Bird species ranges are shifting en-masse

The National Audubon Society just released a new report on the effects of climate change on birds, and the results are startling, if not entirely surprising to those of us in the field. Smaller papers and reports have delivered similar findings for individual species, but this report is the first one to encompass all of North America's avian residents.

The gist: as the climate warms up, birds will move up and north.

One of the ways we monitor climate change - and the general health of the environment - is to monitor 'indicator species'. The animals tend to be small; not only do pollutants affect them first and most severely, small body-size also means they have a harder time maintaining their internal temperature (both cold- and warm-blooded) and are therefore more sensitive to changes in climate than their larger relatives.

Animal indicator species fall into two general categories: sedentary and mobile.

Sedentary animals are animals that don't tend to disperse very far from where they were born, either because of their physiology (they can't) or their behavior (they 'choose' not to). The indicator species in this category are mostly amphibians, small frogs and salamanders. They can't disperse much, they're cold-blooded and freeze-intolerant, and they respire through their skin, making them extremely vulnerable to environmental pollutants and toxins. If their habitat changes rapidly (either the climate or the habitat itself), the population has no recourse and goes extinct.

Mobile animals do disperse a fair distance from where they were born, and some (like some birds) migrate seasonally on continental scales of thousands of miles. Birds are warm-blooded, but small birds still have many of the same thermoregulation problems as cold-blooded animals. Keeping warm is just harder to do when you're small. However, since small birds are highly mobile, even if they aren't generally migratory, their populations tend to shift rather than die out.

We can measure both local extinction rates in amphibians and species range shifts in birds, and these give us clues to climate change.

Anyone who has done field work with either amphibians or birds has probably noticed both of these effects, at least anecdotally. We can't find amphibians where we usually find them. Common birds are suddenly nowhere to be found and species generally classified as 'rare' or 'vagrant' are suddenly everywhere (see my ABO 2011 season summary), with a general north-ward trend.

The National Audubon Society's website has excellent interactive maps (this excites me because I'm a GIS geek) showing predicted future species ranges for the several hundred at-risk species in North America, as well as a good FAQ section. The Huffington Post wrote a nice summary, and the full report is here.

The Butter-Butts are causing trouble again...

Real quick, before I post more of The Great Christmas Adventure, this post on the 10,000 Birds blog about new genetic research on Yellow-Rumped Warblers caught my eye. These guys have been a point of contention in the bird world for quite awhile, and I've banded both of the major west coast sub-species (Audubon's and Myrtle), so they're near and dear to my heart. And their nickname: Butter-Butts.

(c) 10,000 Birds

The post is here: Mitochondrial Mysteries and Splitting-Lumping Yellow-Rumped Warblers.

Also, 2,000 views! I don't know why that matters, but it's a fun number to look at.

Memoir, part 3

(Back to Part 2)

We were awarded Best Bird of the Century, Possibly Ever.

        The rest of the banding day was fairly uneventful. On our last net run, as soon as we ascertained that nobody had any birds, we turned right back around and closed down the nets. That done, we drew sticks on who got to stay behind and start tallying the banding data and recording end-of-day weather data. The rest of us headed back out to take down the poles, pull out the supporting rebar, wind up all the rope, and carry it all back to the banding station. This process was hot and tiring, especially since we were well into the afternoon at this point. We lugged everything back to the station and documented any broken connectors and frayed rope that would need to be replaced the next year. Once we had hauled everything back to the car (this took several trips, even with seven of us), we were all very ready for naps, showers, and food. And beer.

        To our very great and grumbling dismay, we were not allowed to nap. We were told, however, that if we were good little kiddies and paid attention to the lecture that afternoon, the biologists would buy the beer to go with dinner. This perked us up a bit… who says no to free beer?

        The lecture was about how to use the Pyle Guide. It’s an excellent resource for banders, but only if you know the language. We went over the various codes used in the charts, as well as the fact that seemingly-vague modifiers like ‘sometimes’, ‘rarely’, and ‘usually’ actually have percentages behind them. Also, ‘ish’ was used frequently. ‘White-ish, gray-ish, or black-ish.’ What? Doesn’t that pretty much cover everything? Why yes. Yes it does. Welcome to bird banding. We decided that the Pyle Guide could also be used for stargazing, palm-reading, and yoga.

        After the lecture, we looked over the information about the various locations: weather, terrain, common species, banding counts from previous years, etc. Two of the sites were coastal and hilly and full of old-growth forests, three were tucked in valleys in the Cascades and the sites themselves were mostly flat, but high elevation pushed the breeding season back and they tended to be slower, and one was just east of the Cascade crest and was flat-ish, more scrub-y, and tended to be pretty busy. After careful consideration (i.e. “Ooo that one looks pretty!”), we turned in first, second, and third choices to Ted and Tim, a.k.a. the Masters of Destiny. They deliberated for an hour, through dinner, and then for another hour after that. Pete (one of the larger of the boys) was tasked with guarding a 30-foot radius around their table and given permission to maim if necessary. He found a rather substantial stick, so we all stayed out of range.

        Once they’d finished, they gathered us all together and started handing out assignments without ceremony. They must have known that the peasants were on the verge of revolt. Anna and I were assigned to Wenatchee National Forest, the busy site east of the Cascades. This might not actually have been a compliment to my skills, but I decided to take it as such. Beer was distributed, a fire was made, and we began to plan for the mass exodus the following morning. I had a beer (actually a Mike’s Hard Lemonade because I still thought beer tasted like urine) and spent an hour being mildly successful at socializing. They say alcohol is ‘liquid courage’… for me, it’s ‘liquid social skills’. It helps me talk and laugh and make eye contact and all those other little things that normal humans do when in each other’s company. The ‘I’m going to college in Alaska’ always helps… instant conversation topic and source of amusing anecdotes. Like that time my roommates dragged me out of the shower because there was a yearling moose licking salt off of our front porch. That one’s always fun. Or that time that Chaia and I stood in the river for an hour in chest-waders, t-shirts, and temperature sensors. In November (it was 5 below outside and there was ice floating by). For science. And we got an ‘A’ on the paper, damnit.

        We all dispersed to our sleeping bags when the evening started to get cold and breezy. We would have a lazy breakfast around 9 and then pack the various vehicles with gear and belongings and then go our separate ways after lunch.

16 May: Grants Pass, OR; Blue River, OR

        Waking up the next morning to sunshine and the smell of bacon was glorious. I don’t care what kind of health nut you think you are, bacon makes everything better. So does waking up after sunrise.

        We made a fire to stave off the morning chill and drank our respective caffeinated beverages while the bacon and toast finished cooking. We sent Jeff to rouse the two boys who’d overindulged the previous night and into whose tents the smell of bacon and coffee hadn’t yet penetrated. There were grunts and then a smack and several yells and then some ominous rustling. This was followed by a very un-masculine scream as poor Jeff was pulled into the tent and possibly sat upon, if the muffled “Get. Off!” was anything to go by. “And put some goddamned pants on!” quickly followed in a less muffled but much more annoyed voice. When the bleary-eyed and slightly hung-over boys were finally extricated from their tents (drug by a highly irritated Jeff), the bacon and a second round of coffee was served up.

        Our bacon was of the pepper-crusted, thick-cut, bought from the local organic market variety. It came from a pig who most likely died within a 50-mile radius and probably had a name and a Twitter feed. It was some amazing bacon.

        As said amazing bacon was consumed, the conversation deteriorated quickly into bird species one-up-manship and wish lists… because we were huge flaming nerds. Laura really wanted to catch a Pileated Woodpecker (which were gigantic and gorgeous) and was lamenting that her location was unlikely to cough one up. Siuslaw National forest was a bit too wet, and dead trees in coastal forests tent not to stay upright long enough for large woodpeckers to make use of them. The Pileated Woodpeckers were there, just not in the numbers you’d find in a drier, more inland forest. Anna and Leslie both agreed that they wanted a Northern Saw-Whet Owl, and then waxed poetical about its ridiculous level of cuteness. Sara hadn’t been in the bird business long enough to know what the besotted idiots were talking about, but as soon as someone produced a field guide, she was all for getting’ some of that. Hearing the tiny Canadian girl try to imitate a large southern black woman was amusing to say the least. The fact that she mostly succeeded was nothing short of impressive.

