Dramatic Eagles

Weds
5/11/11

Had a bonfire after work two days ago. Used some of the wood that was already there by the lake. I played my geet. Good times.

Next day drove to Ft. Knox with James to pick up gear at the old sites and at storage. It was a fun ride over. James went to the hospital the day before because of a kidney stone, so I had to drive his car for him. He puked out the car door because of the pain and later on peed out the stone into the sieve that the doctor gave him. Ft. Knox is huge! It's like 20 miles across. We went to 3 sites to find 10 sets of poles each. They were well marked for the most part, but they were buried under 2 years of detritus. I got sweaty, dirty, wet, tired, and covered with ticks. srs like 20 or more. Fuuuuck! We rewarded ourselves with BBQ, thanks to a recommendation from a gas station attendant. We each got a sandwich that had 1 lb of pork in it. I saved most of it for later. I had a good time and had fun going to KY. Bubblegoose from the Chef Aid CD. I haven't heard that in a while. We got back from our trip at 1030 pm. That's late nowadays.

The next morning i was covcered with mosuito bireds. Lack o f sleem from phantom ticks and ants. Caught a new, rare warbler today, the Blackburnian Warbler. It was even an ASY male. Very handsome. I made some bomb pasghetti carbonara with Mel. Joe bird lecture, itchy bites. CAW CAW! Bonnaroo?

5/12/11
It had bad day untangling birds. That's why I have so few bands. Sad dog.
TOTAL BIRDS BANDED DURING TRAINING: 30

Sun
5/15/11

Yesterday and today we hacked a bunch of shit on CRAN. We're setting up all the sites. It's been fun work with the machetes, hatchets, and loppers.

On Friday we went to Kentucky again to see the horse races at Churchill Downs. Catharine is a good horse race bettor. Or whatever that's called. Point is she makes money at the track and that's pretty cool to see and learn about. While she watched the last 4 or 5 races, Mel, Kaitlin, and I looked for some fried chicken because we were in Kentucky, yknow? We ended up getting wings at the Hooters across the Ohio ricer in Indiana. Close enough.

Indiana, a counting game for the car:
Church - 1 point
Big iron star on a house - 1 point
Bird, cowboy, stagecoach, camel (camel?) sillouette - 1 point
Hair salon - 1 point
Anti abortion sign/billboard - 2 points
"Pregnant and scared?" billboard - 1 point (it's less in your face that the others)
Wagon wheels on driveway entrance - 1 point each

There were over 35 churches on the way to Kentucky (120 something miles)

5/19/11
Been setting up sites for the last 6 days or so. We get 1 to 2 done per day. Lotsof hacking and whackinig. Trudging, lots of that. I've done got learned in GPS navigation by James, which is useful. Our completely new sites (not the ones that are re-set up from last year; these be brand-spankin-new) are grids of 3x4 with each point on the grid about 100m apart. That fits 10 lanes and a banding station, and a little wiggle room in case of geographical difficulty. Easy, right? Not when the GPS changes its mind every ten steps. 2m away with 6m accuracy becomes 50m away, still with 6m accuracy. ORLY?

Fuckin tired. Each whole site takes from 3-5 hours. My hands are cut, bruise, and blistered from rose thorns and machete wielding. At least I get to destroy some rosebushes and tulip saplings (the latter being totally satisfying to fell in one swipe). I guess I shouldn't enjoy destroying nature, but A) it's really fun and B) fuck rose bushes and their fucking thorns.

We met up with another IBP group based in Bloomington the other day. They're studying Wood Thrushes. They're nest searching and target netting. They're funding allows us to band here =). We went to get pizza with them. They were about 12 people deep. We learned that as a college town, Bloomington is pretty cool. Lots of natural food stores, good restaurants (Indian, Thai, Tibetan, etc), and hippy shit.

Today I signed up to volunteer at Bonnaroo! Yay! And Paco chilled with me today. Yelling "ANDREW!" every 5 seconds until I let him out. He does this weird squeak when I sing around him.