an update, sort of

So as earlier stated, I didn't have wireless while in Nebraska. I also did not have much time to sit down and type up journal entries, either. Last evening we got back to Illinois, and I still haven't had much time. So, sooner or later, I will get around to posting about the rest of my time in NE & here. Also, my camera battery died quickly after my last post, so I will try to upload Jeremy's pictures and share some of those.
Anyway, here is what I DO have saved from NE:

5/28/07 4:20 PM

Now that I have a few minutes free time (In most of my free time, I have been feverishly reading, and have just finished, Alive), I will try to recount the events of the past few days.

Saturday, the 26th

We arrived in Ogallala, NE, at Cedar Point Biological Station (CPBS), at around 5:45 PM (mountain time), after a 12 hour drive from IL, just in time for dinner. The CPBS is the field site for University of Nebraska Lincoln, and so along with researchers, there are other undergraduate students here for summer classes. After dinner I was shown to my cabin by the head honcho here; it is the furthest girls cabin from the lodge and the office, and is up on a rather steep incline. The cabins are not the most extravagant; they have concrete floors and the restroom/shower facilities are in a separate building, but that makes it kind of fun. The cabins don’t even have locks. Everybody just keeps all their stuff in their cabins all day, and their toiletries in the facilities, and nothing is disturbed. It’s really nice to be away from society in that way. Hopefully at some point later I will have a video of the inside of my cabin.

This whole place is very cool; it’s on the southern side of a small lake, and is among rocky hills with prairie at the tops and all around, so my surroundings are pretty awesome. And to my delight I’ve seen many pelicans around the lake, and many lizards scuttling through the grasses.

Anyway, after settling in, Jeremy and I drove around the area to stake out sites to do netting and banding and to find nests. We also went into “town” to pick up some things from the store. After that, it was dark, and hence bedtime, and I went back to my cabin where I met my roommates. Their names are Allison and Sarah, they are very friendly, and they are here doing research on cliff swallows.

I was so cold that night, I had difficulty sleeping. I had taken a shower, so I had wet hair, and CPBS does not provide linens so I only had my sheet and one small fleece blanket to use. Our cabin is rather drafty, too. I didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time and even got up earlier than was necessary because I was so tired of laying there trying.

Sunday, the 27th

As just stated, I woke up early and was at 7:00 breakfast right on time. Unfortunately, it was only continental but I still managed to stuff myself. After breakfast Jeremy and I once again headed out to check stake out the surrounding areas; we ended up getting ourselves relatively in some pasture land with “roads” (gravel or worse) that twisted and turned in a bizarre fashion. It was rather comical, and provided me with the opportunity to see a couple jack rabbits.

We then went back to “town” and purchased some rope (to use for our rope drags, naturally), and an additional fleece blanket for each of us.

By the time we returned, it was time for noon lunch. After lunch we set up some nets around the lodge. They have a few feeders there so there are lots of birds around. In about two hours (including set-up and tear-down) time, we caught 36 birds and 8 of those were lark sparrows! (We actually had to chase away a turkey that was dangerously close to being caught in the net). The conditions were perfect: cloudy and calm. We only tore down because we were informed there was a severe thunderstorm on its way. I napped through the supposed thunderstorm that never actually came, and then it was dinner time.

After dinner, we checked out some areas for mist-netting on foot, which turned into a bit of a hike. While the hike was pretty fun, we didn’t find any really nice areas to net, and thus planned to net the next day in the same place we had earlier. After our hike I hiked up to the top of the highest cliff at CPBS to make some phone calls home and to Sam. The view was spectacular; I got to watch the sunset over the lake with the rolling hills and rocky cliffs all around me. It was a perfect temperature outside, too.

Today, again: Monday the 28th

Sleep last night was much better, as it was not quite as cold and I had an additional blanket to my name. Breakfast was also much better; eggs, bacon, hash browns, and cinnamon toast. At breakfast a wild turkey was actually standing on the feeder outside of the lodge window; that was entertaining.

