birdnerd

The day to day at Base Cero

2007-06-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

Originally this post was going to have more photos but I forgot that all of my photos are on my external harddrive and not on this computer. I'll come back later and add photos, but for now enjoy the text :)

3:50 – wake up in my bed that is covered with a mosquito net. (While mosquitoes aren’t all THAT bad (unless you’re standing outside at dusk), ickier things like spiders and scorpions could crawl on us at night, so we use the mosquito nets to keep them away.) Get dressed in the dark because I’m one of the only ones awake this early. Put a pot of water on to boil for tea. Eat a bowl of cereal. Get my field gear ready and outside, ready to get in the car at 4:30.

4:40 – Once in the park, find the area of the study site I’m looking for on that particular day. (Because of the rains, we can’t drive on the dirt roads, and therefore use a complex systems of trails that WE cut to get to the areas we need to be in.) Put my recording gear together and get myself positioned near the nest of the bird I’m intending to record.

5:00-6:30 – Record the focal bird for an hour, while he sings his dawn chorus (dawn is when most birds, including my study species – the rufous-and-white wren – sing the most, and the reason I wake up so early is to get set up in time to record the dawn chorus).

6:30-11:00 – Go from territory to territory, trying to figure out the breeding stage of each pair of birds. Are they nest-building? Is the female incubating her eggs yet? Are they feeding nestlings?

11:20 – Get back to Base Cero (the field house), dump my field gear, charge my batteries, have a (nearly unbearably cold) shower and eat lunch (tomato and cheese sandwich, hummus, or leftovers).

1:00-5:00 – “Free Time” I usually spend a couple of hours logging (similar to transcribing) my recording of the morning – this will help me in the future when I try to extrapolate data from these recordings. I also read, write emails, chat, do laundry (we handwash all of our laundry here, and it doesn’t dry right now – not with all the rain!), exercise (we have a chin-up bar here, so I attempt/do chin ups, and pushups, mainly) etc.

[Now... I HAD a shot of me doing a chin up, but I think I have it on my external harddrive instead of this computer. Le sigh]

5:00 – Dinner prep time. Every 6 (or 7) day cycle, each person much be a chef once, an assistant chef once, and a dish-doer once. Sometimes on the 7th day we go into town and have Pizza Pronto (overly simple but delicious pizza served with the spiciest hot sauce I can handle). It’s been an adventure cooking for 6 people, but it’s pretty decent. I’ve cooked a bean tortilla bake with rice and veggies, fajitas with rice and beans, pasta with tomato cream sauce, pizza pasta, chili and... that’s it so fa. rTonight I'm making curry.

6:00ish – Dinner time.

7:00ish – Free time. This is when I spend most of my time writing emails and blogs. Sometimes I read a bit of fiction to help me wind down.

8:00 – Bedtime. I had no problem getting used to going to bed at 8pm.

how to tile a counter - Costa Rica style

2007-06-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

Make sure the counter is ugly enough that it warrants re-tiling. Yup, this one sure makes the cut!

Scrape the paint off. Hmm, it almost looks better with bare concrete than it does with peeling, water-damaged paint.

Apply Plasterbond, a chalky blue substance that is supposedly a "sealer and adhesive". and yet it appears to be water soluble. hmm.... Make sure that you don't drink any plasterbond (I swear i didn't, even if it looks like I did).

Get the tile store to cut tiles for you (it helps if the two people asking for tiles are women between the ages of 23 and 30). Based on the poor construction of your counter to begin with, plus your quick measuring job, and the fact that the tile store may or may not account for grout when they cut you tiles, you will probably have tiles that don't quite fit. It's probably good that you took home a bunch of scrap tiles, but you still have to sand down the pieces that are just too big. The rough concrete floor on your back porch works well for this step.

Mix and apply mortar. The (spanish) instructionsn on the bag only give you the appropriate ratio of water to powder if you are intending to make the whole bag. You aren't, so you try to approximate a third of the bag. You don't know how thick it's supposed to be, but when you decide it looks decent you start applying. Note: if you have a limited wardrobe, it might be wise to avoid getting any of your clothes covered in mortar - it may not come off.

Set the tiles. Use little white crosses (spacers) that don't like to stay in place. Make sure to account for flaws in the counter's construction, such as edges and corners that aren't square. You will end up with crooked grout lines and tile that don't line up, but that's OK, right?

