Mist-netting and a jungle hike

They don't call it the rainy season for nothing... It is currently raining (thunder-storming), as it has almost every afternoon/evening since we arrived at La Selva.

The most shocking things here are probably the constant heat, the amount of rain, and all of the amazing sights and sounds. The first night I got here, I had to walk across a long (wet) suspension bridge over a river, from the dining hall to my cabin, in the dark, alone. I'm not going to lie... it was a little scary. There were tons of bug noises, plus who knows what, plus the occasional howler monkey or two to mix it up.

Howler monkey on the suspension bridge

In the daytime, the sounds of bugs and howlers are joined by the beautiful sounds - and sights - of birds! Everywhere! Birds! I think on our first day in the field I saw about 20-30 lifers. I'm now up to 50 or so.

The first few days, our fearless leader Mike showed Charlie and me the ropes of our field work. We scouted out a few of the wren groups on/near the station, and identified a few of the individuals (by colored bands on their legs). One important part of our research is catching the birds, and putting those colored bands on them, which we do by mist-netting. We set up a great big, very fine net, like so:

Big ole net... hard to see, but you can see the tall pole off to the left.

And then the little birdies hopefully can't see the net and fly into it, falling into a nice little pocket:

Hummingbirds are actually quite good at avoiding the net... this guy was unlucky.

Then we go in and carefully extract the bird from the net. Some birds struggle and bite and peck, and some are a bit more docile:

Mike working on a tody-flycatcher

Then you do stuff like measure tail and wing length, mass, and if necessary put on bands and take a blood sample. (We have not caught any of our study birds, so we haven't done any banding or blood samples yet.)

Wing measurement

And then you take pictures with the bird. Because we are serious scientists.

After a few days of work, we had our day off today, so Charlie and I went on a hike through some cool old-growth forest and "swamp" trails. We did not get lost. But we did hear a jaguar in heat, catching a tapir, and fighting off an ocelot. Fortunately we survived. Okay, not really...but we did hear some odd deep rumbling sound and something crashing through the woods. Other than that we had a lovely hike AND made it back for lunch.

Huge trees!

One of many shady bridges...

Beautiful "waterfall" sort of thing

Quick update (fyi I'm in Costa Rica)

Hey ya'll, it's been a while. Here's a quick update:

I graduated from the University of Minnesota! Wooooo!

The Ninjas went to Nationals! It was great. We broke seed, plus we beat teams that were seeded ahead of us, and we pushed other top teams to the limit! Couldn't be prouder of my ladies.

And now, what am I doing with that new B.S. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior? NO idea. But for the time being, I'm spending the summer assisting a grad student from the UofM on his research project studying a bird species called the Band-backed Wren. It should consist of some fun romping around the rainforest catching birds.

After waking up at 3am and a LONG day of traveling (a drive to Chicago, two flights to make it to San Jose, and another drive out to the station), we finally arrived at our final destination about 2 hours ago. I am now exhausted and, after checking in with my parents, will probably go right to sleep. ¡Buenas noches, amigos!

Eagles and hidden love

Today I went for a walk. It was absolutely gorgeous outside, and after having a pretty shitty week, I needed to get out and cheer myself up with nature and birds. Especially since we're supposed to get freezing rain and snow soon... I thought I'd go spot an eagle or two while the weather was nice.

I walked down to the path that runs along the Mississippi just east of the boathouse, and headed south. There was not much out... a pair of male Hooded Mergansers (with a third mystery merganser) right away, and then just a few Mallards and a lone Canada Goose.

Duck tracks

I passed a woman with a dog, twice, and both times she gave me a huge grin. I'm not sure if she thought I was crazy, or thought it was cool that I was looking at birds... or both?

I kept on walking and found a nice little lonely park that I had never noticed before from the upper path. I hiked across the snow to reach the water's edge and found some duck prints. My feet also got soaked trudging through 1-2 ft deep snow... but alas, that is the price you must pay for pretty-ful nature.

Pretty little park

I passed a couple with a video camera, and I'm not sure what they were filming, but at one point the guy was making snow angels...

I kept going and found a Hairy Woodpecker. Nothing special, but still pretty cool.

