tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184287016096248142024-03-12T21:22:11.950-07:00FIELD NOTESthoughts and images /// from life on the trail /// by kaitlin murphy 2018Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-39113034377975876062018-07-17T15:56:00.001-07:002018-07-17T16:17:02.393-07:00Oh, Hello Again!Yeah so it looks like I dropped off the planet for a little while. Last post was in.. September! Well, there are some reasonable reasons for this, which I won't get into, BECAUSE there are<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">MUCH MORE EXCITING THINGS HAPPENING!!!</span></div>
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A little Kestrel sketch I made before leaving Nevada.</div>
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I just finished up a wild field season in Nevada with <a href="http://gbbofieldnotes.blogspot.com/">Great Basin Bird Observatory</a> (I swear I didn't name my blog after theirs), and my love, Bobby is heading back to Brazil for more bird guiding. So what's next for this flighty feather? Well, as you know, I've always tried to do a little writing and drawing while working in the field, it helps me relax and process the knowledge I gain and feel connected to the places I travel. But lately, I've been feeling a stronger and stronger pull in the creative direction. When I left Baltimore almost 5 years ago, I was sort of running away from a creative life that I had cultivated and felt betrayed by. It took some serious soul-searching to realize I cannot run away from this part of myself. Perhaps you know what I mean? Perhaps you have some perspective or activity or side of yourself that, when ignored, you start to feel a little zombie-ish - placid and uninvolved?<br />
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Sort of like this red-blood-cell-shaped cloud, no intentions, just floating...</div>
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I am excited (and a little nervous) to announce that while Bobby is playing squash with baby tapirs in the Amazon, (ok so I am a little jealous), I will be<span style="font-size: large;"> striking out on my own in pursuit of creative inspiration!</span> I will be traveling throughout the US as summer sizzles into fall, visiting friends and working diligently to create a viable art practice. That's right, I have decided, once and for all, to go out on a limb - not for the bird on the end of it this time, but trying my hand at full-time arting! And now that you all know about it, I have to do it!!! (the classic accountability trick). But really, I am very excited about it, so stay tuned for the next post (I promise it won't be 6 months from now) in which I share with you my plan.Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-65995082596768987752017-09-11T18:54:00.001-07:002017-09-11T18:54:47.604-07:00REGUA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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9/9/17<br />
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Imagine walking down
a wooded path, darkly shaded by trees drenched in vines, bromeliads
and moss. All around you, unfamiliar trills and whistles echo from
unseen birds, hidden in shadows and behind curtains of foliage. A
clear-winged butterfly sails by on panes of delicate stained glass.
The air smells wet, maybe even a little musty. </div>
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As you round a bend in
the dim trail, you come upon what sounds like a 4<sup>th</sup> of
July block party hosted by miniature Star Wars LARPers, complete with
firecrackers and light-saber battles. This exuberant chorus of snaps,
pops, and wah-wah-wah-whirrs emanates from a gang of
testosterone-driven White-bearded Manakins, billiard-sized birds who puff out their long snowy-feathered beards and snap their wings
as they skip along the forest floor in a dance competition that has
been going on for millennia.</div>
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Now imagine if 20
years ago, this wood was an open field grazed by zebu cattle, their
heavy shoulder humps and long neck skin waddling as they trundled
along well worn paths. This is not an imaginary place. And it did not
happen without hard work and unpopular dedication.</div>
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Today, the Reserva
Ecol<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">ó</span>gica de Guapia<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">ç</span>u,
or REGUA for short, snakes through bucolic farmland and scales the
sheer faces of the intimidating, jungle-draped, ancient granite
mountains called Serra dos Orgaos, that loom 40 miles northeast of
Brazil's urban epicenter, Rio de Janeiro. Covering over 10,000 hectares and still growing with the
help of organizations such as Rainforest Trust and World Land Trust,
this privately managed, community-centric reserve evolved from much
humbler beginnings.</div>
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Nicholas Locke will greet you with a hearty laugh and smack on the
back. Always dressed in preppy Englishman plaid button-downs, with a