        After we’d finished and cleaned up breakfast, we all set about breaking camp. I had only to stuff a few things back in my bag and take my tent down, since I’d only been there two days. Everyone else had more to do since they’d spread out a bit during their two-week residence. Once I was finished, I made myself useful folding tents (my OCD was much appreciated… miraculously, tents stuff into their sacks easier if you fold then neatly first) and pulling up stakes. It took another hour or so before all the personal gear was packed up, and then we divided up and began loading the banding gear into the various cars that were headed to the different sites.

        Half of us were going south and the other half north (one group with each biologist). The southern group consisted of Siuslaw, Winema, and Fremont National Forests, and the northern group (mine) would hit Willamette, Mount Baker, and Wenatchee National Forests, in general order of start date and effort required. Some of the higher-elevation locations would be snowed in for a few more weeks yet and could wait to be set up, and some of them would require more hiking and carrying of equipment and thus needed more people. We’d start at one site, set things up, leave the two interns responsible for it, and move on to the next site… repeat until you run out of interns. Our northern route would take us first to Willamette National Forest, in central Oregon, which was first just because it was closest. We’d then go all the way up to north-central Washington for Mount Baker National Forest and last, south to my location in Wenatchee National forest in central Washington. Wenatchee was last because most of the sites were close to the road and wouldn’t require much effort to set up. This whole process would take about a week and a half, and then the biologist would travel between the three sets of interns for the rest of the three-month season, helping and guiding where they could.

        We ate a quick lunch, loaded the final things into the cars, said our goodbyes and headed out. Our little caravan headed north on the I-5 until we hit Eugene, where we stopped for groceries, and then headed west into the mountains. Willamette National Forest is situated right in the middle of the Oregon Cascades and is home to the Three Sisters, the spires of Mt. Washington and Three-Fingered Jack, and Mt. Jefferson. All of the Cascades are volcanic, but South Sister is the only one of Willamette’s peaks that is still active.

Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, and the Three Sisters

Detail of the Three Sisters

        The Forest Service bunk house that would be home to Jeff and Sergio for the summer was located forty-five minutes outside of the town of Blue River, right behind the ranger station, at an altitude of about 1500 feet. If you walked down the highway just a bit, the trees cleared out and you could see South Sister and Broken Top poking up, and the swiftly-flowing McKenzie River was just on the other side of the road. The entire area was covered with picturesque evergreen forests and was pretty much taken straight from a sappy Pacific Northwest postcard. It was mid-May, so the dogwoods were blooming and the giant white flowers ensured that the yard was full of honey bees and hummingbirds.

Google Maps image of the immediate area, bunkhouse circled in red.

        The two beds went to the boys who’d be living there, and then as soon as we got inside, there was a mad rush to claim the two couches. The rest of us staked out comfy-looking spots of carpeted floor. Sergio had gotten the makings for curry at the store in Eugene so while he started dinner, the rest of us gathered around the kitchen table and Ted started explaining how this would go.

        Willamette National Forest, as a whole, was fairly high in elevation and a few of the sites were as high as five or six thousand feet. Ted explained that there was a good possibility that five of the six sites would be snowed in and impossible to access. We’d give it a try and, if that was the case, we’d take the boys with us to Mount Baker to help us set up there while they waited for the snow to melt. “You’re not being paid to sit on your butts, boys,” Ted told them with a laugh when Jeff grumbled.

        “We’re not really being paid at all,” Jeff groused under his breath. “And you just want us to carry stuff.”

                All four females gave him wide-eyed innocent looks. “We have no idea what you mean,” Sara said with a bat of her eyelashes. Jeff just gave an exasperated snort and went back to his unpacking.

Rant

Ok, I need to rant for a minute. Not really rant, per se, but spew words from my brain in the hope that maybe on the way out, they’ll put themselves in some kind of order. That’s what blogs are for, right?

I’ve never made a secret of the fact that Houston and I don’t get along. When I left for college, I was really hoping that I’d never actually have to live here again. Unfortunately, that was in 2005, before the stupid economy flushed itself down the crapper. When my parents dragged me back here, one of the ways I justified it to myself was that it was only temporary. Find a job, work a bit, find a different job somewhere nice. Or go back to grad school, get my MS, find a job somewhere nice. Or get my teaching certificate, find a job somewhere nice.

Well, I’ve got a job now… a very good one. My boss took a huge chance on me and I owe her a lot. She pulled me out of Starbucks, and I can’t really ever repay her for that. I make plenty of money to support myself, I can pay for rent and electricity and gas at the same time (or I will, once Brian and I find a place), and I’ve even started paying my own share of my car insurance and my cell phone bill. I’m self-sufficient and I like it. I won’t be buying a Ferrari any time soon (or any new car, for that matter) and I’m still working to pull my credit out of the toilet, but I’m a contributing member of society.

All that said, I’m still hoping that this job will lead to me getting back into the biology world. I still want to go back to grad school and get my master’s degree, if only because it’s a thing in my life that I started and never finished and it’ll keep poking me until I do. In a perfect world, I’d go someplace like Humboldt State in California and get a degree in avian conservation (or something) and then get a job somewhere actually doing that. In the world where landlords want to get paid every month, I should stay here and get a Master’s of Public Health (or something), which would get me a better job, faster. I’m hoping that my GIS experience will bolster my resume enough that somebody at a biologically-oriented organization will want to hire me to do something awesome.

But I also wanted to be an astronaut when I was 10.

I took a risk, going to Alaska to band at Creamer’s Field. I knew the economy made small non-profits like ABO  vulnerable, and I knew that I’d somehow have to survive the winter on part-time retail jobs. The spring/summer/fall was wonderful, I made enough money to pay for rent and gas and food. By mid-October I thought I’d be ok, working two part-time jobs for six months until the field season started up again in April. I was only getting 15-20 hours a week at Barnes & Noble, and about 5 hours every two weeks at Old Navy, which all added up to about $150 a week. And then gas prices went up and it got cold and my mileage went waaaay down. It was all fine and under control until it wasn’t.

By Thanksgiving I was in trouble, but I was determined to get myself out of it. This is a character flaw I suffer from, this I’ll-solve-my-own-damn-problems-myself syndrome. I know this about myself, this reluctance to ask for help until I’m actually inhaling water, but knowing the instinct exists doesn’t make it go away. I called in every morning, asking for hours, and they gave me as many as they could, but even with the holiday rush, it wasn’t much. I was 2 months behind on rent, they were threatening to turn off our electricity, and I was having to turn down hang-out time with Chaia because I literally couldn’t afford the gas to get there. I finally called my parents and begged for money.

They helped me out, and then yelled. Not because I’d asked for help, but because I’d waited until I was in crisis. I went home for Christmas, rent and electricity finally caught up, and they laid down the law. This was quite a feat because at this point, my parents were in the middle of what turned out to be an ugly divorce… but they were in complete agreement on this one: I was coming home. I went back to get my affairs in order and ask my Barnes & Noble manager to arrange for a transfer (which he said he would do and then kinda didn’t). We arranged for my car to be shipped on the ferry to Portland at the end of January, and I flew down to Portland to meet it and Dad at the end of February. I couldn’t put anything in the car, and could only afford to ship a few small boxes, so two-thirds of my possessions went to friends and the give-away pavilion at the dump.

Leaving Alaska was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, even though I was drowning. My friends and boyfriend at the time begged me not to go. They were more than willing to help me, and their kindness broke my heart, but I hadn’t ever let on how bad it really was. My dire situation was a symptom of the greater problem, and staying would only have prolonged the inevitable. I cried a good bit of the plane ride to Portland, and several times on the 6-day drive to Houston. Knowing I was going to a home where my parents were getting divorced and I had no job prospects just made the whole mess worse. Just thinking about it enough to write this makes my chest get all tight and achy.

I got my transfer and re-hire worked out at Barnes & Noble after a couple of weeks, and slowly began paying off two delinquent credit cards and the money my parents had loaned me to bail me out. I was still only making $150 a week, but I had no responsibilities. I also met Brian, who became one of the few positive things around during a very dark part of my life. I eventually got promoted to assistant manager of the café, which paid marginally better and made my life more than marginally more stressful, until I was literally willing to live in a cardboard box if only I could quit. But they gave me health insurance, so I stayed. I had just turned 26, and got kicked off of my dad’s plan, so I was held hostage. This was how Jenny found me in March of this year at one of her GIS classes. I tried to make a good impression so she’d use her contacts to get me an interview or two. A week later, she offered me a job.

