6APR2012 Friday
Lately I’ve been on a plot with Steven. He’s a
good birding buddy. We communicate well about our efforts and sightings, which
makes our efforts much more concentrated. That being said, it’s been really
hard finding nests. Many of the birds are incubating, which means they rarely
move off their nests. Quiet and stationary birds make for vexing work. I
invited Becky to team up with me to find a nest that had been eluding me and
guess what. She found it on her own in 30 minutes. I hadn’t even been looking
in that area. I had only seen the female on the slope and not on the mesa top.
I should have looked all over the territory instead of looking at the same spot
over and over again, even if I had seen the female there. She doesn’t always
have to be near her nest.
Banding
birds has gotten a bit frustrating as of late. They haven’t been engaging with
my audio playback, and that’s probably because it sounds fake. The target
netting procedure is essentially the same as passive netting, except it is
mobile. I keep the equipment in the back of my truck and take it out when I’m
looking to catch a bird. We try to only catch unbanded males, since catching a
female may result in her being away from her nest too long. In addition to the
net equipment, I have audio equipment that I use to play audio recordings of
GCWAs. I have one small speaker tucked away in the vegetation on either side of
the net, and I hook them up to my mp3 player. The sound of another male inside
of an individual’s territory is infuriating to a GCWA, and if I’m lucky they’re
waste no time to say so. They fly toward the sound, at which point I switch the
speaker the audio is coming out of until he
bumps into my net and gets stuck. Then I run out, extract him, apply his
bands, take morphometric data, and let him go. Now we can identify which
individual he is. Sometimes the birds are reluctant to get caught, so we have a
secret weapon. We have a recording of an Eastern Screech Owl that we play to
really catch their attention. The only problem is that it catches the attention
of every other bird in the vicinity. Song birds have evolved a common tendency
to mob predators such as raptors and this behavior is even stronger around
nests during breeding season. When I play this call, I can catch male and
female GCWAs, more than my fair share of cardinals, White-eyed Vireos, Painted
Buntings, and lots of other small song birds. Once again, it’s a last resort
for when the individual in question seems uninterested with confronting my
speakers.
I’ve
caught and banded four birds so far. I’ve given most of them names. There’s
Snowball II, a second year female who is nesting currently, Donatello (he had
ninja turtle bands!), Peadar (Irish color bands), and one which I forgot to
name, but is certainly kicking butt around his area. I followed “Peadar” around
his neck of the woods around Northmost trail. His female popped up, so I
followed her as long as I could through the thick brush and juniper. She didn’t
do much though. Then I lost her. After lunch I tried again. I found Peadar and
checked where I had seen the female. No luck. I had lost my map from my cargo
pant pocket after trying to retrieve my GPS without looking from that same
pocket so I could keep my eye on the bird. I retraced my steps and found it, no
thanks to my GPS which refuses to cooperate under dense foliage.
So that was my day. No nests so far, but I banded
a bird. I returned to the office for the weekly team meeting. At team meetings
we discuss what we did and learned on our subplots that week so that we hit the
ground running when we rotate sites. What new birds are there? Are there any
unbanded males? What new nests were found? What leads do you have on possible
nests? That last one is the kicker. I shouldn’t feel so bad because we work as
a team, but it does hurt a little to forfeit your opportunity to find a nest
when you worked so hard to get that information. I keep it in perspective. This
is a group project, not a competition. Next week I’ll be on a new subplot with
new opportunities and new bird personalities, so it’s a whole new ballgame.
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