I need to get better at this...

There is so much I would like to write about, but I either A) completely forget or B) just haven't had the time to sit down and unload the words on the page.

I know I keep saying this month was crazy and I have all this stuff I need to get done, but Y'ALL, seriously. It's crazy. I actually argued with a girl in my Regression class that next week couldn't POSSIBLY be dead week. But it is! Seriously?! Where did this year go? It seems like just yesterday I was preparing for our trip back home. It's just been a whirl wind of one thing after another.

Let's see, I gave my first oral presentation on the first, finished my first draft of my proposal the following week, finished my poster presentation that I did not get to present due to impending field work, started field work that weekend, layed out my first set of pitfall traps Tuesday, presented my poster at the Bright Ideas Conference Wednesday, and tomorrow I go back out to Louisiana again for the weekend. Whew!

Poor Luna is already tired of me coming and going. She has decided she needs to sleep between the wall and my side of the bed so I can't sneak past her. Like I could if I wanted to anyway. Her "bed" is at the foot of the bed. Out of the way of my infant bladder that must pee every half hour until I fall asleep. But with her laying in her "new" spot, I trip over her every time I have to get up. No bueno. As if I needed help being even more clumsy. Even Serenity is back to snuggling with me at night. I know Buddy is also lonely.

So far field work is going slow, but it is to be expected since I haven't started putting out pitfalls or doing any insect stuff until this week. I wanted to keep around the same schedule as I had last year, but I'm having to work around not only my classes, but my tech's classes as well. Not to mention East Texas has gotten over 12 inches of rain this month and Merryville has gotten well over 9. All of my stands thus far have been flooded and some I haven't even been able to get to due to the shape of the roads.

Two more months of this and I'll be done with field work possibly forever....I really don't know yet. That's the million dollar question right now. What is next. I have no freaking clue. I don't know if I want to start job hunting or keep going with my education. I still have a little time to think about it.

So, I'm going to make my best effort to chronicle this field season while we are out there full time. No promises (like I have readers anyway), but I'm going to do my best to.

Happy Beltane and blessed be!

Copperhead I almost stepped on while trail running with Luna.

Eastern Hognose found at Tucker woods

Worm-eating Warbler mist netted at Tucker woods with Comer's Intro class lab

Tent caterpillar. The favorite food of one of my favorite birds, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo.

Thunderstorms = 80 lb pansy dog trying to get as far in my lap as possible

Poor picture, but Blue Grosbeak on a snag in a eucalyptus stand. 

This stand was just a little bit flooded....

Oh, rubus (aka blackberry)

The blackberry is about shoulder high on me in some parts of this eucalyptus stand

Crazy hail storm in Nacogdoches after my first weekend of field work. 

Sweet Serenity

The eucs have put on about 2-3 feet of growth since I saw them last. That pink flagging is just about head height for my 5'5" self.

Not getting down this road.

Got down the road from above picture the following day only to find this. It was so deep those ripples were more like waves.

These little guys were only about mid-calf to knee high last year and now they are person sized!

A nice row between eucalyptus trees

I'll come back to this stand when I have a machete.

Insect identification (warning: there are pictures of spiders!)

While packing up pitfall and fogging equipment I wouldn't need again till next field season I peeked into the freezer that is in the cage (wildlife storage area) and looked at the multitude of insects some of my fellow grad students have collected for their field season. Their collection jars are about 4x the size of mine, do not contain alcohol, and are just about slap full. Since I have no where near as many insects as they do, I figured it might save everyone time if I just identified my own insects/arthropods. My defense: 1. Two grad students still have 5 boxes of insects to be identified, 2. undergrads are working on insect identification for the two grad students who currently have insects to be identified, 3. another grad student is also collecting insects for his project, 4. I have way less insects than they do (mostly because I did not collect mine with an attractant (like a light source for night flying insects)), 5. I only have to identify them to order or family, and 6. how awesome would it be to say, "Yeah, I identified all of my insects."

