First days on the job

After a weekend of getting settled in, I was ready to start work on Monday. However, as two of the people who are very important to my project were not yet here, I couldn’t start collecting data. So far Julian and others have been showing me the ropes, but I need Candice, the other REU student I’ll be working with, and I need Dr. Levey to tell us what exactly we’re doing.

So, I got recruited to water plants. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Wrong.

I soon discovered that this task entailed lugging around a 2-gallon watering can in each hand, walking through thorns and other nasty brush, trying to locate the 16 plant plots in each patch, trying to find the plants within the plot (some are dead, some are weedy, etc), and deciding how much water to give to said plants. I set out around 9 AM with Melissa and Caleb and we proceeded to get lost on our way to the first patch. With an 8^th of a tank of gas. Lars said we’d be fine with that much. Ha.

Anyway, I was given a basic run down of which plants to water, how many plots were in each transect, and how much water I should use per transect. I had no clue at this point, however, that the plots were oriented in a manner that would have made them much easier for me to find. I’m pretty sure I missed one in the first patch. Oops. Once I figured this out, developed a pattern, and stopped overwatering, we actually began to make good time. But it still took hours and hours (with a leisurely lunch break) in the hot sun, since each of the 4 sites we watered has 5 patches with 16 plots each. Now kids, if we do the math, that gives us 320 plots, and technically each one of us would have watered 106.667. Caleb, however, is a beast who runs with watering cans, so he probably did twice as many as Melissa and I.

We finished our day around 4:30, I went home, took a shower, Beck called, I made tacos, then I was going to go to MacDonald’s to use their wifi (seriously, some Mickey D’s chains have it now), but I ended up reading a book and finding I was sooo freaking exhausted (dehydrated) that I went to bed at 9 PM.

That was a good time to go to bed, though, because I woke up at 5:15 Tuesday morning to go look for buntings with Julian. We set up the mist net in a clear-cut area and caught... nothing. But I know how to set up nets now.

I had safety training at 9 AM, which, given the amount of info it encompassed, probably should have taken an hour. It took three. The guy, Ed, who’s in charge of lots of stuff, seems to get distracted really easily: “So, when you’re out in the field, watch out for venomous snakes. What does your T-shirt say about swimming?” He apparently noticed the word “swimming” on my T-shirt and we spent 5 minutes discussing the 100 butterfly before moving to the next safety topic. This happened numerous times.

After training I ate lunch and waiting for CPR certification at 1 PM. I’d say there were about 30 people in the room, waiting for the instructor to show up. He doesn’t. So Ed calls and we find out the class is cancelled. After all these people took off work for it.

So I get recruited to collect seed traps from an old project and put them in the “bone yard.” Just as we start unloading the trailer, it starts storming. So we finish up fast and get back to the office. Then it starts hailing. At this point I’m talking to Beck and describing dime sized hail. It keeps getting bigger until it’s golf ball sized. And I’m not exaggerating. Luckily my Trailblazer is pretty sturdy, so it didn’t sustain any damage as far as I can tell, but I know some other vehicles did.

Anywho, by now, Doug and Candice were in town, so we decided to all meet up at Moe’s and discuss things, and also just have a bit of fun. I really like the people I’ve met so far in the crew, so hopefully we can hang out pretty often.

We (the bunting people) decide to meet early Wednesday morning and scout for birds in some patches. Candice, Julian, and Doug go to get Candice a badge at 6:30, so I come a little later and hang out in the office, thinking they'll be there by 7:30. More like 8:15. They couldn't find the right people to approve it or something.

We head to one of the sites and begin to search, using our bird song Ipod, which plays classics like "Rockin Robin" and "Free Bird." Har har har. Actually, it's an Ipod you can buy loaded with bird calls, which is pretty sweet, I think. I'm a nerd. Anyway, we play the indigo bunting song on the Ipod to get a response from other buntings. The males are the only ones who sing back, though females might chirp a bit. At this point, though, most females haven't even arrived yet because they come later than the males. So the males respond to and look for the call from the Ipod, trying to defend the territory it's claiming. Essentially, we're pissing them off.

Anyway, the first site is successful, and we get to the second one a bit too late in the day (11-ish) to see/hear much. So I head home at 12:30 so I can meet the guy that's coming to install my internet. I read a book til he comes at 4. Oh well, at least I have interwebs now. Soon after, Beck calls, so I can finally Skype with him. There were some strange issues at times, we couldn't figure out who's computer was causing them, but cameras kept freezing and we sounded like robots sometimes. Hopefully that'll work itself out...

After 2 hours of Skype, I got a call that everyone was going to a Thai restaurant, so I joined them. I had a tofu curry dish and it was delicious. We'll have to go there again. I came home, typed this, and now it's time for bed. Except I need a shower still. But I didn't really sweat today, and I'll just get gross tomorrow... I'm thinking just straight to bed, since I'll be up before 5 AM tomorrow. Such is the life of a bird researcher.