day 3

So I didn't get as much sleep as I intended last night; I had some trouble getting to sleep. However, I am feeling a bit better today, so that's good news.

Early day today. We got up at 4:00 and were out by about 5:00. So we drove to our selected site and got started setting up the mist nets about 5:30. The sun was already rising at this point, and let me tell you, there's nothing like a sunrise over and abandoned bunker. :-) Really though, it was really foggy this morning so it made for a rather beautiful scene. I have a few pictures of it that and plenty of other things, but it's difficult to upload and post pictures with only the trackpad on my laptop, so I will post a photo summary of my travels sometime after I get home.

Anyway, a very productive morning. We "threw" up 7 different nets of Jeremy's and the main guy here at Lost Mound along with the grad student working for him came out to help as well, so they set up a few. Overall I think we caught/banded/bleeded 35 birds by noon, which is pretty good. And it was an absolutely beautiful day. Low wind, high 60's/low 70's. Perfect. Except for those fricking prickly pair cacti. Not only do they have large pokers, but they also have really tiny, short, almost fibrous pokers that easily get stuck in everything. I made the mistake of kneeling while removing a meadowlark from a net, and got about a trillion of them stuck in my knee for awhile. Seriously irritating. Speaking of meadowlarks, they're pretty huge as far as mist-netting goes, and they have really long, sharp talons. That one got me pretty badly. Had to physically pry the talons from my fingers, whereas when smaller birds grip you, it's usually possible to just slide your fingers out of their grip.

Speaking of birds, we caught a pair of blackbilled cuckoos. They made the most hilarious noises I just had to record one of them squawking a bit. Sorry about the background noise.



So, lunch was at around 1:15 and at 2:00 I took a nap that ended up lasting until 5:45. I ate again (reheated leftover pizza!) after I got up and then Jeremy went out and did some more rope drags, which ended up yielding absolutely nothing. What a disappointment. Got back here around 8:30, and here I am now.

Tomorrow our drive to the site in Nebraska is going to take about 10 hours, so we're getting up and heading straight there. That'll be a blast, I'm sure.

Until then.