Spotted Owl Survey

Today I went out on a spotted owl survey with one of my supervisors. We went to two sites which were mostly doug fir and redwoods, and were absolutely gorgeous. At the first site we hiked (nearly vertically) up a hillside to an area where owls had nested years previous. First we spent some time searching for any signs of owls: pellets, white washed trees (pooped on), good nesting platforms, corvids making a racket, etc. After a while of finding nothing Renee switched over to making owl calls, with hopes that they would respond and we could track them down. Unfortunately there was no response and we had to move on to the next sight. Again, we searched around for any signs of them, but to no avail. This time, however, almost immediately after Renee called we got responses from both the male and female. The male was very close and called one more time and we were easily able to find him. The female was farther off, but after a bit of searching and a couple of more calls Renee found the female sitting on the nest, with only a tail sticking out. I could not have imagined spotting it myself, but there it was! It was really great to see how the surveys were done and to actually find some owls. Fun times.

We also caught a Mourning Dove today

Good day at Pine Gulch. Only about 12 birds, but that's a lot for now, and we got a good variety again. Also, it's our second beautiful day in a row after weeks of rain, which is always uplifting.

Female AMRO


Male BUSH

Cutmelon

Carson will remember making this four years ago

With SNGH

Yesterday all of the interns took the morning off from the usual work to go on a bird walk with Steve Howell. It was very informative and fun to hear how a birder like him approaches even the simplest ID tasks in the field. Saw a good 50+ species.

Nice moves, bro

Bigish day

Crazy day at Pine Gulch for us. After a fairly unsuccessful day yesterday we re-setup today, expecting worse weather than yesterday. It was looking that way, but after opening and closing the nets a couple of times, we were able to keep them running for close to enough hours. However, the wind picked up, and despite the clear sky we had to shut down early. That, however, does not mean that we didn't get any birds. On one net run we had 17 birds, which made things hectic as it started to rain, bird bags were low, and new interns are still working on skills like extraction (let alone doing it under semi-pressure). It all went well though, and ended up having a nice flow of birds for the next couple of hours, leaving us with a final of 25 birds and 7 species, which included: swamp sparrow, both subspecies of yellow rumped warblers, pine siskin, Anna's hummingbird, bushtit, common yellowthroat, and lincoln's sparrow.

Here is the swamp sparrow, a species we only catch a few times a year:


Female common yellowthroat


Male common yellowthroat


Cara and Renee processing the hummingbird




Female bushtit


Faded wingtips

Orange-crowned warbler

Our first capture of the spring, as well as one of our first breeding male bird.

March

We've had a quite a bit of rain over the last couple of weeks, which is always tough, but is especially hard for the new interns trying to get the hang of things. Holding and processing a couple of birds per week doesn't promote much progress for anyone. But, so it goes. We had this whole weekend off due to rain, but did get a very nice afternoon for hiking.

There was a tree down on our road, so we decided to head to Alemere Falls, yet again, as no one but me had been there.

On the way we found...
A slender salamander


This other salamander...


This HUGE downed tree on the path (Todd for scale)


Todd (nest searcher), Maria (bander), Cara (bander)


The falls


ALSO, the banders went out for a day with the nest searchers to get familiar with the grid system, as we will be going out to band nestlings later in the season. This area is ridden with poison oak, so when going out in it we dress ourselves in random "oak" clothes that we don't care about destroying. For example:

Toss the troll

CUT loses in semis to Florida at Easterns in a game that involved plays like this...classy indeed. The Florida player was tossed from the game (as their team should be from all tourneys it seems). Carleton'll take a lot from that game I suspect.

CUT over CO, holler

Goodluck at Easterns

Harbor seals in the Bolinas Lagoon

From my dad

Some more

Audubon's yellow rumped warbler

From my dad

Harbor seal that kept sneaking up on us when our backs were turned

From my dad

Haven't had one of these in awhile...still rainy

California Quail

From my dad

Allen's

We caught our first Allen's hummingbird of the spring today. I didn't get any pictures, but here is one from my dad:

American Bittern

This is one of the better shots my dad got this weekend while they were out visiting. If we hadn't flushed this guy there was no way we would have seen it. They orient themselves in the direction the reeds they are hiding in are bending.

Surf Scoter

I woke up from a nap today only to hear from Renee that she had just come upon a SURF SCOTER in the visitors bathroom! Someone must have found it on the beach, and it is sick or injured, so they brought it up here. Unfortunately they did not bother to knock on our door, and just left it in the bathroom for us to find...people are very weird. She left early and brought it to a wildlife rehab center.

Split mandible

This fox sparrow had a split lower mandible, with this big hole going into its mouth...

Stanford for the win

Some of my favorites from my dad from the weekend:









Many of the alums in attendance






JON HAHN!


I LOVED this play, Patrick deep on Feldman:


It reminded me a bit of this oldie, but Patrick's getting the D here:

5 days off

Its just the start of the spring banding season, and since I am staying on, they let me take 5 days off in a row! Great timing too. My parents flew in Wednesday, spent that afternoon and Thursday with me, my brother got in Thursday night, we all hanged out around Point Reyes on Friday, had a wonderful pizza party with my friends in Oakland, and then watched CUT dominate a weekend of frisbee, winning their second (of 2) tournament of the winter! Great visit by all.

And now some pictures:







Bishop pine




At Abbott's Lagoon










My BRO!


Horse tails of some kind


Open horse tails


On the coastal trail






Eggs?


Lil hermit crab


In Muir woods, checking out redwoods:








Small redwoods