I texted my mom a picture of the park, and she told me to watch out for muggers. I said I would, but so far I had only seen people with dogs and people making films and crazy people walking in circles. For at that moment, there was a woman walking on the main path about 50 yards away, but she appeared to be stopping and walking in small circles every so often...

Then my phone died so I decided I'd better scoot before a mugger found me.

I booked it back to the main path, got my feet very wet, and made sure to check out the woman's snow circles on the way. And then I realized, she was not just a crazy woman walking in circles... she was making careful shapes in the snow:

#1

#2

#3

I'm not sure who they were for, or if they were just for the world, but it felt like they were for me. A random message of love. So I stood there for a while in the snow, with the sun on my face, and the sound of people and traffic off in the distance, but the peace and quiet of nature much closer to me, and thought about how serendipitous it was that I should come across this woman's kind offering when I so needed it.

She was long gone, so I just said:

I finally saw my eagle unexpectedly when I was almost home, soaring in and out of view behind houses, far off in the distance.

Ideas worth spreading: Creativity, Love and Gratitude.

Every day at work I listen to music or podcasts for a few hours at a time. In the past few weeks I've been listening to more and more TED Talks (audio podcast), and while I've always learned something new or gained a new perspective when I listened to these talks, today I happened upon something more.

Today I listened to probably 10-12 talks in the space of about 3 hours, and in this random set of talks I noticed a few intertwining themes: Creativity, Love and Gratitude (and Children).

The first talk I listened to was by a scientist who argued the importance of science and play. He did an experiment with the help of a group of children, who used their own imagination and curiosity to come up with a completely novel experiment about complex thinking in bees. They then designed the experiment, executed it, and even wrote about it (with the help of some adults of course). Plus, they got it published.

There were two talks about orphans and foster children. One man presented his own story as a misunderstood and mistreated foster child and how it led him to poetry; and a woman talked about the large child institutions all over Europe that could be replaced with smaller, more loving and nurturing, local homes.

A woman talked about growing up with her two autistic brothers. How they weren't less than anyone else, or even ordinary like anyone else, but extraordinary, something I can very much relate to. The importance of celebrating differences.

One speaker told the stories of artists who ultimately found their creativity in unconventional ways: by letting go of everything they knew, or by finding beauty in pain and tragedy.

A young woman told how the only way she communicated with her mother while she was in college was via mail. Later on when she found herself deep in depression, she coped by spreading love instead, by leaving love letters for strangers to find. And through this she launched herself into a global initiative of connecting people through letters of love.

Another woman created a giant community chalkboard and asked her neighbors to fill in the blank: "Before I die I want to...", prompting people to think about their secrets, wishes and hopes, and share them with their community.

There were a few more about thinking/creating outside the box; helping others not by imposing but by listening; and what makes us happy.

The last talk I listened to was called Nature. Beauty. Gratitude. Louie Schwartzberg, a cinematographer, talks about how he started out in time-lapse photography. The beauty of watching a flower grow and bloom all in a few moments, the beautiful and powerful way in which nature brings us gratitude.

He shares a new project of his, Happiness Revealed in which we hear the wisdom of a child and an old man (a monk I believe). As I listened to the young girl talk about the importance of exploration and imagination, and the beauty that they reveal to us, I thought back to the first talk in which a young girl shared so eloquently how a scientific experiment was brought about simply through the imagination and curiosity of children. Then I thought, wow, these kids are brilliant.

The old man in the video then talks about the importance of living in the day.

"Live as if it's the first day and the very last day."

"Open your eyes...look at the faces of the people that you meet. Each one has an incredible story behind their face."

I thought I was probably missing out on some visual aspect of this talk, so I went back to watch it and it was stunning. If you don't read any other part of this post, watch this video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude.html

This last talk made me think about the other talks I had listened to today,  how they were in small ways related and what I could learn from them. The motto of TED talks is Ideas Worth Spreading. I learned something from the talks I listened to and I think some of that is worth spreading and sharing with you. Some of these things might seem trivial or obvious, but I think it's still important to be reminded of them:

use your imagination. explore. push your boundaries. create.

LOVE. love yourself. love others. love strangers. share that love. 

find the extraordinary in everyone. find beauty in nature. find beauty in tragedy.

find happiness. 

"be grateful for every day."

