I worked 13 hours on Memorial Day

That should be, like, a federal crime or something. I figured, "Well it's not like I have anything else interesting to do on Monday, I'll just go in and work a half day to get a little head start, right?" Wrong. And what do I have to show for those 13 hours? One bird.

Julian and I went out to net, but we got a late start because nothing was really ready to go and we kept forgetting stuff. Probably because it was so damn early and we hadn't woken up yet. Anywho, we decided to start netting in the patches so we can pull 2 tail feathers out of the birds we catch, measure, and band them. Then when we catch them again, this time to collect blood, we'll have 2 new feathers to analyze and we'll know which ones they are. We caught a male pretty fast and processed it, but it became light too quickly, so the birds could see the net and avoid it. Frustrating. You find yourself whispering, "Yea, that's right bird, just fly into the net. You're so close. Come on, come on... son of a bitch!" This happened for a while.

Finally we decided to move some nets, maybe try again in the afternoon when there's more shade, and take a lunch break so Julian could run into town and pick up some stuff. I pretty much fell asleep in the office waiting for him. Back in the field we positioned some nets for the morning. Then we moved a few into some shade to make them hard to see and tried afternoon netting. Very unsuccessfully. Maybe we could net around 8 PM, but I'm not willing to stay that long. So we moved those nets for the morning.

I got home at 7:30 PM after leaving my house at 5:30 AM. I could barely shower, eat, and talk to my parents before falling asleep.

Tuesday involved learning more lessons about net position, but we caught 3 times more than Monday (3 birds, for those mathematically challenged). Even better, we've decided that now we know better what to do (position nets strategically, hang the birds up in pillowcases til we've caught them all, then process them), we can probably cover a whole site in 2 days. I hope our calculations are correct. (3 times 1 is 3, right?)

And even more betterer is that I got to go home around 2! Yay! So I did a bit of shopping, then began my (hopefully) usual afternoon routine: shower, Skype, check crap online, make/eat dinner, etc, til bedtime around 9 PM. Yes, 9 PM, just like I'm in elementary school again. Beck did always tell me I'm 5 years old...