sweater draped over his shoulders and a small wool herders cap
perched atop short salt-and-peppered hair, he skips from Portuguese
to English without hesitation, seamlessly breaking his discussion
with Brazilian researchers to welcome international visitors to his
woodland empire. From there, the lovely Raquel Locke will take over
with a warm smile and grace we haven't seen since classic Hollywood
actresses. Hailing
from Buenos Aires,
Raquel adds Argentinian Castellano to her fluent repertoire,
but her genuine
enthusiasm shines
through in all three languages (plus
some French, seriously??). </div>
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Over the last
quarter-century, this power couple has transformed a humble
agricultural dynasty into a conservation engine for an ecosystem that
needs it more, perhaps, than any other on Earth. Stay
tuned as I continue to learn about the power of tree planting, land
acquisition, and unbridled passion to rebuild biodiversity from the
ground up.</div>
Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-65846366780023978262017-09-11T18:21:00.002-07:002017-09-15T14:21:17.864-07:00Voldenor Trail 9/11<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
TRAVEL JOURNAL</div>
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9/11/2017</div>
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Today is the 16<sup>th</sup>
anniversary of the terrorist attack we all know as Nine-Eleven. I was
in high school when it happened, and I remember many of my friends
going white with fear as we gazed at the televised images of the
Pentagon burning. Their dads or moms or uncles worked there, and they
had no idea if they were still alive. I was 16 years old then, sort of wondering,
sort of not, whether the world was really ending. Twice a lifetime
later, with a tad deeper understanding of ecology and global
environmental issues, I still can't seem to shake that feeling. But I
have found a decent coping strategy: birdwatching. The tunnel vision
that a pair of decent binoculars affords helps to block out the
underlying dread for humanity's future, even if for a moment. Plus it
has proved to be a useful skill much appreciated by conservation
biologists, and currently, conservation-supporting tourists. This
nine-eleven of twenty-seventeen, I am on the other hemisphere, walking up a dirt
road in the mountains of Brazil with one of the world's most
respected experts in conservation biology. And we're both geeking out
about a hummingbird.</div>
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No bigger than my
thumb, the Frilled Coquette sports a neon red mohawk and
zebra-striped cheek feathers that flare out in the sun, looking
almost like gills of a fish. He stretches his wings and zooms off
with purpose: to sip nectar from “his” flowers, then return to
the perch and wait for the flowers to refill. A creature so strange
it seems nearly impossible that evolution produced it, and we all
gaze at him through binoculars and cameras and gasp when he spreads
his tiny red tail. We meaning me; Bobby; a lovely clinical scientist
named Annie from England; Clinton Jenkins, a research professor with
Instituto de Pesquisas Ecologicas outside of Sao Paulo; and Stuart
Pimm.
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If you are involved
in conservation biology, you probably don't need an introduction for
Stuart. For the rest of us, he has wire-rimmed aviator glasses, gray
hair beneath his mesh army bucket hat, his pants tucked into his
socks, and that sparkly enthusiastic intelligence that gets students
to sit up in their chairs and become some of the world's most
important professional scientists. He is the Doris Duke Chair of
Conservation Ecology in the Nicholas School of the Environment at
Duke University, decorated by awards, published 250+ peer-reviewed
scientific articles, and a bunch of popular science books that I will
promptly look for on Kindle or wait begrudgingly until April to find
in the States. His prolific work spans a breadth of fields, from
saving species, to training scientists in Africa and China to be
better conservationists, to developing technology that seeks out
biodiversity hotspots using satellite imagery. And he's the nicest
freakin guy I've met in a while, so absolutely lovely and inspiring
that it almost makes me want to go to grad school.</div>
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He and Clinton, his
former academic advisee and good friend, are visiting REGUA to catch
up with Nicholas and another colleague, Maria Alice do Santos Alves
from the State University of Rio, but they wanted to get out and see
some birds. Bobby and I are “guiding” this walk, although the
guidance is mutual; as we point out species, Stuart relays
interesting news about recent genetic findings or recounts his
adventures such as being helicoptered to the top of the mountains in
search of the rare Gray-Winged Cotinga, and the helicopter never
coming back (his field journal published by National Geographic
<a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0221_040227_cotinga1.html">here</a>).