Brian and I took a week-long trip to Fairbanks in February… he wanted to see this place I talked about so much. Alaska is contagious, and he caught the bug without much effort, even in February. I wanted to go back. I really just wanted to get out of Houston, and the Pacific Northwest was at the top of a very short list, but I wanted to go back to Fairbanks in particular.

All this is the backdrop for the emotional roller-coaster I’ve been on the past two days.

The Fairbanks Barnes & Noble store posted their Café Manager position. Brian asked me if he should apply for it. I told him to go for it, and we’d worry about what to do if they offered it to him. I looked at jobs in Fairbanks, both biological and GIS-based positions, and came up empty. Not just that there wasn’t anything that looked interesting… there wasn’t anything at all. A few things in Anchorage, if only because there’s such a huge oil & gas industry presence there, but nothing in Fairbanks. It would be retail or nothing, and I’ll be damned if I’m doing that again. I could go back to UAF and work on my master’s degree there (their wildlife program is pretty dang good), but my financial contribution to Brian’s and my life would be minimal and that’s never sat well with me. And I’m pretty sure trying to support two people on a café manager salary would be tight.

It doesn’t matter in the least unless they offer him the position, but what to do? It’s an excuse to go back, but what would I do once I got there? I refuse to end up right back where I started (which isn’t likely, but still scares me). And the financial security I have here isn’t something to scoff at, even though I wish I could. It’s easy to say ‘do what you love, regardless of the pay!’ until you’ve done it and nearly ended up homeless. Brian’s still idealistic enough to encourage it (within reason), bless his heart, and I don’t think he understands my constant prevarication and indecision. Even if I went back to school up there, I would be income-less for two years… and even after I graduated, a job isn’t guaranteed, even if it’s maybe a bit more likely. And there’s no guarantee that I wouldn’t screw it up again. I’d try really hard not to, especially in the face of my previous failure, but still. Then there’s my guilt about leaving my job. If I said I was leaving to go back to school, I’m sure my boss would understand, but I still feel like I owe her some time. I’ve been there less than a year, and I feel like I should at least make myself a worthwhile investment before leaving. The last thing I want to be is ungrateful for the opportunity she gave me, when she really had no reason to.

I’m still a field biologist at heart, but it’s possible that that’s just denial at this point. Part of the grieving process and all that. But I really hope not. Especially since Houston is slowly suffocating me to death. I’m not built for city life and a desk job. Even less so when said city is so far away from anything even remotely un-city that weekend getaways aren’t really practical, never mind afternoon hikes or skis.

Bah. I don’t know what to do… no surprise there, but I’m stressing for basically no reason. And this issue is pretty emotionally charged to begin with, which makes the whole thing worse. I think my hormones are part of the problem, but my brain doesn’t really care where it’s coming from.

More of the Memoir (part 2)!

Woooaaaah it's November! And that means NaNoWriMo! Why did nobody remind me??

In that spirit, here's another tidbit of the Memoir of Doom. Here's the beginning bit: Memoir, Part 1

___________

A few net runs later, Anna, Laura, and I were trudging our way to one of the farther-flung nets. It was mid-morning, which meant that the morning caffeine dose had worn off, the birds were taking their 8am nap, and it wasn’t lunch time yet. This was our last net before looping back around to the tarp and we weren’t expecting our current state of empty-handedness to change. As we came up to the net, a three-fold “What the hell?” went out to the universe. The net was moving. It looked like a blanket thrown over an angry cat. Whatever was making it twitch and seize like that was obscured by the two large trees near the net.

        Anna’s exclamation of “Holy lord Jesus!” pretty much summed it up. In the bottom pocket, resting against the ground, was a medium-sized, upside-down, highly pissed off brownish hawk. Some birds scream and yell when they get caught (like robins and woodpeckers), but raptors just hiss at you and glare. And, let me tell you, it’s terrifying. “What the hell do we do with that thing?” Anna said after inching closer and tilting her head a few funny directions. “Should I go back and get Ted?”

        “No no, we’ve totally got this,” assured Laura. “I interned at a raptor sanctuary last summer, and it doesn’t look that tangled.” She moved closer and bent down. “Yeah, it’s really just its feet. Its body and feathers are too big to fit through the mesh… it’s just sitting there.” She pulled open the pocket to stare down at the hawk, who was hissing louder now and staring up at her as if contemplating how best to serve up her intestines (Dill? Sage? Paprika?). “This is gonna be a two-person job, for sure. She’s big and she’s Hulk-level pissed.”

        “She?” I asked stupidly.

        “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s a Red-Shoulder female.”

        “Do we even own a bag big enough for her?” asked Anna, digging in her various pockets for bird bags.

        Let me interject here for some Red-Shouldered Hawk stats, so you can have some idea of the lethal and predatory ball of feathered rage we were dealing with. Red-Shoulders are considered medium-sized hawks and, like in all raptors, the females are significantly larger than the males. Males are 17-20 inches from head to tail, and females are 20-24 inches long. Wingspan ranges from 36-40 inches in males and 40-44 inches in females. So, we’re talking about a body the size of a small baby, with a foot-long striped tail, and a wingspan longer than my arm. All that, with razor-sharp talons on one end and a wickedly hooked beak on the other end. And pissed.

        “No bag for her, can you imagine reaching in there blind to pull her out? You wouldn’t have any fingers left!” Laura shuddered. “Ok, I’m going to try to untangle her feet. Anna, could you hold onto her upper body and keep her from flapping? Sarah, you should hold the pocket open until we can lift her out.”

        “Hold on a second, I’m not touching that thing! It’ll bite me!” Anna looked a little green.

        “Hawks aren’t bitey. She won’t bite you. Probably.”

        “How very reassuring. Still not touching it.”

        “Sarah, how about—”

        “It’ll bite me too!” I wasn’t looking to donate any fingers either.

        “She won’t bite you! Jeez, you’re both such chicken shits!”

        “Ok, fine. But you’re responsible for sewing my fingers back on!” Not chicken shit. Not at all.

        “Finally. And seriously, hawks kill things with their feet, and I’ll keep those under control.” She took a deep breath. “Ok, Sarah. Reach in—slowly!—and grab her around the middle… pin her wings in, thumbs on her back, fingers on her chest, got it?”

        “Heh… sure, no problem… just grab the angry carnivore, no worries…” But I reached into the net anyway. To my very great surprise, she didn’t even try to bite me, just turned toward me, tried to flap out of my reach, and hissed some more. I was able to get my hands around her partially extended wings and pin them to her sides, gripping her body securely. She flailed her legs a bit and drew attention to her seriously scary-looking talons. They were a puncture wound waiting to happen. Laura had been right: her feathers were too large to have gotten caught in the 30mm mesh, so she was just lying in the pocket, caught by her feet and her beak. Laura brushed the net off of the hawk’s shoulders and examined her beak. It was open in the constant hiss and there were a few strands of net wrapped around her tongue.

        Laura indicated that we should all kneel down. Bending over would get tiring pretty quick. Anna held the pocket open and Laura gingerly reached for its legs, which were still sporadically kicking and grabbing. After a close swipe to her thumb, she got its feet under control and gestured with her chin at Anna. “Can you get her tongue untangled, Madame Chicken? Use a stick or something, don’t stick your hand in there.”

        Anna glared and reached for her pocket knife and the nail file it contained. “I still think it’s gonna bite my fingers off,” she muttered. But, she still reached toward the hawk’s beak, muttering “Niiiice birdie…” under her breath. The hawk eyed her as she gripped her upper mandible and reached inside with the nail file. The hissing got louder and the kicking got more intense, but Anna was able to slide the net strands off of the bird’s tongue, freeing it. She exhaled in a huff and put her pocket knife away.

        “Ok, now we should be able to lift her out of the pocket… it’s just her feet left!” Laura said. “Hold the pocket open… Sarah, one… two… three… uuuup and over!” The hawk was now resting on her back on my lap, her feet still attached to the net, the pocket turned inside-out. We had a much better angle and view now, and the bulk of the net was out of the way.

        “Need me to hold its legs? It looks like you’ll need both hands for those feet,” Anna offered, as if she hadn’t been about to run away a minute ago. Laura raised an eyebrow at her and smirked. Anna shrugged. “It didn’t bite me.”

