Re-settling in

It's been 12 days since I finished my first field season. All of my data is entered and ready to be analyzed and I've uploaded an extra 60 journal articles to read in more detail later. I found out Friday that I will now have a proper office area! Woohoo!! I get to start on that Monday. I would have got on it Friday after I found out, but I was so sore from the workout that morning that I just didn't want to leave the apartment.

Buddy and I made a deal before I came back home for good from field season. If he would walk with me and Luna I would go to the gym with him. This past week I walked Luna for a mile or more everyday up to the day we were going to go to the gym. We are using the tiny gym at our apartment complex's sister complex and can't go in till after the office opens at 830 unless we want to pay $10 extra a month on our rent for a key. Yea right! I'll just go when you're open, thank you very much. So, since we couldn't go until around 830 and Luna and I had been walking at around 630-7ish every morning, I thought it was a good idea to just go ahead and walk her that morning before lifting weights at the gym. I'm a newb, so I figured it could kinda be like my warm up.

Luna and I head out and I'm feeling really good about this walk. So good in fact I decide we should keep going and make it a 2 mile walk through the hiking trails. The trails here are nice and well labeled, but none of the beginner (read "easy") trails circle back around to the main walking paths in the garden area. In order to actually make a circuit you have to take a more difficult trail or just turn around on the path you're on and walk it back. I had walked some of the trail called Labyrinth before and it wasn't as bad as the last intermediate trail I tried. What I mean when calling it bad is super freaking hilly. And not just steep hills, nah. I mean steep goat hill down, enough room to place your feet flat, and then steep goat hill up. I'm not in good enough shape to keep that up for very long and besides I did enough hill lunges during field season, so I'll stick to the non-goat hill trails thank you very much. (That's the second time I said that....just an observation)

Anywho, we walked our two miles. I was sweaty and exhausted. Luna was panting and exhausted. Then I went to the gym. At first I was ok. I tried out some machines, Buddy told me what I was doing wrong, I lifted some more weights, and then I got sore. It's been forever and a day since I tried to do anything other than walking some hiking trails in order to get myself in better shape. The burn was ok and I can get used to it. The soreness is going to take even more getting used to. I guess my body was mad at me for doing too much in too short of a time frame cause the back of my knee did not like it when I moved today, so I didn't walk. But tomorrow I'm going back to the gardens and walking the paths for at least a mile on top of doing house work. I know, I lead an exciting life.

So that's been my week and a half since field work. Catching up on inputting data, finding more sources for my paper, getting back into some what of a routine around the apartment, walking Luna every morning, and now (starting this week) going to the gym three times a week.

I've also been doing a lot of back yard birding. I rarely go out to the patio with out taking my camera. There is a cherry tree of some type that has fruited and was driving the woodpeckers bonkers. We would have three different species of woodpeckers in that tree at once sometimes. I also heard a yellow-billed cuckoo out there today, but I didn't see it. Now I'm on cuckoo alert! I will have a picture of it! Enjoy what pictures I do have from this week. Blessed be!

Above: red-headed woodpecker

Right and Below: summer tanager

 Right: brown thrasher. Such a secretive little bird

Below: pileated woodpecker. They are pretty large and loud, but just splendid to watch.

This guy on the left is a red-bellied woodpecker. They have a stripe of red on the back of their head and nape of their neck which sometimes can confuse the beginner birder. But I was lucky enough to be able to catch part of the red patch on this fella's belly for which he is named.

 This guy on the right is a great crested flycatcher. They have a very distinctive coloration where the top part of their body is grey, their neck is whiteish, their belly is yellow, and the underside of their tails are orangeish brown or a roufus color.

 

 To the right are a red-headed and red-bellied woodpecker foraging off the same cherry tree.

 This red-bellied woodpecker was quite the acrobat.

More pileated woodpeckers. I'm not sure how their family system works, but right before I shot this picture, the bird highest in the picture was feeding the lower one. Perhaps it was a male feeding a female since there is only slight variations in plumage (feather) coloration? 

This guy to the left is a red-eyed vireo; thus named due to it's red eyes. I had heard it nearby and played back it's song through a birding app on my phone. He was not happy and came swooping in the patio trying to find the other male vireo. He then flew to this branch probably confused since he couldn't find the other male in his territory even though he had clearly heard him calling, then flew away.