Or boating deep up the Amazon river to visit a student mapping
territories of endemic spinetails. Or trekking deep into the
rainforest of Peru to meet a group of Guarani being studied by a
former student, where she is helping to facilitate the passing of
deep ethnobotanical knowledge from the elder population to their
grandchildren before it is lost to globalization. Stuart is one of
those completely unpretentious, giddy professors who can't help but
take advantage of every 'teaching moment' that arises. </div>
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Last night, Bobby and I were asked to put on a presentation about the Hooded Grebe Project, a conservation effort in Patagonia for which we have volunteered two seasons and plan to return again this coming year. The Hooded Grebe is a critically endangered bird with numerous threats to its existence, and the Project has been tackling them one by one. After our presentation, which closed with Bobby's premier footage of a grebe pair performing their exotic and elaborate mating dance, Stuart expressed his enthusiasm in a succinct and effective way: "We cannot let that go extinct!"</div>
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I feel
incredibly lucky and grateful for the opportunity to spend even a
short time with such amazing scientists and conservationists like
Stuart and Clinton. It makes me, and even 16-year-old me, hopeful for
the future of the planet that such hard-working, passionate people
exist on it. And inspires me to work harder to find my own ways to
contribute.</div>
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Here's a few photos from our hike:</div>
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Bobby photographing the extremely venomous <i>Bothrops jararaca</i></div>
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that we just almost stepped on</div>
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Cresent-chested Puffbird</div>
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Scary horsefly, just cz the photo turned out so good</div>
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Frilled Coquete. Unfortunately this photo didn't turn out so good.</div>
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Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-68939450634089227002016-10-21T18:19:00.001-07:002016-10-26T19:02:23.826-07:00Falcons return to the Mississippi with help from surprising places<p dir="ltr">The late summer sun was fading over a languid Mississippi river, turning the cloudless sky into an ever-so subtle collage of pastels, like the way movie theatres used to illuminate the screen before showtime. Swirling through the warm air, hundreds of chimney swifts dipped and fluttered after mayflies. Semis and SUVs pummeled across the river too, leaping the aquatic hurdle between Iowa and Illinois supported by a handsome suspension bridge, called the Great River Bridge at Burlington, Iowa.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I’ve been to this waterfront a handful of times, usually to scope the Purple Martin houses for occupants. But I had never heard the sound that echoed down from the top of the H-shaped bridge supports that evening. Faint, but unmistakable: the rhythmic screeching of a Peregrine Falcon!</p>
<p dir="ltr">Even with binoculars, the falcon circling the bridge was just a speck in the sky, distinguished from the much smaller swifts by its powerful flight. I watched it twirl upward and land on the top railing, just a tiny smudge against the darkening sky. This seemed an unusual location to me, but I had no idea how monumental it was to see a Peregrine along the Mississippi, until I looked into the recent history of the falcons in the Midwest.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Peregrines are well known as a conservation success story in the United States. They have the widest global range of any bird species, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica. Some sub populations migrate tens of thousands of miles each year, including the Canadian arctic subspecies which migrates to Argentina for the winter. The Latin ‘peregrinus’ means traveler or wanderer. This is a hardy bird. </p>