Superb Owl Day

Hello BLOGOSPHERE! I'm still here! You can't get rid of me!

I don't write much anymore, because interesting things don't happen to me that often. But that all changed last weekend. On Sunday, the day of the Superb Owl, I saw just that...a SNOWY OWL. What? Yes. There it is: 

There are two Snowy Owls that have been seen in Dodge County, MN recently, so I went out with a team of owl chasers (consisting of grad students, undergrads, and small children), and we spotted this beauty. Unfortunately we did not find the second owl. But we did find some other cool birds on our journey, such as: Common Redpolls, American Tree Sparrows, American Black Ducks, Common Goldeneyes, Common Mergansers, Canada Geese, a Cackling Goose, and a few roadside Red-tailed Hawks and Bald Eagles.

Woo hoooooooo!


Yours truly,
Bird Lady

Back in the real world

Well I'm back in the good ole Twin Cities and stickin around for the foreseeable future!

The last few weeks at Itasca just flew by and it was both fantastic and terribly sad at the same time! I wish I could stay up there all summer! It's amazing how magical it is to be so close to so much nature. I could walk outside and immediately hear 10 different bird species from my porch. Just one minute away and I was at a huge, beautiful lake, where it was not uncommon to see beavers and otters (okay, the otters are not so common, but I did see them once!) swimming around, ducks galore, and eagles and ospreys swooping and soaring and fighting over fish. Not to mention a gorgeous sunset every night. One minute in the other direction and I was in the middle of the woods, full of deer and foxes and bears and of course more birds birds birds!

I miss the quietness and solitude of standing alone in the forest. No sounds of traffic, no generators humming, just birds and bugs singing and buzzing. I miss the way the outdoors brings people together... you can't sit inside surfing the web or watching tv when there's so much to do! There was always something to do! We could go hiking, canoeing, kayaking, biking, play frisbee, volleyball, soccer, or just sit around and talk. And there was always someone awesome around to do those things with. Anyone who loves the outdoors and loves nature knows this feeling, and knows how difficult it is to describe.

But alas, all good things come to an end. Suddenly class was over, and all of the students were studying for finals. Then it was the day of the final, it was over, and we were grading tests. The last few days were carefree and lovely. Then I was packing up my cabin, loading up the car and saying goodbye (for now).

After driving for 4 hours, watching the wilderness transform into flatness and city, I rolled up in Minneapolis and stepped outside into what felt like a sauna... I hauled all my crap inside and thought I was going to die. I spent just a day in hot hot Minneapolis before heading to hot hot Madison for the weekend. It was strange to realize that I hadn't been in Madison since January, when I got back from Spain! And before that, another four months since last summer! So I hung out with the family, enjoyed beautiful Madison, saw my friend Molly Jones and heard about all her adventures in New Zealand and Australia, watched the España crush Italy in the Euro 2012 football (aka soccer) championship, before turning around and heading back up to MN!

And so here I am, back in the cities and back in the real world, with just a part-time job and not sure what else to do with myself all summer. 

A visit from the Conley crew

Well we had an exciting week here at Camp Itasca! The fam came up to visit last Thursday, and stayed for a long weekend. They rented out a cabin on campus and it was so much nicer than mine, so I just camped out there all weekend (its best features were a shower, couch, wifi, and a porch). We went on some adventures: to the Headwaters, to see some really big pines, looking for birds, watching sunsets; and sometimes we just chilled, hammocked, grilled, etc. They also brought me up some fun stuff, such as lots of food, a BANJO, and lots of new books to read.

At the Mississippi Headwaters

A very large White Pine tree

Watching the sunset over Lake Itasca

On Monday they took off, and that day in class we saw two rare birds that I have never seen before (that we've been searching for in class since last year!): a pair of Black-backed Woodpeckers, and a Blue-headed Vireo!

Itasca is just at the edge of the Black-backed Woodpecker range, so while they are not common here, they have been known to be in certain areas around here. We've gone to some of these places and "called" to them with recordings of their own calls (territorial birds will often respond to their own calls), with no success... then one day at the Headwaters they just appeared out of nowhere! A little later we chased down the very rare Blue-headed Vireo (their relatives the Red-eyed Vireo are extremely common), and got a great look at it! It may not seem that exciting, but it was really cool!