        “That would be lovely, thank you,” Laura replied sweetly and, still smirking, carefully transferred the hawk’s legs into Anna’s hand. It took another five-ish minutes of careful picking at the black nylon net strands, swearing, and back-seat driving before Laura finally got the hawk’s feet completely free. “Ha! Piece of cake!” Laura said with a triumphant grin. It had only managed to claw her once, in the meaty part of her palm, which we counted as a success, all things considered.

        Anna had to help me up (my hands were a bit full and my legs had fallen asleep) and then we were speed-walking back to the tarp with our prize. Laura kept looking at the bird’s legs critically. “I don’t think we’ve got a band big enough for her...”

        Anna shrugged. “Ted’ll know what to do.”

        When we were almost out of the trees and into the clearing where the tarp was located, Leslie came jogging along the trail “What’s taking so lo— Holy shit!” Her eyes went wide and she slowed as she reached us. “They sent me to make sure you hadn’t fallen in a hole somewhere. Wow, best bird ever!” She turned and ran ahead of us back to the tarp, yelling something about ‘not in a hole’ as she went. Anna walked in front of me, blocking the view of my cargo from the people sitting on the tarp. Leslie was standing to the side, smiling gleefully and everyone else looked curious.

        “Guess what Net 3 coughed up?” said Anna, as we approached. She stepped to the side and made a sweeping bow “Ta-da!”

        Sure enough, none of the bands we carried with us were anywhere near large enough for our girl, so Ted took some measurements, enough to ascertain that she was indeed a ‘she’. A million photographs later, we released her, which was an adventure all its own. Hawks are large enough and heavy enough that they need to push off of something to get airborne. Normally this is the ground or a branch. In order to avoid having a hand clawed to pieces, hawks get ‘launched’ when released. You don’t want them to push off of you, so you give them the momentum they need by literally tossing them into the air. We let Laura do this, as nobody wanted to run the risk of having their face clawed if they didn’t toss high enough. She flapped to a tree and sat for a few minutes before flying back in the direction we’d come.

On to part 3!

Banding Memoir so far

The other thing I've been doing in my spare writing time is working on this thing that I started for NaNoWriMo two years ago. Needless to say, I didn't finish it in the allotted month, nor in the allotted month the next year. But I've kept adding tidbits to it, slowly, so here's what I have so far:

Based upon actual events. Names and a few insignificant facts have been changed.

Forward

You know that book-turned-movie “The Big Year” and the utter nerdiness that is contained therein? This story is in some ways both more and less nerd-tastic than that.

I am involved in bird research… banding, to be specific, which is quite possibly the most widespread and standardized biological field protocol in use today, and not just in the world of birds and mark-recapture studies. The fact that I was doing research and actually had these birds in hand makes it nerdier. The fact that I was getting paid (a pittance, but nonetheless paid) and that this was a vital part of a college education in biology dilutes the nerd factor somewhat. In other words, it wasn’t just for fun, and it wasn’t just a wild hare with no greater purpose.

I would also like to officially absolve the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP) of any blame whatsoever in the events that follow. My clumsiness is my own and it was an invaluable learning experience, not to mention a good story. Also, it quite obviously hasn’t scared me off of bird banding or field biology.

Prologue

My biographic blurb, if I had one, would read something like this:

Sarah was born in Colorado and grew up in Texas. She then ran far far away and graduated with a BS in Biological Sciences from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2009. During her original stay in Fairbanks, her aunt introduced her to the Creamer’s Field Migratory Station and to mist netting, and she volunteered whenever her classes allowed (and sometimes when they didn’t). She worked for the University of Alaska Museum of the North’s Mammalogy department doing molecular genetics and was introduced to field-work looking for Collared Pikas in Valdez, Cordova, and the Denali Highway. Sarah spent a summer and a half and a fall (respectively) as an intern for the Institute for Bird Populations in eastern Washington and Klamath Bird Observatory in southern Oregon and northern California. During her year as a graduate student and teaching assistant at Oregon State University, she realized that, while the molecular biology of garter snake reproduction is interesting, birds are her true calling. She started working as a bander for Creamer’s Field Migration Station in the spring of 2011. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, drawing & painting, hiking/camping/birding, volcanoes & glaciers, social cooking, Firefly and The Big Bang Theory, playing piano and flute, and tormenting her cat, Cricket, with a laser pointer. If she were a bird, she’d like to be a kestrel but would probably end up as a chickadee.

This story explains that “half” summer in the Pacific Northwest.

September: Fairbanks, AK​

​“You’re getting good at extracting… you could probably get a summer internship somewhere. It could get your foot in the door for some really exciting banding work.”

​This came from Sue, the head bander at Fairbanks’ local bird banding station, as I finally pulled a recalcitrant Black-Capped Chickadee free of a mist-net. After four and a half gruelling minutes of picking nylon strings out of feathers and feet and pleading with the very angry chickadee, the ego boost was welcome, but it also started me thinking. The previous summer, I’d gone in the field with a grad student to do pika and vole work. It was serious fieldwork… the beautiful and picturesque middle of nowhere, camping, no facilities or showers for the duration of each trip (2 weeks), and arctic ground squirrels chewing on your bootlaces. I had to get certified for gun and bear safety… because it was necessary. An entire summer of that, but with birds? Hell yes.

January: Fairbanks, AK

​It was Christmas break before I actually got around to looking for and applying for summer work. I’d just finished making an A in the greatest class ever (not every class encourages you to torture your lab partners in the name of science), and the subsequent high made me aim absolutely nowhere. I applied for anything and everything that looked even remotely interesting, staying away from any posting postings that mentioned ‘invasive plant control’ (weeding) and ‘trail maintenance’ (digging). Since my first field job was just an extension of my lab job, I hadn’t had to apply for it. The job search itself was nothing if not educational.

​There are several job boards where biology- and wildlife-related jobs and internships are posted. Applying for these is not even remotely similar to applying for real jobs in the real world. You email a resume and cover letter to an actual person (usually a graduate student, professor, or research scientist at a non-profit organization) who will then look over it and possibly 20 to 50 others. When applying for real jobs, as I found out later, you fill out an application online, possibly attach a resume, and a computer looks at all 700 of them and bounces out all but the top two or three percent for an actual HR person to look at. In this case, it could be six months before you hear back, if you hear back at all, and that’s usually an automated condolence response. I got replies within a week of the application deadline from every single one of the field jobs… and a real live person wrote the condolence emails.

​Also, although most field jobs pay little to nothing, a good number of them will house you or provide campsites. The good ones provide field vehicles (or gas reimbursement) and a small stipend that will usually cover food and necessary personal hygiene products. This is probably because making poor college students and recent graduates look for housing (usually) in the middle of nowhere for two to six months on short notice and is just ridiculous. There’d be an uprising.

​I was thoroughly tickled when one of the bird banding places emailed me to set up an interview. Since all field biologists are poor, 99% of field biology interviews are conducted over the phone. Come spring, field biologists do a great shuffle and spread out all over the country and the world for the migration and breeding seasons of various forms of life. Trying to get someone to come in person for an interview is futile and silly. There is no such thing as a ‘local applicant’. My interview went something like this:

​“Hi, I’m Ted, one of the biologists on this project, and you’re on speakerphone with Tim, our other biologist, and Phil, the project director. We’ve got your resume in front of us, but how about if you tell us a bit about your previous field experience.”

​“Blah blah with pikas and voles in Alaska, blah blah bears and safety, blah blah, Alaska Bird Observatory, blah blah, volunteering, blah blah, extraction experience--”

​“You’ve extracted birds before? You’ve got mist-net experience?” They sounded excited at this point.

​“Yes.”

​“Do you have any banding experience?”

​“No, but I’ve watched it done a bunch of times.”

​“That’s great! We send our interns out in pairs, and one of them needs to have a personal vehicle for getting between lodging and banding sites… do you have a vehicle at your disposal?”

​“…Well, no…”

​“Ok, no worries. How well do you know birds by sight and sound?”

​“Well, I know most of the species in Alaska, and quite a few of those overlap with the Pacific Northwest—”

​“How good are you with songs?”

​“Mediocre, but I’ve got a good ear for pitch—”

​“Musician?”

​“Mmhmm.”