Let the mortar set over night. Apply grout on the next rain day. Use a rubber trowel. If you don't have a rubber trowel for this step.

If you don't have a rubber trowel, a my patented flip flop technique works just as well. I give you permission to use this technique if you ever need to.

And voila! a tiled counter!

pictures

2007-06-08T14:28:00.001-07:00

No time for a written blog today, so I post some photos of me in the field, taken by Dan, my supervisor.

Rainy Season Part Two

2007-06-03T14:41:00.001-07:00

My last blog was about the rainy season and how frustrating it is to get out of the car, realize it’s raining too hard to do anything, sit around for 1/2 hour and then go home. On Wednesday, we got up, got dressed, got in the car and drove for 2 minutes before the rain started. What’s really frustrating is a) our field house, which is only a 5 minute drive from the study site in the Park, doesn’t get rain even when the Park does so we don’t know that it’s raining in the park until we get there, and b) it doesn’t often rain right AT dawn, it rains until 3am, then stops from 3-5 and starts again. Meaning: it’s not raining JUST exactly when we wake up, so we get ready and head out into the park, only to be shut down by the rain. Fortunately, this morning it was raining at 4am, so we just didn’t get out of bed. That’s much more tolerable. AND I got to sleep in until 6am, woohoo! Which is good, because I was awake most of the night listening to rain on the tin roof. Speaking of, our roof is leaking. There’s a leak over the toilet, a leak near our shoes, and a rotten spot of roof above my bed that occasionally drops wood chips and other random junk onto my mosquito net. I moved my bed the other day to avoid more random crap being dropped on my feet. Now I’m closer to the window, which means I get splashed with rain when it’s really heavy and the wind is strong. Classy accommodations :)

Even though the rain is frustrating, we took advantage of the time “off” to paint and clean the house. Steph and Dan have been painting one room a year since they acquired this house, and there was only one room left to paint this year: the study/office. Painting here is a bit of an ordeal, because we have to sweep the walls for cobwebs, dust, and insect leftovers and then we have to wash the wails to get rid of accumulated dirt, etc. BUT it was really rewarding because it’s clean and bright in here and I know we cleaned out most of the spiders, for now. I have a desk in the study, so it’s nice to have it clean and bright (walls are nearly white). We had some leftover paint and decided to touch up the walls in the rest of the living space (kitchen and dining room), which cascaded into us sweeping and washing THOSE walls, and now the whole place is clean and bright. I found a decorative sarong that we’re putting up in the dining room for a splash of colour. It makes me happy.

Work room before:

Work room after:
Living room Before:

Living room After:

Alrighty, it’s now June 1 and we had ANOTHER rain day today. Today was the frustrating kind; we got up, got dressed, and drove to the park. I had just turned my recorder (I record bird song from 5-6am) and it started to rain. Then it started to rain harder. What makes matters worse is I didn’t know the shortcut to get back to the main road (which is where I’d be picked up), so I bushwacked up a cliff of sorts, dodging acacia trees and stepping in puddles. What an adventure.

Back at the house, we decided to take further advantage of our time off, and we tiled the kitchen sink. Now, this sounds like a decently easy job, but Stephanie and I worked on it all day today. Yesterday we prepped the area by peeling paint and applying the Plasterbond (whatever that is). Today we did the actual tiling part... and it took us just under 12 hours. What an ordeal. We didn’t know how thick to make the “bondex” mortor stuff, and then it kept making a mess, and the tiles didn’t want to stay on vertically... Anyways, at about 4:30 we placed the last tile and cleaned up. Tomorrow is grout day. Then we have to apply caulking and then it’ll be finally done!!! We should have started this project on the first rain day. I’ll post photos of that project when we’re finished the whole shebang.

That’s pretty much all I have to say for now... it’s pretty boring when we don’t go out into the field!!!

rainy season

2007-05-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

The rainy season official started a few days ago. Since then, we've had rain every day. It's been kind of annoying, actually.... We get up at the usual 4am, head off to the park and start doing out field research. Then around 6am it starts raining and we have to go back home. I just wish it was raining at 4am so we didn't even get out of bed!!!! Today was worse. It was raining as we got out of the car at our study site... we waited it out a bit but ended up leaving by 5:30. Really frustrating.