<p dir="ltr">But in the mid-twentieth century, Peregrines and other birds of prey were dwindling at an alarming rate. Rachel Carson’s famous Silent Spring alerted the public to the threat: the pesticide DDT was moving up the food chain, concentrating in the bodies of raptors and other top predators. The chemical reduced the integrity of raptor eggshells, causing doting parents to accidentally crush them in the nest while attempting to incubate. By the time DDT was made illegal, Peregrines in particular were on the brink of extinction. There was never a country-wide survey of the population before the introduction of DDT, but limited historical data suggests an estimate at 3,875 nesting pairs. By the 1960s, Peregrines were extinct in their eastern range, and by 1975 only 324 known nesting pairs remained in the western states. The species was declared federally endangered in 1973, just a year after DDT was banned. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Thanks to the clever efforts of falconers and wildlife biologists (more about their hilarious yet effective tactics here: http://www.earthtouchnews.com/all-articles/2016/march/03/behold-the-falcon-sex-hat-a-species-saving-hump-helmet/), Peregrines have made a comeback, particularly in large metropolitan areas on the East Coast. Since their prefered nesting sites are high cliffs, and their favorite food sources are large flying creatures, they have filled a niche in cities by nesting on skyscrapers and bridges, and providing a convenient service to urbanites by picking off feral pigeons.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If you are from, or have ever been to the Midwest, you might wonder if Peregrines ever lived there. After all, the lack of elevation change might preclude them from nesting. However, historical records do indicate nests along the ridges and bluffs of the Mississippi prior to their population crash. But that’s a long way away from the East coast, and despite the fact that Peregrines are able to migrate to the southern tip of Argentina and back in a year, the birds needed a little help getting a population started again in the Midwest. And they got it from an unlikely source: heavy industry.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Enter Bob Anderson, passionate falconer and conservationist living in Minnesota in the 80s. Inspired by other captive breeders’ success in the east, Bob took it upon himself to help reintroduce falcons to Minnesota. But there’s a problem when it comes to rewildling these powerful hunters. Falcons imprint on their nest site, meaning if a licensed falconer raises chicks in a backyard breeding facility they may continue to return each spring as adults. This may be helpful for training purposes, but not for rewilding an endangered population.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So what’s a rewilder to do? Look for a place that is high up, safe from people and predators such as raccoons and Great-horned Owls, that can act as a surrogate imprinting site. It’s called hacking, a method borrowed by conservationists from the centuries-long history of falconry. The banded, captive-bred chicks are brought to a high cliff or other suitable nesting place in a hack-box, a secure cage with viewing windows for the birds to see and acclimate to their surroundings, while being fed by human parents. In the final days before fledging, a cache of food is left for them and the door is opened, allowing the young birds to practice flying and hunting with little influence and disruption of human presence. Monitored from afar, they are fed surreptitiously until they no longer need it, and they leave on their own time. The method was working on the east coast in various natural and man-made structures. </p>
<p dir="ltr">And that’s exactly what Bob did. His first success was in 1986 from the top of City Center, now called Multi-Foods Tower in Minneapolis, where he released his young fledgling named MF-1 (after the Minnesota Falconer’s Association for which she was produced). The next spring, MF-1 returned to a nest box Bob constructed for her on the top of the skyscraper and raised two chicks of her own - the first wild Peregrines in the Midwest since the 1960s. Not destined to be a one-hit-wonder, MF-1 continued her reign of the City Center tower for 7 more years before being mortally injured in the most honorable way a falcon can - duking it out with a rival female. In the meantime, she produced a daughter who turned out to be another very special falcon in the Midwest. </p>
