush.

Anyway, the cool birds continued. First Lincoln's Sparrow and an actual Lesser Yellowlegs. He was huge. And had a white butt. And his legs were the color of an obnoxious yellow Ferrari. We also got a few Northern Waterthrushes, a lovely Rusty Blackbird male, a Grey-Cheeked Thrush, and a Savannah Sparrow.

Also, FIRST BABY COOKIES to the Common Redpoll (and to ME)!!! He was all fluffy and was still growing in his wings and tail and it was all stubby and adorable. Aaaand I'm done now.

(Thursday 19 May) Banding Summary: 56 birds, 15 species (MYWA, CORE, AMRO, OCWA, SWTH, SCJU, HAFL, BCCH, WCSP, LISP, LEYE, NOWA, RUBL, GCTH, SAVS)

FIRST BABY! Common Redpoll.

Friday was rather miserable. I got all excited about hip-waders and found a pair that weren't too big in the feet but would fit around my tree-trunk thighs. I was feeling very accomplished.

And now, in the style of my hero, George R. R. Martin, whose epic HBO series I am now being dragged off to watch, I am going to leave you all with a cliff-hanger and finish this tomorrow.

^___^

LOTS of birds over my weekend!

So, over my weekend, the Northern Waterthrushes descended.

(Tuesday 17 May) Banding Summary: 47 birds, 13 species (MYWA, SCJU, AMRO, OCWA, BCCH, SWTH, RUBL, LISP, HAFL, CORE, NOWA, SOSP, FOSP)

And, on Wednesday, all our warblers suddenly appeared. En masse.

(Wednesday 18 May) Banding Summary: 122 birds, 14 species (SOSA, HAFL, GCTH*, SWTH, AMRO, OCWA, MYWA x32, BLPW, YWAR*, WIWA*, NOWA x40, GWCS, SCJU, CORE)

The rest of the week to follow in a day or so!

Week of Awesome Birds, Part 2

So, last time, we talked about the Rusty Blackbird and the Downy Woodpecker and the supposed Lesser Yellowlegs. Here is the exciting conclusion to last week's cliff-hanger!

Solitary Sandpiper, not!LesserYellowlegs.

We went home and I posted pictures on Facebook. I didn't have time to caption any of them. On Sunday, Dayna proposed a radical theory: perhaps it was actually a Solitary Sandpiper and that's why its biometrics were so tiny. We checked the SOSA biometrics (wing cord, tail, bill length, tarsus length, etc.) and our bird fit them perfectly. Also, brown butt. We were both feeling rather stupid at this point. I checked Facebook when I got home Sunday afternoon and good ol' Uncle Tim (my family contains many bird nerds) commented on one of my photos: "Nice Solitary Sandpiper!" -_-;;; This is me feeling very VERY dumb.

Other characteristic examples of Sarah Being Dumb:

Solitary Sandpiper with only kinda-yellow legs.

Exhibit A: 2008 (the year of The Great and Epic Fail) Institute for Bird Populations (IBP) Northwest training camp in Grant's Pass, OR, day 2. Ted Snyder is checking on the extraction skills of his newest intern on a tiny little bird with a yellow patch on its head. "So, Sarah, what's this bird?" I look at it for a minute. "A baby... Golden-Crowned... Sparrow?" This should have resulted in a wrathful glare and a smack to the head, but Ted is nicer than that. "How about a Golden-Crowned Kinglet?" *FACEPALM*

Exhibit B: 2009 IBP Wenatchee National Forest, Rattlesnake Springs (I think) banding station, near Naches, WA. Our biologist and boss is visiting for a few days and Erika (fellow intern & field partner) and I are going about business as usual, banding and processing, etc. We get a rather large flycatcher and are going about trying to figure out what species it is. We're taking lots of measurements and trying to match them to anything on Pyle's Empidonax flycatcher chart... without success. All the measurements are just way too big. Erica (biologist) watches us for a few minutes and then cuts in: "Uh, girls... that's not an Empid." Twin blank stares. Re-examine the bird: grayish brownish greenish, rictal bristles, large-ish bill, buffy wing bars. Definitely a flycatcher. Wrack brain some more... light bulb of guilt. Sheepish and appropriately contrite: "It's a Western Wood-Peewee, isn't it." *FACEPALM*

I feel that an allowance of one egregiously stupid moment per year is not too much to ask.