On the bright side, it's allowed me to catch up on some of the work I've been getting behind on. so I guess that's nice.

Today we started painting one of the rooms in the field house. It's the last room that hasn't been painted, so it'll be nice when it's finished. Boy did we uncover a lot of spiders when we moved the furniture around. Blah.

Erm I don't have much else to say so i guess that's it.

This picture is a storm front that was coming in one day. We thought it would dump a ton of rain but it was pretty anticlimactic and we didn't get any rain that day. This was before the rainy season....

Monteverde

2007-05-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had my first hot shower since leaving Canada. It was wonderful.

We're in Monteverde, a really touristy cloud forest in Costa Rica. We delayed our 3rd day off and bumped up our 4th day off to form a weekend proper, and we made the 3 hour drive from our home in Santa Rosa to a hotel in Monteverde.

We had a rain day yesterday. We went out into the field at the usual time (4:30am) and were rained out by 6:15. This works for me seeing as my best data is collected between 5am and 6am. We then left for Monteverde around 9:30 or so. Almost as soon as we got here, it started raining. Well... it IS the rainy season, I guess. We hung out in our room (Jess, Celia, David and I) and I played with my computer. After we had dinner, Jess Celia and I spend the evening reminiscing over old music and singing to old 90s dance music. It was fun. We used the "strobe effect" on our headlamps and had a party.

Today we went for a hike in the forest. But before we went into the forest itself, we hung out in a hummingbird garden. So far, I think that has to be the highlight of my trip. There were at least 7 different species of hummingbird and they were all flying around these hummingbird feeders. I took A LOT of photos, but they're still on my camera so I'll post some later. At one point, I realized how tame some of the hummingbirds were, and I got my face within about 3 inches of the hummingbird feeder, with hummingbirds on it. I even reached up my hand really slowly and pet a couple hummingbirds. I couldn't believe it. fortunately Jess was taking photos at the same time, so I have proof that I tickled a wild hummingbird's belly!!

I'm currently sitting on a balcony of a restaurant using the free wireless. I had a full meal but I'm still feeling hungry! I'm glad I'll be eating dinner in a couple hours :)

I've been posting photos on my flickr site.

Ugliest bird in the world

2007-05-24T14:21:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, we found a nest cavity for a woodpecker species. My supervisor has become very interested in woodpeckers over the last little while, so we investigated. Stephanie, Dan’s wife, has a fancy tool that we’ve called the “peeper”. It’s an infrared camera that you attach to a pole, and it has wires leading to a screen so you can see what’s the camera can see. She plans to use it for checking nests that are too tall to reach by hand. We decided to use the camera to peep in the nest cavity. Sure enough, a little woodpecker nestling was inside!

A few days after the initial peep, we decided we wanted to band it so that we can ID it later as the nestling we know of. Dan climbed up on a ladder and grabbed the nestling from the cavity. And OMIGOSH it was UGLY. It turns out the legs were too thick to put a legband on, so we just took a lot of photos. UGLY.

The photos, in order:

1) Adult pale-billed woodpecker at nest cavity

2) What the nestling looked like on the screen of the peeper – not very clear!

3) The nestling, showing what I’ve called the “ugly chicken skin”

4) The nestling, reaching out its neck as if it’s going to be fed by a parent

5) The nestling, with its head in the position its probably most used to – reach up for food from mom or dad!

PS: While connecting to the wireless internet to post this blog and check my email, I had to avoid sitting down on a tarantula. Just thought you'd like to know

Day Off 2

2007-05-17T15:20:00.001-07:00

We work 6 days a week and get 1 day off. For whatever reason, we’ve decided that Wednesday is our day off. Because SOME people really like to go on day trips, we usually head somewhere on Tuesday, stay overnight, hang out the next day, and then come back to the field house on Wed afternoon.

For our first day off, we went to a beach called Playa Hermosa (I think playa = beech). We hung out and swam in the ocean and it was fun. Maybe I’ll post pictures from that day later. For the second day off, we went to a remote field station on the Caribbean slopes of Costa Rica (we are currently on the other slope – would that be Pacific??). The forest was really different there... It was very very very humid, and closer to what you’d think of as a rainforest. The forest I’m working in now is really dry, especially because the rainy season hasn’t really started in full force yet.