​“Excellent. Since you’re familiar with some of the Northwest species, we’d like to place you there, unless you have one of our other regions in mind…?”

​“No no, the Northwest sounds wonderful!”

​“Our training is in Grants Pass, Oregon. You can fly into Medford and someone can meet you, if that’s more convenient. We start on May 1st and go for about two weeks. At the end of training, you’ll be assigned a field partner and a location. You’ll go with your biologist and a couple other pairs and help set up their sites before going to your own.”

​“My last final exam is on the 11th, so I couldn’t be there until the 12th at the earliest—”

​“That’s fine… most of the first part of training is learning to extract, so you’ve got a huge advantage there. Honestly, banding is easy… you do the same thing to each bird. Extraction is the hardest part of the process because each bird is different. The only way to get good is to extract hundreds of birds in hundreds of different situations. We’ll have training set up in a campground outside of Grants Pass, and I assume you’ll need someone to come pick you up at the Medford airport?”

​“Yes, but—”

​“Great! You’ll be paid a per-diem that should cover your food and incidentals, and we’ll email you a packing list and a species list to familiarize yourself with. I’ll also send you our contact information… just pass along your flight information when you’ve got it. Any questions about any of this?”

​“I got the job?”

​“Well, yes, of course.”

​“Oh… well, great then. Um, I can’t think of any questions right now, but I’m sure something will come to mind eventually.”

​“Shoot us an email if it does, don’t be shy. And start sleeping with your field guide under your pillow!”

​“Um, sure, yeah. Thank you so much… I’m really looking forward to this spring!”

​“We look forward to meeting you in person. Bye now!”

​“Goodbye.”

​I looked over at my roommate, who was smirking at me. “You look a little shell-shocked. Did you get press-ganged again? You really need to learn how to say no. Don’t ever go car shopping by yourself.”

​“Well, I’ve got a summer internship… They were a little pushy. Or maybe they were just excited? But the mafia uses non-profit organizations as money-laundering fronts, right?”

​“Probably, but that conversation sounded entirely too nerdy to be related to organized crime. Where’s it at?”

​“Starting in Oregon, but it’s the entire Pacific Northwest… where’s Grant’s Pass?”

​“Shit if I know. Silly Lower 48 with all their cities. Awesome volcanoes in that area though… take pictures for me, yeah?” Aleria was a geology major. She wouldn’t let us throw rocks at boys because we might hurt the rocks. We nerds have a special pheromone so we can identify each other at crowded parties. It’s a survival mechanism.

​“Speaking of shit… I probably need to acquire a tent at some point between now and May.”

​“Yeah, I hear Oregon’s rainy.”

​“Well, crap.”

11 May: Fairbanks, AK

​I envied my lab partner who spent the entire semester of Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates with a mild head cold. I had to use an artificial means of knocking out my olfactory nerves, namely VapoRub. After using the same fish, pigeon, and cat specimens for the entire 3-month semester, the entire class had started eyeing poor Katie with things that ranged from jealousy to plotting the acquisition of her infectious agents… difficult to tell exactly with all our faces in a permanent state of nose-wrinkling.

​Anyone who has made it through a biological education without becoming intimately familiar with the smells of formalin and decay should feel cheated. The carcinogenic preservatives are quite aromatic, even before the liver enzymes of the various organisms began liquefying everything.

​“Are you ready for the final tomorrow?”

​“Near enough.”

​“You just want to run away, don’t you? Where’s the gall bladder?”

​I inspected our monstrously large cat’s open peritoneal cavity and poked at the liver-sludge with a blunt probe. “Under there… somewhere.”

​Katie leaned over to look where I was pointing. “Ok, you’ve made your point. Let’s get to someplace better ventilated than this.” As we made our way to the storage cabinet, she inclined her head toward the shelf bearing our plastic-wrapped pigeon. “You’ll be doing bird stuff this summer, right? I bet the live ones don’t smell quite so ripe.”

​I laughed. “Yeah, but some of them bite.”

​“When are you leaving?”

​“Day after tomorrow morning at ass-crack thirty.”

​“You’re not packed yet, are you? How are you going to fit all your field gear into two suitcases?”

​I shrugged. “I have a medical condition… I can’t pack a suitcase unless I’m panicked about it. Also, I plan to pack very little in the way of actual clothes. Boots and binoculars and a sleeping bag are much more important.”

​“Have you worn your boots yet this spring? Sprung any new leaks since last fall?”

​“Um…”

​“Do yourself a favor and fill ‘em full of water in the shower before you leave. Boots flooded with freezing cold, scummy pond water is no fun at all. Also, scrimp on shirts all you want, but pack every pair of socks you own.”

​“Yeah, I’ll put that right at the top of my list: ‘Fill boots with water’ and ‘Negotiate with laundry fairies for return of stolen socks.’ Right above finding gall bladders in liver-goo and remembering how to spell ‘brachiocephalic’. Got it.”

12 May: Fairbanks, AK

​“If I’ve got to be at the airport at 6:30 and Beqa’s got to be there at 5:30, there’s really no point in you making two trips. I’ll just go early and veg by the window,” I said.

​“Is there any way to make getting up that early not suck?” Beqa asked. We were no more than 8 hours done with finals and stress sleep and airplane sleep just aren’t as good as the real thing. It was already quite late.

​“At this point, I think we should just stay up. I can come home and sleep and you guys can sleep on your planes,” Chaia suggested.

​Beqa looked mildly horrified. “How are we going to stay up? We’re exhausted as it is!”

​Chaia and I glanced at each other and nodded decisively. “Mario Kart,” she said.

​“And mudslides,” I added.

​As it turned out, Beqa had never played Mario Kart on a Wii… or on anything else for that matter. Teaching her took the better part of an hour, and by the time we were ready for alcoholic beverages, Chaia’s fiancée and brother-in-law-to-be had already gone to bed. The problem with mudslides is that they require a blender, which is not the most quiet of kitchen appliances… up there with coffee grinders, garbage disposals and exploding microwaves.

​We plotted and schemed. The bathroom was dismissed for its echo. Trying to make mudslides without a blender was almost as unacceptable as not having them at all. We plotted and schemed some more. The most likely plan was to run an extension cord outside for the blender. We’d gone as far as locating the aforementioned extension cord when there was a sudden revelation from Chaia: “Wait. Wait! We live in Fairbanks… in Alaska. It gets cold here in the winter. We don’t need an extension cord… we have electrical outlets outside!”

​And so we plugged the blender into the car plug-in outlet in the parking lot in front of Chaia’s apartment. Blenders are a bit difficult to control if not resting on a solid counter-like surface. This was a little blender and it nearly sent Beqa flying. Needless to say, Mario Kart was a lot funnier after that.

​And yes, we made it to the airport on time. We were even mostly sober.

13 May: Fairbanks, AK, Seattle, WA, Portland, Medford, and Grants Pass, OR

​As I recall, the flights from Fairbanks to Seattle and then Seattle to Portland were uneventful. However, the teeny-tiny little puddle-jumper flight from Portland to Medford was the longest forty-five minutes of my life. Flying in those things is like riding in a car with no suspension or a bike with no shocks or a tiny boat… you feel every single little bump.  The weather wasn’t even particularly bad, but I started dreading flying through small clouds. I’ve never had motion-sickness of any kind, but I came close on that flight.

​When we landed in Medford, we were all a little rumpled, and I was tired and grouchy and hungry on top of all that. It was approaching 14 hours since leaving Fairbanks, and neither of my layovers had been long enough to grab any food. I’d sent a “I’ll be the grouchy short girl in a green shirt with red luggage” text to Ted, the biologist dispatched to pick me up, so he found me without any trouble. My stomach made a very loud and very undignified noise somewhere between Medford and Grants Pass, so we stopped for Taco Bell before heading for the campground.

​White Horse Campground is a few minutes outside Grant’s Pass and has played host to the IBP horde for the first two weeks of May for years. The tent village was surprisingly well-organized in a sprawling kind of way. A picnic table at the far end had been turned into a kitchen, one in the middle appeared to be the designated study area, and another closer to the cars (next to a telephone pole that contained several electrical outlets) was the designated electronic devices charging station. It was close to 10pm by that point, so Ted introduced me around and then suggested I get my tent set up and head to bed… wake-up was going to be at 4:30 the next morning. The prospect of pitching an unfamiliar tent in the mostly-dark was a bit daunting, but I got it done and got to bed.

