it's hot and I'm tired

So as usual, I am way behind in posting - with good reason. I work every day trying to band birds and find nests, some days more successfully than others. Yesterday, a good day - 2 birds banded and 1 nest found. Today, a bad day - 0 banded and nests. Very little bird activity, but lots and lots of wind and heat and humidity:( But we have done really well this season despite the many challenges we have faced in beginning this new project. I did film a female warbler collecting material that I will hopefully post one day!

migrants

The golden-cheeked warblers have been here almost a week (first detected in Travis County on 3/4). Today I saw 2 Nashville Warblers, 2 Orange-crowned Warblers, and heard 1 Black-and-white Warbler.

Spring is here!

the birds are back in town

I returned 2/23 and had my crew ready that following Monday, but due to logistical delays we are just getting started. The 1st GCWA was reported in San Antonio on 3/2!!! The 1st in Austin was reported yesterday on 3/4. I took 1 tech out yesterday but we did not detect any GCWAs. Today started out very dismally and I expected the bad weather to preclude us from finding any. But luckily, we stuck it out long enough that the icky weather blew away, and we ended up hearing our 1st GCWA! We resighted him and I verified that he was banded with my naked eye (we did not even have our bins on us!). We went back to the car to retrieve our bins and refound and resighted the male, just in the nick of time since he disappeared soon after.

new project, same old birds!

Well, I am heading back into the field in 2 days!

I have a contract to study population viability of GCWAs on Balcones Canyonlands Preserve. It is my dream project and I am very excited about it. I will have my 1st crew working with me on GCWAs since 2006, and my largest crew in my several years of sueprvising. I have hired 6 techs, 3 of whom worked for me before on my masters project. An advantage of having good techs who become good friends:)

We will be super busy with all the facets of this multi-dimensional project, but it will also be super fun. I hope I remember to update all our adventures!

much belated post

Well here it is 4th of July weekend. The birds just kept me much too busy to keep up the blog. I ended up banding ~40 birds or so this year and finding 27 nests. The sites I nest searched on held small numbers of birds and many didn't produce anything. Interesting and alarming! I began a pilot study looking at the effect of recreation on productivity. I actually got all but 1 male on the 2 sites banded and it will be interesting to see how many return to these or nearby sites next year. We ended up with >50% return rates across the banding sites! I will not be analyzing the results of the pilot data until later this fall. I am currently in the midst of another field season up in Missouri and planning my wedding later this fall!

first camera up today!

Well, these posts are few and far between because I am super busy. However, this afternoon got rained out so here I am. One of these days I upload some pictures, but not today. So far I have banded 29 gwcas, including 1 female. After 1 month of surveys, we are hovering between 40-50% return rate at most of our plots - very cool! We have even resighted 1 of 3 females banded in 2009 and she is the almost the same territory as last year. Absolutely amazing!

I have only found 6 nests thus far - the nest finding is slow going so far. I have found nests for every female I have seen with material except one yesterday who collected a bit of spider web and disappeared. I was not able to relocate her or her mate so I gave up. So good indication of just how late and slow this field season is progessing regarding the ladies. Another indication, not only do we continue to document new young males arriving each day, I resighted a 09 banded bird on Monday's survey for the first time - so even the older guys are just making it back. So lots of nest building is yet to come in what is shaping up to be a very odd year.

On Tues, I observed my first incubating female and this morning, successfully positioned a camera just above her nest. Mama accepted immediately and was eager to hop on her nest (4 eggs) as soon as I left. I was able to get a beautiful overhead shot so it will be good footage. I also took a short video with my still camera of a female building a nest a few days ago. It captures the 'wiggle dance' and she flies right past me as she leaves the nest. I will one day post that as well!

That's all folks!

slow progress

Birds are still being very slow to come in. In the last 2 weeks, I have gotten 14 banded. The females are here and somehow I have kept myself from getting wigged out that I have not even started territory mapping yet, let alone nest searching! I just started finding males at one site mid-week and I have not found more than 3 at my other site:( I will start nest searching on Tuesday!!!