I don’t have much more time to type, but I will post some photos:

Banding Birds

2007-05-14T13:54:00.000-07:00

For those who read this blog without any context, here’s the short of it. I’m doing my Masters of Science in Biology at the University of Windsor. I study bird behaviour, specifically acoustic communication in birds. In laymans terms: birdsong.

I’ll save my SPECIFIC research project for later, but in general behavioural ecology research on birds involves being able to identify one individual from the next, so you can tell who lives where and who each bird is paired with. The way we can tell one individual from the next is by “banding”. We put an aluminum leg band with a number on it on each bird, plus a unique combination of coloured leg-bands. We also take measurements, take a few feathers (to do plumage coloration measurements later on if we wish), and a blood sample (so we can later extract DNA if we want to do any molecular work).

For three summers I was a research assistant for a prof at Laurier, working with white-throated sparrows. For the most part I just took notes, although Ramsay did teach me how to do some things, even though I often didn’t get to practice them myself. Because I’m doing my own research now, Dan (my MSc supervisor) is teaching me how to actually handle birds, and band them, etc. He won’t trust me with our study species yet (I have a tendency to let birds escape my hands because I’m scared of hurting them) but there is another species of bird here that Dan and his partner Stephanie band, called the Long-tailed Manakin. The other day we caught one of these Manakins in our net and Dan asked me to “process” it. So I banded my first bird!! I had to do the whole procedure, without his help, because he was trying to catch a female of our species (a rather boring looking bird called the Rufous-and-white Wren). BTW, we catch birds by setting up nets that look like volleyball nets and putting speakers near them playing the songs of rivals – this makes birds very angry and they try to attack the invading birds, so they end up flying into our nets and voila we caught ‘em! Point of the story is: I banded my first bird, hussah!

The picture is a photo of me holding a Long-tailed Manakin. This isn’t the actual bird I banded, seeing as I was really frustrated and impatient by the time I finished banding my bird, but it’s the same species. Ain’t it cool? It’s not the most flattering of photos... I was a bit nervous. Notice my blurry left hand – it was just holding the bird’s wings so they didn’t flap. The bird doesn’t just sit there nicely when you hold it like that – it tries to flap, and that’s bad, so you have to try to keep it still until the last minute. Hence the nervousness.

Oh, and more on banding: For those who received emails from me last year when I was in Algonquin, you may remember that we name birds based on the combination of colour leg bands we give them. The system Ramsay uses is a bit more strict than the system Dan uses, where the name is really just what the colours are (e.g.: yellow, orange, dark blue, aluminum is YODA, pronounced yoda, and aluminum, mauve, green, red is AMGR, pronounced amger). Dan uses S (for silver) instead of A (for aluminum), and he feels free to insert letters, especially vowels, if it makes the name make more sense. Dan also uses more colours. Here are some examples:

Dark green, orange, green, silver = DOGS
Pink, pink, yellow, silver = PPYS (“peas”)
Blue, dark green, red, silver = BDRS (“butters”)
Mauve, yellow, yellow, silver = MYYS (“mice”)
Pink, orange, pink, silver = POPS
Mauve, orange, mauve, silver = MOMS
White, dark green, silver, chocolate = WDSC (“Woodstock”)
Chocolate, red, silver, pink = CRSP (“crispie”)
Mauve, red, silver, blue = MRSB (“Mrs. B”)
Green, mauve, silver, mauve = GMSM (“gymsum”)

And some others: WPSY (whipsy), RYSO (rizzo), MYSY (missy), WOWS, SPRG (spring), MRNS, SYGO, SPMP (Ess-Pimp), OOPS.

OK you probably get the point. Why am I telling you this?? I’m asking you to come up with some names. It’s a good way to waste time. Feel free to take a little freedom and add vowels, if you like. OH, and each name MUST have an S in it somewhere. Here are the colours:

R = Red
O = Orange
Y = Yellow
G = Green
D = Dark Green
B = Blue
M = Mauve
P = Pink
N = Black
W = White
C = Chocolate
S = Silver/Aluminum

ticks

2007-05-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

We have access to wireless internet now! About a 10 min drive, we got to the national park's centre, and it has wireless. Yay! However, I'm still trying to catch up on emails so haven't had time for blogging.