Little did I know how difficult it is for an insect lay person, such as myself, to even begin to start identify these little guys! For example, I didn't know the best way to identify spiders to their family is by eye arrangement. I do now! P.S. I do not like spiders one bit and staring at them through a microscope in order to see how their eyes are situated on their head has made for an interesting time to say the least. After the first two days I kept feeling like something was crawling on me. Today was my third day and I'm little over half way done with one of my boxes! Luckily I only have 3 boxes and one of those has hardly any insects in them. Although by the end of the day I'm tired of staring at bugs and inhaling smelly rubbing alcohol (I'm sure it'll be like formaldehyde soon enough where I just don't smell it anymore), I'm starting to see insects in a whole different light (figuratively and literally).

Yes, looking for a spiders eyes through a microscope can be horrifying. Especially when you see their fangs!

But, the coloration on some of them is just amazing, dare I say almost beautiful. It's also amazing how some of them are designed. Just a slight variation in the wings on a fly like insect can mean different species, families, or even orders of insect. 80% of all the animals on Earth are insects! Crazy!



This weekend I was reading the blog of a professor from another university who has his grad students do blog posts from time to time. According to what I read, I will not have as much time to myself as I thought I would. I guess I need to get it in as much as possible while I can. Though it also has me wondering, is my project just too simple? Should I add something to it? Should I be doing more? And I really have no idea.... I guess that's something I'll have to think on.

Here are some pictures I took today while enjoying some of my "outside" break time. Enjoy and blessed be!

summer tanager

brown thrasher in the sun

singing brown thrasher in the sun

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.

What are you seeing out there?

We are once again on a rain delay. This one is going to be longer than the last since the rain came in sooner than expected, there is a ton more of it, and our area is in a flash flood watch. Lovely.

So, we are back in Nacogdoches for at least a few days. Luckily we are ahead of schedule. All of our pitfalls and foggings are finished and we only have 24 surveys left. If we can't get out till Monday and still do two surveys a day, then we will still be finished by the 12th which is 2 days earlier than projected. I'm going to think positive thoughts. It's almost over, so I want it to finish out well and not in a scramble. 

Another positive note is we don't have zeros on the eucalyptus stands data sheets as I was warned might have been the case. Brittany was even able to get a few good pictures of some of the birds we have seen. 

Immature painted bunting

Another shot of the immature painted bunting. Females look similar to this fella. The main difference is males sing while females will chirp or call. When this little guy matures he will look like this:

Image courtesy of allaboutbirds.org

I've only been lucky enough to see one mature male this season. Trying to get eyes on birds while in a stand full of 8-10 feet tall eucalyptus trees is easier said than done. 

In an earlier post I mentioned we went  driving around trying to find roadrunners. We were finally able to get close enough to take a photo. Again, this is Brittany's capture (gotta give cred where it's due!)

In true cartoon fashion, the roadrunner most folks are familiar with looks nothing like the real thing. 

Photo cred: boomeranghq.net (google search) 

And they don't make the meep-meep sound. Here is a better photo I found:

Check out that crest on its head! These are awesome birds! They not only eat bugs and insects but snakes! They are also super lightening fast runners. At least the cartoon version was correct in one aspect. 

Another really nifty bird I have previously mentioned that we have heard and seen is the orchard oriole. When we first heard an immature call we were both stumped. For those who are familiar with bird songs, it kinda sounded like a blue grosbeak and an indigo bunting had a love child. Luckily Brittany was able to get eyes on it when it started moving around. I lost a part of my bino straps while transferring them from one set to another thus I have barely used my binos at all. Ugh, I digress. Not only do the immatures sound nothing like the adults, but they look nothing like them either. 

Photos from Merlin bird ID app. 

Crazy, right?? Trying to identify birds like the orchard oriole make birding both fun and frustrating. Age groups and sexes of the same species can be so different that you can get frustrated trying to figure out just what they are. But I assure you, once  you figure it out you will never forget. I hadn't heard an immature orhard oriole in over a week and as soon as it started singing I knew what it was. 

Now that I've bored you all to death with bird knowledge, I'll leave you with some recent pictures from the season. Blessed be. 

Enjoying the shade when it's found while waiting on the insecticide to do its magic. 

Raccoon hind foot print

Baby praying mantis!!!