Chachalaca

Not much new here. Rainy yet again, but it's quiet at the station because it's the weekend so it's a bit more relaxing.

At this point, I have spent almost exactly half of the year sleeping in a tent, and while sometimes this has it's disadvantages, I love waking up to the sound of rain on the rain fly. I don't love when it rains and I don't have the rain fly on and I didn't particularly love waking up to this a couple of times per week in Mexico:



The chorus of plain chachalacas in the trees around us.

Uppers

I went to the site called Uppers today. It's about a ten minute walk up the hill from our station. It was a slow day with only seven birds, but the view from up there is outstanding, especially on a clear day like today.

Muddy Hollow

I went to another offsite today with Michael. It was probably the most beautiful day I've had here so far. Nothing too special on the bird front, but we brought in about 15 and I got to see a lot of hermit thrush. Tomorrow I get to check out or third offsite and will then be expecting about a week of rain.



Banana slugz


Ruby crowned kinglet


Hermit thrush

Joe's

Here are a few of Joe (Leibrecht)'s pictures

Processing

Looks like rain today, so I may have the day off, which really means nothing to me during the week because everyone I know around here (Oakland) still work when it's raining out.

Here's a picture of me processing one of those hummingbirds from yesterday. When processing a bird there are a lot of things that we look at. Sometimes birds are too stressed out to band and must be rehabed and released immediately. If they are fine (which most are) the number one priority is to get the band on the bird. Then we look at determining an age and a sex for the bird, which is the hardest aspect of this job because of how different this process can be between species. To do this we will look at a variety of molting patterns, plumage differences, the thickness of their skull, the wear of their feathers, the shape of their feathers, iris color, and more. We also collect information on their fat content, wing length, weight, and feather fade. A lot of this stuff is pretty basic and I am already used to doing it, but when it comes to learning the specifics for the age and sex of species I hadn't seen until a week ago, I am learning more than I could have hoped for.

Pine Gulch

Today was my first day at one of our three offsites (not located right where we live). It was about ten minutes away, located right along the Bolinas Lagoon. It was a beautiful day, we caught a huge variety, and bigger numbers than since I've been here. We got an American robin, a hutton's vireo, a bewick's wren, a winter wren, a few ruby crowned kinglets, a sharp shinned hawk, a couple fox sparrows, a couple song sparrows, a pine siskin, and five anna's hummingbirds.

Joe measuring the robin


hutton's vireo


male anna's hummbirds






The view from the banding spot

Sandies

We just ate some phat sandies here for dinner.