(Saturday 14 May) Banding Summary: 15 birds, 8 species (CORE, SCJU, MYWA, AMRO, SOSA, RUBL)

Nice little Hammond's Flycatcher.

Sunday went fine, with the exception of on very badly tongued Rusty Blackbird... the worst one I've seen among the several thousand birds I've extracted. "Tonguing" (bird's tongue caught on the net) happens on occasion, most commonly with birds who tend to yell in the net. Usually this is restricted to robins and woodpeckers. Birds tongues are forked in the back, and this is where the net gets caught. Generally, a dexterously applied toothpick will fix this problem. Woodpeckers are another matter because their entire tongue is barbed. Blackbirds usually aren't a problem, but this one was a borderline avian microsurgery problem. I eventually got her freed and apart from some bleeding in her mouth, seemed fine.

Cool birds: Gambel's White-Crowned Sparrow, Rusty Blackbird (1 male, 1 female), Hammond's Flycatcher (x3)

(Sunday 15 May) Banding Summary: 25 birds, 9 species (SCJU, CORE, BCCH, MYWA, AMRO, FOSP, GWCS, HAFL, RUBL)

Male Blackpoll Warbler!

Monday was cloudy and quite warm (41 at opening and 65 at closing). Net 25 (triple high and a general pain in the butt) came down while Cheyanna was setting it up, so we took it down and re-did the support lines... opened fine at 8:00.

Cool birds: Solitary Sandpiper (x2), Orange-Crowned Warbler, nice male Blackpoll Warbler (a new one for me!)

(Monday 16 May) Banding Summary: 25 birds, 9 species (MYWA, SCJU, AMRO, CORE, HAFL, FOSP, SOSA, OCWA, BLPW)

Week of Awesome Birds, Part 1

Studliest male Redpoll EVER.

So. Thursday was rather boring, except for the NewsMiner reporter that visited with Sue. We had to close at 11:00 for wind. Not many birds, and nothing remotely cool or interesting.

(Thursday 12 May) Banding Summary: 9 birds, 4 species (SCJU, BCCH, AMRO, MYWA)




Friday was windy. Let me tell you something about Fairbanks. It's in a bowl. There are hills on 3 sides and a mountain range on the other side. There is no wind. Ever. Except this year. There is wind quite frequently. DO NOT WANT. One of the many reasons we open right after sunrise is because it's one of the stillest times of the day. Heat makes air move, and pre-dawn is about as cold as it gets.



Male Orange-Crowned Warbler!

I didn't even bother opening net 23, and I shouldn't have bothered opening net 11, since those two are the most wind-prone nets we have. We ended up closing most of the gully (11, 13, 17, 20, and 21), net 7 in the front and nets 26 and 27 in the back around 10:00.

On the plus side, it's not really freezing at night any more AND we caught the first Orange-Crowned Warbler of the year.

(Friday 13 May) Banding Summary: 14 birds, 6 species (MYWA, SCJU, AMRO, CORE, BCCH, OCWA)


SY Female Rusty Blackbird

Saturday was the day that the awesome started. Susan Sharbaugh brought her Intro to Ornithology class by mid-morning. I got a female Rusty Blackbird (not endangered yet, but in decline) and what I thought was a Lesser Yellowlegs. All his biometrics were WAY too small, so we called him the Least Yellowlegs. Also his butt was brown. But he was cool nonetheless! We also got a Downy Woodpecker male later. He was the cranky pill his mummy taught him to be.



Very cranky male Downy Woodpecker.

More next episode! Stay tuned for the Lesser Yellowlegs conclusion and photos!









Massive update (now that Sarah's caught up on sleep)

It's getting harder to sleep now. For perspective, the sun came up at 4:46am this morning and won't go back down again until 10:51pm. It doesn't actually get dark until close to midnight and starts getting light again around 4. I made up for 5 days of less than optimal sleep last night.

Friday was relatively busy. Too busy for interesting things to happen. Two important things from Friday: the beaver chewed a tree down in our main path to the gully (which was chewed in a funny spiral pattern and of which I will post a photo later), and the Robins are back. Yippee.

(Friday 6 May) Banding Summary: 17 birds, 5 species (SCJU, MYWA, CORE, BCCH, AMRO)

Captain of Team Adorable: Ruby-Crowned Kinglet.