The biggest thing that's happened since my last blog is my newly realized hatred for ticks. I kind of knew ticks would be present, but I really underestimated the GROSSNESS of it. I have been "tick-bombed" twice since being here... that's when you sit down to watch / band some birds, and you realize you have tons of teeny tiny little ticks crawling up your legs, trying to find a bit of flesh. Or... you don't realize you have ticks on you for a couple days and then you find a totally bloated swollen tick with its head embedded in your torso. Gross.

Anyways, I have seen some cool things but I'm not sure that I'm entirely cut out for tropical field work! Yikes!

I´m here and I´m alive!

2007-05-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

It was an adventure getting to Costa Rica, but I´m safe and sound here now.
We had to take 2 flights to get here from Detroit. 1 from Detroit to Chicago, one from Chicago to Houston, and then one from Houston to Liberia, Costa Rica. Our flight from Detroit to Chicago was fine... and then we sat and waited in the departure lounge for the gate we heard mentioned over the intercom. Only when the flight started boarding, and my boarding pass gave them a blinking beeping red light did we realize that we were in the departure lounge. This flight was still going to Houston but it was the wrong airline. Meaning... we were in the wrong terminal, and had to get to OUR gate within 20 minutes, or it´d depart! Yikes. We got to the gate and it looked like it was closed so I looked at the guy pleadingly. He said 'we´re still deplaning' meaning, we weren´t late! But that´s when the real adventures started. We got on the plane a bit late, and then sat on the plane for a while... Finally the captain updated us: they got to a thing on a routine checklist and they were 'missing a pin'... having found the pin in the cockpit and not underneath the plane they got worried, only to realize that yes it´s supposed to be in the cockpit. they just had to get maintenance to sign off on it. So we left an hour late. As we´re in the air, we´re thinking we don´t have that much time to get off the plane in houston and then back onto the plane to costa rica, so we get a little nervous. THEN the captain comes on the intercom and updates us again: ' we´ve been having a little weather lately, and we´ve been rerouting to get around it... we don´t have enough fuel to get to houston.... so we´re gonna land in dallas and fuel up'. hmm.... we sit in dallas for a long time (well over an hour) because of 'paperwork'... but finally we´re heading to the runway and we stop and sit there. captain says 'so we had enough fuel to go straight to houston... but now houston wants us to reroute again... meaning we don´t have enough fuel. we´ve got to go back' so we go back to the gate and refuel again. AT least time we got updates about those of us with connecting flights in houston. they rattled off a list: if you´re going to bla, you´ve got a flight leaving houston at 8... etc etc etc. AND if you´re going to Liberia, Costa Rica, yoú'll have to wait until tomorrow because there´s only one flight a day. We´ll put you in a hotel.
But they didn´t. We got to >Houston (around 8:30, we were supposed to land around 2 or 3 or something), they barely even were helpful until we found one particularly helpful woman who told us a few numbers to call to find ahotel - but the airport wasn´t paying for it. We ccouldn´t get the payphone to call Dan in costa Rica so this nice lady let us use the airport phone to call him. that was also nice of her. We tried calling a bunch of hotels but there was nothing available so we slept on the floor of the airport. At least it was quiet, unlike lima. And carpeted - the chairs all had armrests so we slept on the floor. And the airport was empty, just cleaners. So it wasn´t bad, as far as sleeping in airports goes.
And finally we arrived yesterday around noon, unpacked our stuff, went for a walk and saw some volcanoes, and then watched the sunset... ate a yummy dinner of pasta, and headed to bed around 8pm.

This morning we got up at 4am and headed out into the field. Dan was taking me on a tour of the study site. It was 'cool' today, starting the morning off at 21degrees, and hitting only 28 by 11am. It´s the dry season now, so it hasn´t started raining yet... that´ll happen soon.

I saw some cool birds today, so if you´re bored you should search for them on google images, or flickr or something.
Blue.crowned motmot
Elegant trogon
Pale-billed woodpecker
Long-tailed manakin

And I study the Rufous-and-white wren, a rather boring looking brown bird with a decently pretty song.

I just found out today that I won an award through a national granting agency. The Fred Cooke Award, it gives me $700 to do research or travel to a scientific conference. Sweet.