14 May: Grants Pass, OR

​4:30am was also mostly-dark and rather chilly, and I used up half of my getting-ready hour just fumbling around my suitcase. I had a headlamp, but that would require more fumbling that could be done after banding when it was light out. I snarfed down a bowl of oatmeal, brewed myself some tea for the road (I’d not seen the light of coffee at that point in my life), and packed my backpack: fanny pack, binoculars,pocket knife, field guide, water, spare socks, lunch, small notebook &writing utensils, gloves, camera. Hair braided, jacket and hat on, hiking boots tied, and I was ready to go.

​We piled ten people and their gear into two cars and drove a few miles down the road and into the woods. My social awkwardness dictated that I spent the entire 15-minute drive drinking my tea and not making eye-contact. I couldn't remember any of the names I'd been told the night before, so this was probably just as well. I will note that not making eye-contact with any of four other people in a small sedan when there's no scenery to look at (still dark) is quite a feat. We parked at a pull-out on a gravel road a few miles from the campground, piled out of the car, and proceeded to hike a little way into the trees. Everyone was still too sleepy for much conversation, which was perfectly fine with me. A couple of the boys and the two biologists had a rock-paper-scissors match to decide who had to carry the large and awkward tubs of gear. The sky had been greying up on the ride over and now the landscape was bathed in just enough early light that one could avoid low-hanging branches.

​The group immediately split in half to go in two separate directions… Ted was the only person whose name I remembered, so I followed him like a little baby quail. We stopped at a large tree on the far side of a small-ish meadow just as the first birds were starting to chitter at each other. Conversation started up as Ted and the other interns started setting up the banding station. Most of what was directed at me was simple questions about Alaska and my progress on my degree. This was a safe subject, as I was used to these questions and didn't have to put forth much social or mental effort to answer them. It was at this point that I realized that this banding station was very different from the one I was used to. The Fairbanks Creamer's Field banding station comprised of a semi-permanent wall tent on a raised wooden platform, a 'desk' for banding, several tables for additional data collection, chairs, hooks for hanging bird-bags, and a little propane heater that worked 2 days out of every 5. This is the Mercedes of banding stations. The IBP banding station was the used Kia that still runs but has the bare minimum features, isn't much to look at, has a seat spring poking you in the butt and a finicky clutch: a tree and a tarp.

​This stylistic difference stemmed mainly from the operational differences between ABO and IBP. The former operated only one largebanding station for a long season (6 months), banding every day. The latter operated on the principle that two interns operate six banding stations at each location, each banding station visited every 10 days for a short season (3 months), using only one 'kit' of equipment for everything. This strategy precludes any structures at all and demands that you bring everything with you and break down or pack out everything at the end of the day, including the nets themselves. The banding kit here looked to be complete with everything we'd need, all packed into a neatly organized tackle box. The nets were in labelledgrocery bags. The 'banding station' was a large blue tarp on the ground, held down against the breeze by our backpacks. I was told that at this location they didn't need to worry about human traffic or vandalism, so the net poles were left in place at the net lanes.

​The normal procedure for a station like this (and with 5 people) was to split up the nets in order to get them set up in the shortest amount of time. Ted took me under his wing, picked the closest 2 nets, and headed out. I explained my concerns about the set-up procedural differences, but he seemed unconcerned. I'd actually handled a mist-net before, which put me several steps ahead of the other interns on their first day.

​At this point, let me explain a few things about mist-nets. Standard nets are 12 meters in length and 3 meters high, and are generally divided into 4 'pockets' which are held up by 5 trammel lines, each culminating in a loop at each end. These loops are generally strung on a pole and then pushed apart along the length of the pole, 'opening' the net. The poles are supported somehow, either with rebar hammered into the ground (fixed), or with rope secured to a tree or piece of rebar (mobile), or a combination of the two (one fixed end, one mobile end). Most banding stations use some variation on this theme. The poles need to be able to support the net, keep it taught, and keep the whole contraption from falling over when hit by a small- to medium-sized Flying Thing. The net itself is made of a very fine mesh (usually black nylon) of varying sizes... the larger the bird you're targeting, the larger the mesh you need. Passerine (songbird) banding operations typically use 30mm mesh (squares are 15mm to a side, or about the size of a dime). Once set up, these nets can be quite difficult to see head-on, which is fortunate because most birds have eyesight at least as acute as our own; many species have color vision that dips into the ultraviolet. Most banders have had at least a couple of embarrassing “whoa there’s a net there!” moments of not realizing the net exists until it brushes your nose. It’s like walking into a spider web, only less sticky and more mortifying. Buttons and zipper-pulls are the most common ways to catch a human.

​The point and purpose to a net of this type (also used to catch bats) is that the Flying Thing hits the net and falls into one of the pockets, where they ideally sit quietly and safely until a Human comes along to extracts it. What actually happens is that the Flying Thing hits the net, falls into the pocket, flails around for 15 or 20 minutes and gets feet, feathers and head tangled up, flails some more when the Human arrives, continues to flail as the Human extracts it, yells a little for good measure, bites the Human a few times, and then usually quiets down when placed in the Warm Dark Place (a cotton bird bag with a drawstring closure) for transport.

​So, never having actually attached a net to a set of poles nor, in fact, ever having dealt with a net as an entity separate from its poles... I was a bit clumsy. Ted patiently demonstrated how the white top loop had been twisted through the other four black loops, ensuring that they were all in the correct order. The poles were in two pieces, the bottom of which was slid over a piece of rebar in the ground and held taught with rope tied to whatever was handy. The bottom two loops went on the bottom pole, then the supporting rope, then the top three loops onto the top pole, and finally the top pole popped into the connector atop the bottom pole. With two people, this wasn't as hard as I was anticipating. I learned later that trying to do it by oneself slowed and clumsified the process quite a bit.

​With the net open and properly tightened, bottom pocket a safe distance from the ground, grocery bag tied to the bottom of the pole, and numbered clothes-pins clipped to the support ropes on either end (for labelling birds in their bags and securing them to a shirt, jacket, or tree), we headed back to the banding station to wait for the first net-run.

​The general rule for checking mist-nets is 30 minutes. There are various circumstances and situations, individual to each banding station and its climate, that could make for shorter or slightly longer net-runs. Nets that are far apart and take a while to check could lead to longer times, as could trying to boost a low capture rate (leave the nets alone longer gives it a better chance of catching something). Longer times must also be balanced with the safety of the birds, e.g. the longer they sit in a net, the more they struggle, the more tangled they get, the more stressed they get, etc. Running the nets more often than 30 minutes could be necessary for lots of reasons, most relating to weather: cold, heat, wind, light rain. Severe occurrences of any of these factors can also lead to closing of the net or the entire station. Shorter net runs can also lower a very high capture rate.

​Twenty-ish minutes later, we all set out to check the nets. Ted reminded me as we went along that we needed to make sure to walk the entire length of the net and wiggle the bottom pocket to make sure a bird wasn't camouflaged in the grass or against leaf litter. As we approached the 3rd net on the trail, something small and squirmy caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, it didn't appear very tangled, so Ted had me demonstrate my extraction skills. I quickly assessed which side of the net the bird had flown in from and opened the pocket. Bander's grip to secure the body, untangle the feet, loop the net off of one wing and then the other, gently tug off of the head, and the little guy was free. I squinted at him as I was putting him in the bird bag... I remembered having seen one of these before, but couldn't quite come up with a species name. He was absolutely tiny, had a little black mask on his face, and a bright orange-ish yellow crown on his head.

​"So what have we got?" Ted asked as I tied off the bag.

​"It's a, uh... baby Golden-Crowned Sparrow?"

​Ted raised an eyebrow. "Really? It's only May... babies haven't happened yet. This is a full adult. There are only a few things that are this small. You might have had his red-head cousin up in Alaska."

​Light-bulb. Way to make an awesome first impression, dumbass. "It's a kinglet, isn't it."

​"Yep."

​"Can we pretend the last five minutes never happened?"

​Ted laughed. "Don't sweat it. The species are easy, and you know most of them already. You've got the hardest part down... that was a very efficient extraction, nicely done."

​**We checked our other net without incident and I successfully extracted two warblers, correctly identifying them as a MacGillivray’s Warbler and a Yellow Warbler.