Saturday turned out to be chilly (23F) and windy. Which was bad. There are a few conditions under which banders are advised to close nets. Rain and wind are the most common, followed by direct sun, heat, and predators, as well as to reduce the capture rate on very busy days or if something happens to severely damage the net (such as a deer running through). We started getting pretty gusty winds (up to 5 on the Beaufort scale) around 9am, and at 9:30 I closed nets 23 and 11 because they were blowing into the alders and getting tangled. Immediately after that, two of our volunteers brought me a foot and a random (unidentifiable) entrail from net 2, and said that there was also a nice, neat pile of feathers under the net as well. Hooray for raptor kills. There is a Northern Harrier hanging out in the front field, so she gets the blame. We closed both nets 1 and 2 (which are end-to-end) for the rest of the day as a precaution.

On the up-side, we caught a nice male Ruby-Crowned Kinglet and the Hermit Thrush that had been singing for a day or so in the back. Two new species in one day! Since it was windy, the kinglet was puffing up his feathers, which was excellent for the photo! Usually the crown patch is mostly concealed.

(Saturday 7 May) Banding Summary: 7 birds, 6 species (CORE, BCCH, AMRO, SCJU, RCKI, HETH)

Sunday morning was the coldest morning we've had yet this season (20F) but it was completely clear, so it warmed up nicely mid-way through the morning. This meant that we had to break ice on the gully again, and early in the morning the residual water on our waders froze by the time we got back to the banding station. The water is continuing to go down, if very slowly. We're hopeful that we'll be in hip-waders by the end of spring banding (4 June).

My waders have sprung another slow leak... not horrible, but definitely irritating. Regardless, it turned into a lovely Mothers' Day, and we had several couples and families out for a stroll come to visit. Unfortunately, we didn't have many birds and none of them were very exciting. One of our volunteers did see the Harrier try (unsuccessfully) to take a Mallard in the gully.

Also discovered today: a moderately sized herd of Lesser Yellowlegs flying over at low altitude sounds like a small propeller airplane. Yes, I did say 'herd'. It seems more appropriate than 'flock'. Herd implies large and noisy.

(Sunday 8 May) Banding Summary: 5 birds, 3 species (BCCH, SCJU, CORE)

Lovely Fox Sparrow.

Monday was exciting, never mind that the hole in my waders had gotten bigger. Sue's Denali Highway interns came out with us, and Mark (the refuge manager) brought us cinnamon rolls. Sue told us to put that down in our phenology notes. Apparently he lost a bet with his assistant... something about the return date for Savannah Sparrows or something. Whatever. We got cinnamon rolls. ^__^

There was an entire chorus of Wood Frogs singing in the gully. Wood Frogs (Rana sylvatica) are Alaska's only amphibian (we have no non-avian reptiles either), largely because they are able to allow their body temperature to drop below freezing without suffering the necrosis that occurs when ice crystals puncture cell membranes. They super-saturate their blood with urea and sugar to cushion their cells and lower the freezing point of their body liquids. Yay for having anti-freeze in your blood.

Tried to get a picture of the FOSP's red butt, but the light foiled us.

We spotted a few American Pipits in the front fields, as well as a Tree Swallow looking very possessive and at-home on one of the nest-boxes. We also had a Hermit Thrush singing his little heart out in the back and one of Sue's interns spotted an American Tree Sparrow. Several species of butterflies are out and about and several buds on our study birch tree have burst. Not the buds we're supposed to be looking at, but still. Green-up is still at least a week away.

I'll fix my waders (again) tomorrow and hopefully I'll be dry for a couple of days.

Cool birds for the day: 2 Boreal Chickadees, one caught twice, and a Fox Sparrow at the end of the day!

(Monday 9 May) Banding Summary: 16 birds, 6 species (MYWA, CORE, SCJU, BCCH, BOCH, FOSP)

In other non-bird news, I've signed a lease for a cabin! I get to move in in a week or so.

First migrant!

Groundhog!

Monday went... interestingly. Several people were cranky (myself included), but it was a nice day and we did have several birds.

So, I took my waders home over the weekend and attempted to fix them. I fixed several holes, but apparently not all of them. Still leaky, but better than the huge green Cabella's waders with the hugest holes ever.

There was also obvious beaver activity in the gully... several trees chewed on, etc. I also saw one of them just hanging out by the farmhouse... 1/4 mile from any kind of water. Most random thing EVER. EDIT: actually a groundhog. >__<

Golden-Crowned Sparrow.