Also, I have a professional website. It´s not finished but you can check it out
http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/mennill_lab/barkern/ there

Hike to Cocococha

2007-04-17T15:12:00.001-07:00

Our second day at Explorer's Inn = a hike to Lake Cocococha. It was a > 5 km hike to the lake, and then back again. We stopped at a neat swamp where I took some photos (made a nice composite in Photoshop, too). When we got to Cocococha, we looked for giant river otters, but they were gone by the time we got there (they are early morning creatures). We then went out in boats, and saw hoatzin and howler monkeys, both of which were pretty cool. The people who went out in boats after us did see the river otters - turns out they were hiding behind a little hill near where we saw the hoatzin and monkeys.

Some photos uploaded, but not the pictures of hoatzin or howlers. I'll get to them soon.

Oh yeah, and there's a Scarlet Macaw named Wowie that hangs out at the Explorer's Inn. I think the story is that E.I. had a domestic Blue and Yellow Macaw, and Wowie "fell in love" with it and stuck around, even though he was a wild macaw. The Blue and Yellow Macaw was "eaten by an ocelot" or so the story goes, but Wowie has stuck around... He's kind of violent and doesn't really like people... so if you get too close, he'll bite your fingers/toes. On the other hand, he has walked right into people's cabins before (I've seen photos!) so I don't quite understand him.
Yes, I took plenty of pictures of Wowie. It's not every day you have a wild macaw posing for you.

First Hike

2007-04-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

We settled into our cabins and then met for our first hike. Before we even started hiking, some of the people from Explorer's Inn told us that there were monkeys behind the lodge. We checked it out and sure enough there was a group of Saddle-backed Tamarins. They're super small monkeys, and they were hyper and constantly moving, making high-pitched squealing noises as they moved through the trees. I got a few pictures, though the lighting wasn't ideal in any of them.
Hiking in a big group isn't ideal because that many people moving through a forest tends to make a lot of noise. And if there is anything cool in the firs,t the people up front see it first... while the people in the back are oblivious. I got a few pictures of plants and insects, though.
More photos posted.

Getting to Explorer's Inn

2007-04-13T12:59:00.001-07:00

The boat ride to Explorer's Inn took 4 hours. And yet I wasn't bored. The vegetation lining the river was what you'd expect - lush, tropical forest - and it was so different from what I'm used to in Canada, I was trying to take it all in. We saw oropendola nests, which was cool. And loads of birds flying around, which I didn't get photos off. There were lots of colourful and conspicuous birds, which was nice. I'm used to boring conspicuous birds, or small colourful secretive birds... so it was nice to be able to SEE brightly-coloured / cool birds. We were always on the look out for cool mammals like capibarras which are the world's largest rodents, but we didn't see any.
When we got to Explorer's Inn, we had to walk up recently made wooden stairs.. which was a little scary. As we were walking the path from the cliff to the lodge, I could hear a really obnoxious bird. I looked around a bit, and up above the path was a Scarlet Macaw, which is only my favourite bird ever, so that was pretty cool.
We got into the lodge and were given some lunch. Peruvian food is weird. Lunch was fried cauliflower (i think) and beets served with mayo on top, among other things... Kyle got my cauliflower, I got his beets. it worked out well. Explorer's Inn really liked their beets with mayo. So weird. OK I'm not going to get into E.I. food, because I think I could waste a whole blog on it.

Yup, more photos posted today.
the picture in this post is 2 macaws I saw within a few minutes of getting to the lodge. These ones are Red-and-green Macaws, not Scarlet Macaws.

Puerto Maldonado

2007-04-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

When we landed in Puerto Maldonado, we were ushered to a bus that drove us around the town/city (not sure which is more appropriate). The city was interesting... Very few cars, most people drove around on motor bikes. The rules of traffic were therefore fairly fluid; people would just honk when they wanted to pass you, just so you knew they were there. Because of this, there was a constant ambient noise in the city of "beep beep" or "meep" or "honk" or "kent" or any other varieties of horn. Tons of stray dogs, just wandering the street. It was a bit sad.

We found out that the resort we were going to stay at, Explorer's Inn, had been hit fairly bad by a flood overnight. The stairs leading up the cliff from the boat landing had been completely washed away, and do had the water pump. The only way we would be able to get up to the resort was to climb up the cliff on a rope. Um, yeah, so we stayed in Puerto Maldonado overnight. Steph and Dan (the professors) organized dinner for us with a place down the street. Unfortunately, right around dinner time, it started POURING outside. We're talking heavy Amazon downpours here.... And because we were on the equator, it was dark before 6 anyways. So we're walking down the street, getting soaked from head to toe, in the DARK, trying to find this restaurant. Oh and then we do find it and guess what? There was a power shortage on that block of town. Excellent. Well we got inside and it was all lit by candlelight. It took a while, but eventually we were all prepared dinner - I think their kitchen ran on gas rather than electricity.