​Back at the banding station, several of the other interns already had birds in various stages of being banded and measured. Most excitingly, a tall blond girl was wrestling a Western Scrub-Jay from its bag. I say ‘wrestle’ because the bird was large-ish (almost too big for her hand, and therefore difficult to control), squirmy, and had a big wad of the bag in its feet… and showed no signs of wanting to let go. When she finally got it away from him, he yelled loudly about it. She found him a stick to hold instead  and that seemed to quiet him down. As soon as the excitement was over (several photos later), Ted and I sat down on an unused piece of tarp and commandeered a banding kit and data binder. He handed me several data keys in plastic page protectors, indicating that these were the abbreviations they used when collecting various bits of information. The hardest part about switching agencies is learning a new set of data codes… every agency has its own system. The concept is the same, but some groups use letters, some use numbers, some use 5 categories for one characteristic while others only use 3, etc. ABO had used number codes for everything, while IBP (I discovered) used letters for some things and numbers for others. Numbers are easier to sort in a spreadsheet on a computer, but letters are easier to use and remember in the field because they stand for words. It took a while before I could wean myself away from the cheat-sheet with the codes all written out.Generally, the data sheets are organized in the order in which you take the measurements. The standard measurements and characteristics are usually on the front of the page, and a space for notes and species-specific measurements on the back. The spreadsheets are generally crowded and complicated, so fewer mistakes get made if you can just enter the data in its logical order across a horizontal row.

​Under normal circumstances, the process of banding a bird and taking down a set of standardized measurements takes about 3 minutes if you’re good and the bird isn’t something weird. If you’re just learning or the bird is one that isn’t familiar to you, it can take up to 10 minutes.Many species have their own set of 1 to 5 measurements or characteristics that can help age or sex that particular species and if you’re not familiar with those off the top of your head, looking them up can take a few minutes. Under extreme circumstances (very cold, a female on the verge of laying an egg, very high capture rate) when the bird needs to be released as soon as possible, a band is put on, minimal data is taken (age and sex only), and the bird is released… this can be done in 1 minute for an experienced bander on a familiar species. If the species has very clear age- and sex-related plumage, it can be done even quicker.

​I’ll go through the process here, but it’s much easier to understand if you actually see it done… I’m sure there are several YouTube videos out there that would be helpful with this.

​The first thing that has to happen is getting the bird out of the bag. Getting him in there was relatively easy… getting him out again can range from feel-feel-grab to feel-feel-ow-ow-ouchie-grab-escape-feel-grab-ouchie. Next, species and sometimes subspecies is determined. Usually this is a simple, instantaneous one-glance thing. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it requires 3 different field guides, 3 different humans, and 20 measurements (the Empidonax flycatchers are notorious for this). But species has to be determined before a band can be put on the bird, however much effort that might take. This is for two reasons: mostly it ensures that every bird flying around with a band on its leg has been identified, but also different species need different band sizes. For the most part, if two species are close enough in appearance that you can’t tell which one you have in your hand, they will take the same size band… but you never know.

​Band size is very important. Too small and it won’t slide freely on the bird’s leg and will rub a raw spot, too big and it will fall off. Standard-issue bands for small birds are made of light-weight aluminium and are simply an open cylinder. The cylinder is pried open, the bird’s leg set inside, and then pried closed again. For large powerful birds like raptors, bands made of a stronger metal or with a different clasping mechanism are used so the bird can’t crush the band or bite through it. Bands are issued by the USGS and are designed so that its weight doesn’t affect the flight of the bird wearing it. They each have a unique 9-digit number that, when entered into the national database, will be associated with that bird and all its measurements for the rest of its life. Banding is basically an extended mark-recapture study and can be used in a diverse array of population studies.

​So, after species is determined, band size is assessed. If the bird already has a band (a recapture), the number is noted. If the bird is a species that our specific banding permit doesn’t include, the bird is marked on a datasheet as ‘unbanded’. All the same data is taken, but no physical band is applied. Hummingbirds, for example, require a special permit and special bands, and game birds (anything that can be hunted for food or sport) are handled by the Department of Fish & Game, since hunters are pretty good about reporting bands on the birds they kill. Most species have one appropriate band size. Some have two or even three if the leg sizes are variable. A tool very like a ring-sizer at a jewellery store in practice (not in appearance) is used in this case to determine which size should be used. This leg-gauge is usually a flat piece of metal with different sized labelled notches in the sides. Band sizes go from 0A at the smallest to 9 at the largest. Our small, portable, song-bird-geared kit only contained up to size 3. The letters after the numbers were assigned in the order they were invented, not size order, so they go: 0A, 0, 1, 1B, 1A, 2, 3.

​So, we’ve determined what size band the bird needs. The old-style plastic film canister (which are getting to be a rare commodity these days) that contains that size band needs to be fished out of the kit, which is sometimes harder than you might think especially with only one hand. The next band on the string is pulled off and its number recorded. The USGS requires a report on every single band used. This means that even if a band is destroyed or lost, which happens sometimes, every band hasto be given an accounting code indicating how it was used (normal, lost, destroyed, replaced, etc.). Special pliers, shown below with other common banding kit tools, are used to first pry open the band, apply it to the bird’s leg, and then pry it shut. Ideally this is done so that the numbers are right-side-up but newbies like I was often get this wrong, to the annoyance of the banders who may recapture the bird in the future. Having to contort one’s head to read an upside-down band isn’t fun and is usually the source of some mild swearing.

​Let me interject here about how this is all accomplished with only two hands and ten fingers. Fine manual dexterity is a must… anyone who has played a wind or string instrument or the piano comes pre-trained in the use of all the fingers in unusual ways. You’d be surprised how many non-musician banders get cramps in their pinkies and ring fingers or can’t get them to move independently. At a small operation like IBP, where 2 people operate the whole station, each person has to be a completely independent bander and scribe, which means being pretty ambidextrous. Hold the bird in one hand, and write, band, and otherwise manipulate the bird with the other. Also, it only takes two fingers to hold a calm bird… that’s three free fingers (including the thumb) on one hand that can be useful… this is especially important in the process of opening and manipulating the band. You have to be able to hold the pliers and the band at the same time.

​Anyway, after the band is safely on the bird’s leg, all the metadata has to be recorded. This includes the capture time, date, and net number. A code for the band use (normal, lost destroyed, etc.) and bird status is also recorded. The bird status can include several things, most of them not good. One code stands for a normal healthy bird and all the others cover various ailments, including death. Thankfully, these codes aren’t used very often. The most common are ‘stress’ and ‘wing strain’.

​Now we’re to the actual measurement part. The first set of three biometrics are done together: brood patch, cloacal protuberance, and fat deposition. This requires blowing the feathers out of the way so you can see the translucent skin of the bird’s abdomen. A brood patch is when a (usually) female bird will pluck the feathers on her abdomen in preparation for incubating eggs. The skin will also swell with fluid to allow efficient heat-transfer. This is immediately apparent upon blowing on the feathers of the abdomen: a big huge naked belly. In most species, a brood patch is an instant indicator of an adult female bird. A cloacal protuberance is when a male’s cloaca (the reptile catch-all urogenital and rectal opening) swells in preparation for mating. As with the brood patch, a large cloacal protuberance in an instant indicator of an adult male. Unfortunately, these are breeding characteristics so if you’re banding sometime other than late spring and summer, you’re out of luck. The other thing you can see if you blow the feathers of the abdomen out of the way is fat deposition. Generally birds store metabolic fat in what’s called the furcular hollow. This is the equivalent of the hollow between your collar bones (the bird collar bones are called furcula). Orangey-yellow fat stands out from the pink muscle around it. Birds start putting on fat in late summer in preparation for migration.

​The next biometric took some practice, several seasons’ worth in fact. If the bird’s age can’t be reliably determined by the BP, CP, or the general look of the bird’s plumage, looking at the skull can solve the mystery. In general terms, ‘age’ just means a juvenile, sub-adult, or adult. Anything more specific than that is called ‘micro-ageing’ and has to be determined by very specific feather characteristics. When a bird hatches, the two layers of its skull are separate. As it grows over the next year or so, those two layers fuse together gradually. Vertical pillars of bone tissue grow between the layers, connecting them. A bander can see these pillars through the nearly-transparent skin as tiny white dots. The extent of these dots tells the bander how complete the oscification is and therefore how old the bird is. A fully oscified skull (dots all over) indicates an adult, while a partially oscified skull (no dots or dots only in a few areas) indicates a juvenile or sub-adult. Unfortunately, depending on how transparent the individual bird’s skin is, these dots can be difficult or impossible to see. Birds like woodpeckers have so much muscle on their heads and necks that the skull can’t be seen. Other birds have black skin, which also makes skulling impossible. Luckily, most of the species for which skulling doesn’t work have other characteristics that give away their age.