Also, our first migrant of the year: Golden-Crowned Sparrow! Sue and I saw him sitting on a branch near net 18, pretty as you please. When we got back to the banding station and Aunt Judy went to go see if she could find him too. Two minutes later, we hear on the radio, "He's in the net, can I bring him in?" ^__^ Creamer's Field only catches a few of these guys a year, and they're usually one of the later migrants to come into the station. He was gorgeous and mysterious... funny the same qualities that make birds sexy make boys sexy too. Hmm. I must ponder the ramifications of THAT.

(Monday 2 May) Banding Summary: 6 birds, 3 species (BCCH, CORE, GCSP)


Stuff from the two days I was off-duty:


(Tuesday 3 May) Banding Summary: 5 birds, 3 species (CORE, BCCH, SCJU, DOWO)
Downy Woodpecker, awesome! Also, the Juncos are here!


(Wednesday 4 May) Banding Summary: 15 birds, 3 species (CORE, SCJU, MYWA)
May the fourth be with you day! Yay for Star Wars nerd-ism. The Myrtle Warblers are back as well... 9 of the 15 birds were MYWA's. They travel in packs.

Boreal Chickadee.

Now, on to Thursday.

I took the waders home again for my actual weekend (Tuesday & Wednesday). I turned them inside-out and filled them full of water to see if I could find any more leaks. Found the big one, which wasn't along a seam at all, much to my astonishment. I left them out in the lovely sunshine for an afternoon, and the field test on Thursday seemed to support my they're-finally-fixed-for-real-this-time theory.

Hooray for dry feet. Seriously. It did wonders for my mood and general outlook on life.

The water in the gully is starting to go down, finally. I no longer have to hold up my waders and walk on tip-toes and hold my breath when going to check net 13. We may actually get down to hip-waders before spring banding is over!

Cool bird of the day: Boreal Chickadee. They hang out at the station and overwinter in Fairbanks, but they don't generally fly low enough to get caught in nets. He was quite a lot better-tempered than the Black-Capped Chickadees tend to be, which was very nice.

(Thursday 5 May) Banding Summary: 8 birds, 3 species (BCCH, ORJU, BOCH)


PS: I'll insert pictures later this evening. Chaia is demanding the grocery store and I need the post office.

PPS: Bun-on-the-Run is now open! The Rule at CRMS is that if you let go of a bird after you've touched it (from the net, from a bag, etc.), you get a tick on the white-board. Five ticks mean you have to bring Bun-on-the-Run cinnamon rolls for everyone. We like this rule. Especially now that Sue has one.

Murphy is a vindictive bastard

First barbecue of the year yesterday: success! There was yummy brautworst and extra-yummy moose burgers and many games of Dominion and a few rounds of Apples-to-Apples and an interesting game of Balderdash.Chaia got a little tipsy and couldn't spell anything, but it's her birthday today, so it's allowed. Chena Hotsprings now!

Actual banding report to follow either tonight or tomorrow.

EDIT: So. Banding on Friday. It didn't rain... that's about the only positive thing I can say.

Since my waders were leaking, I selected another pair at random. They were huge and baggy. And had the hugest leak ever. As soon as I put a foot in the water, it started gushing in. Dayna also decided to go ahead and open net 13. I had to hoist my waders up and walk on my tip-toes, and even then I only had about an inch to spare. And water was pouring in and it was oh-my-gosh-short-out-my-brain cold.

Also, as I was setting up net 18 (one of our double-high nets), I attached the padlock to one of the upper trammels because the upper ones don't tend to sag quite as much and can take the bit of extra weight. I apparently didn't shut it all the way, because when I was tugging on the rope to get it all the way up, the lock fell off and beaned me on the forehead. I've still got a bump. I said bad words. Lots of them.

That's pretty much how the rest of the day went. We had one Redpoll (full brood patch) on opening net run, and nothing else until closing, when we got our other 2 Redpolls. Needless to say, I got quite a lot of reading done.

(Friday 29 April) Banding summary: 3 birds, 1 species (CORE)

Displeased.

Banding yesterday was an exercise in several different kinds of futility.