What an adventure.

I posted some more photos, this time from Puerto Maldonado. I was still being reserved with my photo-taking because I didn't want to run out of batteries. Once I got to Explorer's Inn, however, I started taking more.

The bird photo is a fledgling Silver-Blue Tanager. It was on the sidewalk we were walking on, and the parents were going nuts. It couldn't fly yet, so it just sort of flapped and ran away. I was scared it was going to get hurt....

From the Plane

2007-04-11T07:21:00.000-07:00

More Peru photos posted. This time it's the photos from the plane. After our long stopover in Lima, we flew to Cusco, then directly to Puerto Maldonado (which is down in the Amazon basin). Cusco looked awesome from above, and I caught a few photos of it. The mountains themselves were different from what I'm used to (i.e.: the Rockies). They seem... softer, somehow.

Airports

2007-04-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

I've started posting my pictures from Peru. I took well over 1300 photos, and I deleted many of them while they were still on the camera. I downloaded 1,135 photos on Sunday... I started uploading them today, but I won't upload them all at once.

Today I uploaded three photos, from the two airports we were in on the way to Puerto Maldonado.

Visit my Flickr site for more...

costa rica flights

2007-01-25T10:00:00.001-08:00

Flights are booked:

May 1, 2007 : Fly from Detroit to Liberia, Costa Rica
August 16th, 2007: Fly from Costa Rica to Detroit

testing...

2006-07-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

This is a small selection of photos from my field season in BC, during the summer of 2004. I stole the html from Regan. Thanks Regan.

Another Greeting From Alqonguin

2006-05-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

The days here warmed up briefly but it's rainy again. Today (Sunday) is my day off so I'm catching up on emails... Maybe I'll work on the WRS website again. The link, I think, is: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~wrs/home.html Sorry if that doesn't work. The site is still under construction... I have been making updates but I haven't uploaded any of the corrections yet.

I just finished breakfast. It was waffles with warm berry topping. I forced myself to eat some cottage cheese because I know I'll be hungry in 1 hour if I don't. Oh well, there are leftovers in the fridge that I can eat. the food is really really good here. Betty, I'll give you some recipes when I get ahold of them. I've been making a list of meals because I have difficulty coming up with meal ideas.. but no full recipes yet. There's a lot of tofu here, and beans. And pasta salads, quinoa salads. There was a really good squash carrot soup that I ate for breakfast for a few days (that's first breakfast... at 4:10. Second breakfast is at 7:30).

I finished my thesis. Finally. Dr. Ramsay brought up my corrections when he arrived here. I spent a few days going through them and adding the finishing touches. It is a grand total (including 7 pages of references, 4 pages of Appendices, and over 20 pages of Figures) of 91 pages long. It *should have been* a Master's thesis... if it was a better project. But I was not prepared for my project, and I didn't do enough planning ahead, or reading... so it was not very good research. Despite that, one of the "Birders" up here is the son of the retired Park Naturalist... and he wants to show my thesis to his dad because dad is writing the "Birds of Algonquin Park" book. Wouldn't it be cool if I was mentioned in Park literature? And on top of that.. the project that the "other birders" are working on relates to logging and indicator species... and my thesis is related to that sort of thing as well. So Doug, this head birder, is interested in reading it. I'm pretty flattered but also a little nervous because (as mentioned) it's not particularly good research. ah well, I did make some interesting comparisons so there is SOMETHING to get out of reading it.

The people up here are fun... but there are a LOT of them. Did I mention that I'm staying in a cabin with 4 other girls? At least they are birders so we are all up at approximately the same time. And it's a good thing I'm tired all the time or it would be difficult falling to sleep...

The people up here listen to good music too. It's not uncommon for me to walk into the kitchen and hear Postal Service, or Cuff the Duke, or Arcade Fire. I'm getting excited for Hillside. Who has tickets?

