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)