Upon arrival at 5:15, it wasn't raining but looked like rain wasn't far off. Because of the nice warm days we'd been having, the water stick at net 23 went from 0.5m on Monday to 1.1m yesterday. The pole had also slid down inside its PVC stilt and there wasn't enough of the pole to actually get the net open. This was fine because between the main trail and the net, I almost went over my chest waders. I could get to it at 6am, but I probably couldn't have gotten there at noon to close it down. Opening 20 was ok, but opening 21 just beyond it didn't happen. Dayna didn't even attempt 11 (crotch deep on Monday), and attempted and failed 13. Those two were above chest wader depth on 5'6" Dayna. This is all fine and good; fewer nets to check in the gully. We caught a Chickadee on the opening net run, and two Redpolls on the subsequent net run. The Chickadee had two pretty good fault bars* running through its tail... tips were broken off at one point and part of the vane was completely missing halfway up one of the central rectricies. The Redpolls were Super Cute. The female had a nice fluid-filled brood patch (if she wasn't already sitting on eggs, she was very close to laying), and her boyfriend was caught in the same net right next to her. Come to find out, their band numbers were within 5 of each other, so they were caught on the same day, and likely at the same time. Yay for mated pairs!

We didn't catch any more birds all day.

It started spitting rain around 8am. We ended up closing net 17, which was catching the rain and sagging. It had stopped by 10am, but it was just enough so that we were damp and cold. Trisha only kept the two school groups about 30 seconds at the station itself, likely because the benches were wet and we didn't have any birds for them.

My chest waders still have a leak, so my right leg was wet most of the day. But those waders aren't insulated, so distinguishing between very cold and very cold & wet was difficult.

No birds and cold and rain = BORED BANDERS. Of course this was the day that Stephan's Nook needed charging and I hadn't thought to replace it with a paperback. I'm going to start bringing my knitting. Also, there are no pictures. Apologies.

Banding summary: 3 birds, 2 species (BCCH, CORE)

After banding was done, there was Barnes & Noble Cafe work to be done. They really need to stop scheduling only 2 people back there at a time. They end up cannibalizing half of their book-floor staff to come save up from the mob. And nothing gets done. Heaven forbid we run out of cookies or something. Nobody can stop running around long enough to bake more.

*Fault bars and growth bars: These are bars of light and dark within feathers (easiest to see in tail feathers) that represent good- and poor-quality feather construction. These bars represent metabolic cycles, usually coinciding with day and night. During the day when birds are eating, they have a lot of extra resources to put into growing high-quality feathers. At night when they're not eating, the feathers they make are lower in quality due to reduced metabolic resources. This cycle results in growth bars. An particularly bad or long low-resource period results in metabolic trauma, which produces fault bars. This is usually due to a rainstorm or chicks in a nest being abandoned by their parents and not fed for awhile. Fault bars are bad-quality sections of feathers that are wider and more severe than growth bars. It is not uncommon for the feather to be so compromised that the feather shaft (rachis) breaks at these points. The alignment of these bars can help in aging a bird. If the bars are all lined up, those feathers all grew at the same time, indicating that the bird is either very young or lost all of its tail to a predator, etc. If the bars are off-set, the bird grew its tail one at a time, either in a symmetrical pattern from a regular molt (indicating an older bird) or in a non-symmetrical pattern from losing one or two feathers at a time to predators, etc.

Set-up (last week) and First Day of Banding (yesterday)!

So, after suffering a winter of working at Old Navy and Barnes & Noble, we are finally getting spring banding underway here at Alaska Bird Observatory's Creamer's Field Migration Station. This is its 20th year gathering banding data, which is one of the longest continuous data-sets in the state of Alaska. The banding station itself is a semi-permanent wall-tent that gets set up in April and taken down in October every year. CFMS (under the direction of Head Bander Sue Guers) runs 30 nets total, only 21 of which are open in the spring. For those of you who have banded before and are used to 2-person field crews, this seems like a lot of nets. Fortunately, ABO has a long list of volunteers who are trained to check the nets and extract birds,

so when it gets busy (mostly in the fall) the banders can stay at the station and band while the volunteers continue to check the nets and bring birds back. I started out doing this whenever my class schedule allowed a morning off when I was working on my degree at UAF. Spring tends to be slow (0-20 birds per day is typical) since the migrants are just beginning to return, and fall varies between moderately busy and crazy busy (50-200 birds per day). The CFMS nets are divided into sections to make them easier to check. Nets 1-7 are the Front, nets 24-30 are the Back, and 11, 13-23 are the Gully, some of which cannot be opened until the seasonal pond evaporates a bit. Nets 8-10 and 12 are the Hinterlands and are also not open in the spring.