​Another important measurement is the length of the wing. Sometimes this can differentiate between male and female. In some species, taking a tail measurement is important as well, but it generally isn’t done unless it’s necessary.

​The last set of standard biometrics is all about the feathers themselves. First, any juvenal feathers are recorded as a percentage. Next, the shape of the tips of the outer wing feathers (primaries) and tail feathers (rectrices) is recorded. Adults tend to have squared-off, truncate feathers, while juveniles tend to have very pointy feathers. The wear on these main flight feathers is also recorded. Lastly, any molt occurring is categorized and recorded. Birds replace all of their feathers all at once, once a year (generally in the fall right before migration), and adults do it in a different pattern than juveniles. There is a whole science behind how it’s possible to differentiate between a second-year bird and a third-year bird using these molt patterns… this is the basis of micro-ageing.

​Species- and group-specific biometrics can vary from the length of a crown patch to eye color. Feather patterns can tell a male from a female, and bill-length and feather emargination can help with species identification. Any species in which there is a male-to-female gradient on some characteristic, there is a measurement to quantify it. For example: an adult male Wilson’s Warbler has a jet-black crown patch, whereas the females and young males have a greenish patch with maybe a few black feathers. In these guys we measure the black crown (if present) and estimate the percent saturation of the black. Google them, they’re adorable.

​The last measurement taken is mass. A small and highly accurate scale is used, as well as some unorthodox methods for getting birds to sit still enough to weigh. Usually, a cup of some kind (film canisters, cut-off shampoo bottles, short length of PVC pipe, etc.) is used to immobilize the bird. The bird is inserted into the cup and stood on its head on the scale. This looks ridiculous, but is safe for the bird and a lot less headache for the bander. After a mass reading is taken, the bird is scooted out of the cup and released.

​I apologize for the technical tangent, but this was my 2-day crash-course in bird banding. I had seen all these things done but had never done it myself, and just understanding the information behind things like micro-ageing took a while. Learning to understand and use the bander’s ‘bible’ (Peter Pyle’s Identification Guide to North American Birds, Part 1), which I will go into later, was also an interesting experience that took several seasons of squinting and re-reading. If you’re a bander or a well-informed birder and already know all this stuff, feel free to skip these bits. I won’t be offended. I just don’t want to drop a bunch of bio-jargon on any non-science-inclined folks who happen to read this.

​Ted and I did several more net runs and extractions that first day, and banded several more birds. By the end of the day, the process and hand movements were getting more familiar and less clumsy, which I counted as a success. When you’re getting up an having breakfast at 4:00am, lunch happens around 10:00am. Most people, myself included, had packed a sandwich or something like it. Most of us had also packed one other non-sandwich thing (carrots, nuts, crackers, grapes, etc.), and these were placed in the middle of the tarp to be fair game for anyone. By this point in the morning, the dawn rush was over and birds were coming slowly enough that we could eat out sandwiches comfortably and graze on other things the rest of the morning. I was also gradually getting to know the other interns. Most were college students majoring in some kind of biology-related science, just like me, so there was common ground for conversation. This fact made my social awkwardness a good deal less debilitating and a good deal less obvious. Turns out, I could talk about classes and professors and labs with complete strangers without much trouble.

​By the end of the day, we were all well into the end-of-field-day mentality of “I reeeally need to get out of my hiking boots and let my toes roam free”. Back at camp, the two interns whose turn it was to cook dinner went off to take stock of community groceries and make a list for going into town. I went into my tent and, now with full daylight, reorganized my things so that I wouldn’t have to dig for them in the 4am dark. Then, once the groceries pair returned from town, we all sat down at a picnic table for some learnin’.

​Ted and Tim were going over bird life-history as it related to ageing, bird years, and molts. The easiest way to explain this is to provide the diagram that they drew (see below). It took a minute to wrap my head around some of these concepts, but once I drew the diagram for myself a few times, it started to make sense. After staring at the diagram for a while, the concept of ageing birds by molt and plumage started to make sense too, based on the fact that some of the molts are incomplete. After an incomplete molt, some of the old feathers will still be there, and they won’t look as new and shiny as the ones that have been replaced… they might even be a completely different color than the new feathers. This concept is how birds get micro-aged. A ‘molt-limit’ (a term that would become our nemesis) is the boundary between two different generations of feathers, new and old. Seeing these boundaries is the bane of every young bander on the planet. You keep ‘seeing’ them everywhere… and then you finally see a real one and it all makes sense. Understanding the standard life-history model and age nomenclature also helped us to understand the Pyle Guide. You can’t read a single sentence without stumbling over one of the terms in the diagram below.

​Ageing and sexing birds is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You grab the low-hanging fruit first: find the corner pieces and assemble the edges. Then you start piecing together small bits of information that don’t mean much by themselves, but you can get a pretty complete picture by putting lots of those small bits together. Unless the small bits all point in different directions. Then you’re screwed.

​After the lecture, we had a lovely dinner of make ‘em yourself tacos and beer, sat by the campfire for a bit while Ted played guitar, and then went to bed when the mosquitoes came out.

15 May: Grants Pass, OR

​I stupidly thought that 4:30am would be less jolting the second morning. It wasn’t. But I’d found my headlamp the previous afternoon, so getting ready wasn’t nearly as clumsy. I ate a granola bar while my tea steeped and while everyone else brewed their coffee and tried not to fall asleep on my feet. Clearly, it would take a bit longer for my internal clock to adjust itself.

​**We were going to the other banding site today, the last day of training. We also had to take down all the poles and pack them out with us to be sent with one of the crews for the season. This made for a long-ish day, but we were all pretty excited about getting our assignments that night, so nobody minded much. We got everything set up and I tagged along with two of the interns for the first net run. Nothing too exciting, a few sparrows and MacGillivray’s Warblers, but another pair came back with a Bullock’s Oriole and Ted came back with a bag and a huge grin.

​Everyone wanted whatever was in Ted’s bag, so we did the pick-a-number game. Twenty-three. Prime numbers do it every time. He told me that we had to wait and do all the other birds first. If you ever want to motivate young banders to move quickly, Mystery Bird In A Bag is a huge freaking carrot. We finished with the sparrows and warblers in record time, took photos of the pretty oriole, and then everyone turned and stared at me.

​“If you accidentally let it go, no one will ever speak to you again… just in case you were wondering. No pressure or anything,” one of the other interns said wryly.

​“I’m good with that,” I replied as I opened the bag and gingerly reached in. I had learned about birds and biting with a Black-Headed Grosbeak that one of the boys handed to me yesterday without warning me, so my teeth were pre-emptively gritted just in case.

​The Flying Thing didn’t bite me, but it also didn’t feel like anything I could identify. Sparrows are medium-sized and stout, warblers are small and delicate, kinglets are tiny, grosbeak things are large-ish and bite, robins are large and loud, woodpeckers are loud and peck, etc. This was medium-sized and seemed to have no neck, no feet, and no tail. When I finally pulled it out, I started. It basically had no neck, feet, or tail, and was iridescent brownish-blue on top and white on bottom. It had a tiny bill and long pointy wings.

​I grinned and held it up. “How often do you catch these?” I asked.

​Ted returned the grin amid ooh’s and ahh’s. “Almost never. They’re certainly around, we see them all the time. But their eyesight is so good that they see the nets. And usually they’re flying up too high anyway. We got lucky with this one. She probably isn’t the cream of the intellectual crop, if you know what I mean.”

​It was a Tree Swallow, a young female who wasn’t the deep cerulean blue of an adult yet. Her wings extended out past her stumpy tail, and she basically had feet with no legs. Banding her (which requires a leg) was interesting. We got it done, but I had to dig around on her belly to grab a foot and pull it away from her. Here she is (right), along with an adult male for comparison (left).

​And the awesome day was about to get even more awesome.

On to part 2!