The rest of today, however, has been discouraging and frustrating. After breakfast we set up our nets in the same place as yesterday; around the feeders outside the lodge. However, in three hours time, we only caught 5 birds, only 1 of them a lark sparrow. The conditions weren’t right; it was so sunny and windy that the birds could see the nets.

Then we had lunch, and after lunch hiked up to the top of the hill I hiked up yesterday to do some rope drags, hoping to find a few nests. The habitat seemed just right, but I don’t know if it was the wind or just our bad luck, but after about an hour and a half of rope dragging, we gave up for the day. I did come away with a nice sunburn, however. It just sucks that the conditions were today were so bad when they were perfect yesterday but we had to tear down because of a thunderstorm that never came.

I am beginning to get a bit worried because as my project deals with the sex ratio of the baby chicks, we have to find nests with chicks from which I can draw some blood, or I’m screwed.

So the rest of this afternoon has been free. After dinner, we’re going to a bar to try and convince them to put on the hockey game for us. That should be fun.

Other than today’s bad luck, I am having a good time in Nebraska, and meeting some very friendly, interesting people here. Looks like a storm is on the way, so I am heading to the lodge early.

5/29/07 6:49 PM

We did succeed in finding a bar that would put the hockey game on for us, first try. They were very accommodating and I had a delightful time because the other customers were so hilariously country. A few other students/employees at CPBS came to meet us, and there actually was one other person with us who’s under 21 so I didn’t feel too out of place ordering coffee. We had a good time, but the way home was definitely the best. There was a storm a few miles away, and we were up on the dam crossing the lake(s), and the lightning in the distance was insane. There were too many strikes per second to even count, and it was almost completely surrounding us. Deciding it was like a light show, we put on the radio and “Frankenstein” accompanied our light(ning) show for us. It was so so cool.

Today I woke up at 4:30 AM, and Jeremy and I were off to work by 5:00 AM. We netted in a location about 2 miles southwest of the CPBS headquarters, amidst some minimal rain showers. It wasn’t a very fruitful morning, but we were able to catch three lark sparrows. These three we kept to use for the psychology professor’s work.

At around 9:00 we heard some thunder pretty close (consistent with the forecast) and took down the nets as quickly as possible, and got out of there. We were back at the station by 10:00 where we got some quick breakfast (toast and refrigerated apples and oranges are available all the time) and he set off for the Denver airport to pick up the psychology professor, whose flight miraculously made it to Denver all the time, even with all the storms. They won’t be back in time for dinner, though, so I’m going to have to find a way to save them some food and put it in the fridge in Jeremy’s cabin (which is naturally far fancier than mine).

So today I have been basically hanging out in Jeremy’s cabin all day, babysitting the three lark sparrows we caught this morning, hiding from the scattered thunderstorms. I took a shower and managed a nap (though this was difficult because the birds are almost constantly rustling in their little cage thing) and had lunch. I also did a little reading and now here I am ‘blogging.’

Let me try to explain the work the psychology professor will be doing. He and Jeremy have also been to Texas to sample lark sparrow populations there, where the birds are sedentary, as opposed to here and further north and east, where they are migratory. The two have hypothesized that because the birds here must migrate, they have need for a better visual/spatial skills and memory. The area of the brain responsible for these skills is the hippocampus, so the professor is examining the brains to determine whether birds here have a larger, denser hippocampus than birds in Texas. The two populations were chosen because they are close enough that there is a theoretical possibility of interbreeding and this closeness best eliminates other factors that could lead to differences in brain structure. So, that’s a pretty interesting hypothesis, and the reason we kept the three lark sparrows we caught today.

Jeremy has been telling me this psychology professor is a very interesting character, so I am excited to meet him. I am also excited but also quite a bit nervous to see the actually slaughtering procedure. Apparently it is optimal to inject the birds with the lethal injection, and then open their chest cavity open while the heart is still beating. Wow.

(Side note: I realize that I have not yet explained my independent project in detail, and I intend to do so at some point).

Well, I’m off to dinner again. By myself tonight. :-/