Who's going to convocation? I think that's when I'm coming home. Dr. Ramsay is extremely vague and mentioned something about heading into K-W 5 days before convocation... which means I'd be heading home then too. BUT.. he didn't elaborate. mom, dad, Shay... one of you willing to pick me up in K-W if I come home early? Or Erin, Heather, Kate, Sonal... willing to take me in for a few nights until I can be picked up? Eek. (side note: kate, anyone living in the basement yet? How's the kitten?)

Alrighty... hope things are well with you. Ttyl!

-Nic

hello again

2006-05-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

Hi there, (for those of you who haven't gotten a first email from me... the email program I'm using ate your email addresses but here's the summary: I'm in Algonquin Park studying birds and i wanted to keep y'all updated. If these emails bore or annoy you, please let me know and I'll stop sending them!)

Weather is much warmer now. Winter jackets in the morning but tee shirts and shorts by afternoon.
Mornings are EARLY. Yesterday we were up at 3:15, today it was 3:45. We need to be up before dawn so we can record the birds' whole "dawn chorus".

New birders arrived today. We're taking over the station.

I don't have a whole lot else to say... I'm really tired... not surprising. Probably a little sunburnt as well. But it's fun. Lots of cool people too. And I'm passing on lots of good advice to the new thesis students so they don't make the same mistakes I do.

Today we went for ice cream in Whitney... a town of a couple hundred people... very "small town".

Today is a sad day because it is Wednesday and I am missing America's Next Top model... So I'm assigning you the task of taking notes and summarizing the episode for me and sending me an email as soon as it's over. Erin, Heather, Emma... you're probably watching it? Ryan... did I get you hooked? At least tell me who gets kicked off. At this point, I don't even care if it's Jade or Sara... Jade at least provides entertainment because she makes up words and facts "elephants are so prehistoric. they remind me of dinosaurs. cuz... they're in the dinosaur family, you know". Yeah, OK Jade. I've made up a few words here... especially in the last 2 days when I get braindead by 3pm... Sometimes I get called Jade.

Alright, now that I've told you more than you ever wanted to know about america's next top model... I'll let you go. It's almost dinner here and I wanna clear my laptop off the table. Maybe I'll post pictures later but connection is WAY to slow now!

Bye!

-nicole

Pictures: Top picture is Allison, the cook. The second picture is some random white flowers. The third is Matt (a turtler) and Adam (a squirreler).

Greetings from Algonquin

2006-05-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

Hi!

So I thought I was going to start a "blog" to keep you all updated with my field work experiences, but this is actually easier b/c I can compose an email and then just hit "send" when I log in. Blogger (the website I blog through) is slow lately and would be even worse on dial-up, the only connection to the internet here at the Wildlife Research Station.

I picked this list of people because I thought you might be interested in what's going on. I will *not* be offended if you email me back and say "hey actually... I'd rather NOT get a weekly email about your bird-watching, can you take me off this list?" Or maybe you can't check your email very often and so it's perfectly reasonable to not want to get repeated emails. I support that.

Here goes the first email:

For one month, I am going to be a field research assistant studying white-throated sparrows in Algonquin Park.

We arrived up at Algonquin Park on Thursday. We got out of the car in tee shirts and it was warm enough to do so. Last night, the pipes froze in the bathroom and yesterday it snowed/hailed. We are all sitting in the cookhouse with multiple layers and several blankets. We had a fire earlier, also. it's COLD. I am currently wearing 2 sweatshirts and I was wearing a toque. Brr.

Dr. Ramsay, my supervisor, has not arrived here yet and I'm running out of things to teach the 2 new girls. I'm a little afraid he'll think we didn't do very much but we don't have a permit yet so I'm hesitant to run around with sound recording equipment in case someone stops us. He will be arriving tomorrow (monday).

The food here is amazing. We get 3 meals a day cooked for us and they sure know how to cook vegetarian food. i want to steal recipes from them.

I don't have much else to say. I'm trying to redesign the Wildlife Research Station website but it's slow-going because my web-design skills are rustier than I thought they were.

Talk to you later!

-Nicole

the picture is of the "upper lab"...the lab we were working out of. behind the lab is the lake, and that's sunset.

Welcome

2006-05-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

I've created this bird blog to highlight my fantabulous bird adventures. When I was in Algonquin this past May/June, I wrote emails instead of blogging because of the nature of the internet connection. So I've backdated all of these posts so that they appear on the days I sent emails.

Enjoy!

images for blog

2006-05-02T10:20:00.000-07:00