Half set-up wall tent

Monday 18 April: Set up the wall-tent, as well as nets 3 and 5, which are double-tall and a general pain in the butt. The poles were long and unwieldy, the nets were twisted, and the ropes were tangled and frozen. The pain-in-the-butt-ness was compounded by the fact that there was knee-deep snow everywhere. The Creamer's Field Refuge is one of the coldest places in town. We snow-machined the tent and the Porta-Potty in, as well as the cement blocks to support the double- and tripple-tall nets. The only birds around were Chickadees (both Black-Capped and Boreal), Redpolls, and Bohemian Waxwings, all of which over-winter in Fairbanks. The Canada Geese had just recently arrived.

Front nets, furled for the night (left).

Tuesday 19 April: Set up the rest of the Front, with the exception of net 6, which was apparently missing a pole. Sue and I set up the Gully nets that were not likely to be too badly flooded the next week (11, 13, 19-23). The snow in the Gully was deep and very powdery.

Wednesday 20 April: Sue and I brought an extra pole for net 6 and got it up, and managed to set up all of the back nets except for 25, which is the triple-tall. Mike arrived part-way through the morning and with 3 of us, we were able to get 25 up. It required 45 minutes and lots of swearing. We had to take the net off of the poles probably four times, which is no small feat when the poles are 30 feet long and there are three nets to get tangled up. On the way out, I noticed that there were a few Greater White-Fronted Geese in the fields mixed in with the many hundreds of Canada Geese. This turned out to be a new species for me... don't ask me how I'd never seen them on the ponds in previous years, I know they've been there. No Sandhill Cranes yet.

Monday 25 April: Let me preface this by saying that Cricket (my 1-year-old black cat) was being an absolute twerp on Sunday night and I got very little sleep in preparation for getting up at 4am. I hadn't been out to the station since Wednesday, so I had no idea how much of the snow had melted. I'd brought break-up boots and rain pants in case it was wet or snowy, but I decided to play it safe and put on the chest waders. Neither Dayna (the other bander) nor Sue put on waders, so I felt a little silly, but whatever. As soon as we got close, it was immediately obvious that the Gully was now full of water and that the chest waders were indeed a Good Plan. Dayna was dispatched back to the farmhouse to get another pair (and also the radios that we'd forgotten). Some time, probably on Thursday or Friday, Sue had installed PVC pipes at a few of the Gully nets with Sharpie marks for water depth (only the best in high-tech equipment for field biologists). The one by net 11 said 0.75m (~2.5 ft) at 6am, and was up to 0.9m (~3 ft) by closing at noon. Hooray for melting snow at an inch per hour. Anyway, since I was the only one with waders at that point, I got to open 11 and 13. I discovered two things as I started into the water: there was still snow beneath the water and there was 1/4 inch layer of ice on top of it. This made for very slow going and lots of rather pretty bruises on my legs until I discovered that my golf club (meant for raising and lowering high net trammels) was good for ice-breaking. Also, the nets had sagged on their poles as they stretched a little (from being scrunched in their bags all winter), so the poles had to be adjusted. This is Not Fun in water and ice. Needless to say, it took me an hour to adjust and open two nets. Go me. Hopefully now that channels have been opened to the nets, the ice layer won't be quite as thick tomorrow. Opening temperature: 28F. Dayna and I swapped off net runs

Sue, banding a Chickadee.

going into the deep water. I think we had about a dozen birds by the end of the day (I was a Bad Bander and didn't look at the final tally), all Black-Capped Chickadees and Common Redpolls*. One of the CORE's had the beginnings of a nice brood-patch, yay! Someone thought they saw a Lesser Yellowlegs out on the pond, and there was a pair of Sandhill Cranes in the front field. We didn't catch the LEYE, much to my great disappointment, nor did we catch either of the Great-Horned Owls that were yakking up a storm all morning. Probably for the best... our poor nets wouldn't survive an owl that big. Sue thinks they've got a nest somewhere within the station, since usually owls aren't calling at 10 in the morning. We had two school groups come through, and we were lucky to have at least one bird at the station for each of them. Closing Temperature: 52F. Hopefully the Juncos will be here by tomorrow! All my bird pictures were bad since my lens was all fogged up. >___<

*EDIT* Banding summary: 10 birds, 2 species (BCCH, CORE)

P.S. I will try to keep the language PG-rated. However, the nature of living things is to take in elements of their environments and incorporate them into themselves. Usually this is food and air. My linguistic environment has been decidedly polluted.