<p dir="ltr">in 1988, Bob founded Raptor Resource Project, Inc, an organization with a mission to preserve birds of prey through nest site restoration, creation, monitoring and maintenance. Meanwhile, a falconer by the name of Paul Simonet was working at Xcel Energy’s Allen S. King power plant, a natural-gas combined-cycle generator that burns 300 tons of coal an hour. https://www.xcelenergy.com/energy_portfolio/electricity/power_plants/allen_s._king . He saw a male Peregrine hanging around the stacks and excitedly called his friend Bob up with the news. A hopeful but unconvinced Bob came over and, seeing the falcon along with prime nesting potential, began building a relationship with the facility to install a nest box up on the catwalk. Bob and other falcon conservationists monitored the box closely, and discovered in 1990 a young falcon hanging around as if to stay. It turned out to be a banded daughter of MF-1, named Mae, back from her first winter on her own. To the delight of Bob and other enthusiasts, Mae laid a clutch in the nest box on top of the energy plant, hatching a new era of cooperation between conservationists and industry in the midwest. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Bob and RRP partnered with several industrial enterprises across Minnesota and eventually expanding into Iowa. The first industrial nest boxes were all adopted voluntarily by new members (aka dispersing young) of the burgeoning population. After this initial success, as well as receiving results from heavy metals testing in industrial-nesting falcons that revealed no significant increase as compared to urban or control birds, RRP began intentionally releasing young raptors from industrial sites in hope that they would return to nest themselves. </p>
<p dir="ltr">This partnership between conservation and industry may seem ironic. Coal and oil are some of the biggest culprits of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. But Bob saw an opportunity and ran with it. According to Amy Reis of RRP, Bob worked closely with the plant managers and staff. “He actively maintained relationships with all of our industrial partners: cleaning up messy areas, responding to calls for information and assistance, transporting injured birds when necessary, maintaining and moving nest boxes, and working with the press to raise interest in and awareness of the falcons and the companies that were so crucial to their recovery.” Nesting on smokestacks does have its hazards, such as flying into wires or other tall structures. But apparently it is no more dangerous than the alternative, as smoke stack nests continue to produce more fledglings than either natural or urban sites. And the mortality rate doesn’t approach the number of collisions with automobiles and planes. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Most intriguing of all is the effect the raptors’ presence has on the industrial communities. While RRP has not conducted any formal survey of staff, they note significant enthusiasm for the birds, including an increase in cooperation with RRP in reporting avian mortalities and injuries. Bob also cultivated public support through then-innovative means: nest cams! His first web cam project, “possibly the first internet-based bird cam” according to RRP, featured Mae atop the Allen S. King Plant in 1998, and exposed thousands of viewers to the intimate home life of these previously mysterious creatures. In her eighth year as Xcel queen, she became a celebrity followed closely by viewers for the rest of her 14-year breeding reign, when she faced the same honorable demise of her mother, at the talons of a rival.</p>
<p dir="ltr">By 1998, the populations of eastern Peregrines were rebounding successfully, reaching pre-DDT estimates of one to two thousand pairs. But something was bugging Bob. Despite a growing midwest population, the raptors had not yet begun nesting on their historical eyries on the cliffs above the Mississippi. He decided to conduct a hack program from Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa. The program was a success, and a few years later, not only was the Peregrine removed from the Federal Endangered Species list, but Bob watched proudly as young from his industrial nest boxes began breeding with the Effigy Mounds progeny, completing the link between history and the future, and strengthening the genes and nesting-site elasticity of midwestern Peregrines. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Unfortunately, Bob passed away in July of last year, 2015. He continued his work with passion, even rappelling down stacks and cliffs to band chicks until the last years of his life. Yet, his legacy continues to trickle down the Mississippi. His captive-bred chicks have contributed over 1500 progeny in the US and Canada over the past three decades, adding to the efforts of Iowa and Minnesota Departments of Natural Resources own captive-breeding projects. As of summer 2016, MF-1 could boast being mother, grandmother, etc to 512 wild descendents, according to the dedicated monitoring of RRP. The Great River Bridge in Iowa is tricky place to resight bands, but it has been occupied for the last ten years. Perhaps some of Bob’s extended feathered family have nested up there too. In the last few years, World Bird Sanctuary, Inc in St. Louis has successfully released Peregrines along their length of the MIssissippi, extending their reach further into the historic range. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Thanks to the innovative, open-minded dedication of Bob and other falcon conservationists, the piercing cry of the Peregrine can be heard echoing over the Mississippi once more.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Special thanks to Amy Reis of Raptor Research Project and Pat Schlarbaum of Iowa Dept of Natural Resources for taking time out of their busy schedules to answer my questions via email.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidKRh61l5Spm7C1xExiSS9bv2e6EaK-Aje5K5BuhyphenhyphenZ2U6VWheBu0bOG7D_oviz3f9UBjf8JgOjloBy9dMLUB2UH4mxJ5-KQ0ytUG__ZUUZhohz8bPIL4Px5v-_s39dbHiE1guIYBmc32AM/s1600/20160906_193803.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidKRh61l5Spm7C1xExiSS9bv2e6EaK-Aje5K5BuhyphenhyphenZ2U6VWheBu0bOG7D_oviz3f9UBjf8JgOjloBy9dMLUB2UH4mxJ5-KQ0ytUG__ZUUZhohz8bPIL4Px5v-_s39dbHiE1guIYBmc32AM/s640/20160906_193803.jpg"> </a> </div>Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-33668779414096148252016-10-13T09:38:00.001-07:002016-10-13T09:50:02.337-07:00GRASS<div style="line-height: 100%;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpByzlsfMLu6OjGsqrTei9R5A36Ui7B7pGe1OENWkNcvWtYZBJRPQbIyEzLCXgO0nMcz0MwmAzyfWQKl95hU-f4IQpws2xupxxxQZNq14RyWV9GmNQGx7ObS_q2TtRe3vKX92il3ChpNv_/s1600/DSCN4363.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpByzlsfMLu6OjGsqrTei9R5A36Ui7B7pGe1OENWkNcvWtYZBJRPQbIyEzLCXgO0nMcz0MwmAzyfWQKl95hU-f4IQpws2xupxxxQZNq14RyWV9GmNQGx7ObS_q2TtRe3vKX92il3ChpNv_/s400/DSCN4363.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Let me keep my mind on what
matters, <br />
which is my work,
</div>
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which is mostly standing still and
learning to be astonished. </div>
<div style="line-height: 100%;">
-Mary Oliver</div>
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Southeastern Iowa, August 2016</div>
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Birders aren't exactly renowned for
their impetuous outdoor prowess. The term 'bird-watcher' might
conjure images of retirees scooting excitedly from forest to pond in
matching Exofficio gear and floppy hats, or just gathering around
hummingbird feeders like paparazzi to the tiny feathered celebrities.</div>
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<br /></div>
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However, as an avian field technician,
aka professional bird-nerd, I spend more time in uncomfortable
situations than most people would choose. For instance, standing
statue-still while being marauded by armies of blood-thirsty
mosquitoes in order to get a good look at an unidentified bird
without scaring it away. Or climbing up and down a razor-back ridge
line of scree slopes that seem to be falling out from under my feet
faster than I can make any progress, in the hot summer sun, to count
and measure plants at 300m intervals. Or hiding in the lee of a
shallow crater on the stark Patagonian plateau while 120km sustained
winds sandblast my teeth and fill my tent in a thick layer of grit,
for hours until the cloudless storm passed.
</div>
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I don't <i>enjoy</i> any of these
things. I love how these situations infuse adventure into my work,
but I'm not a masochistic adrenaline junkie or stamina performance
artist. In fact, many field biologists value comfort. We gather tools
and clothing that can protect our delicate bodies from the elements
in order to make endurance a little more bearable. Many wear long
pants and sleeves, in all weather, as a shield against cancer-causing
sun, biting insects, and scratching brush. Sturdy boots protect
supple soles from sharp rocks and thorns while hiking for miles off
trail. Sometimes a mosquito head-net is the only thing that keeps us
sane enough to concentrate. This summer, I even jumped in the
field-gear deep-end and got gaiters – little fabric “skirts”
that are worn over boot tops, so rocks and grass seeds don't pour in
by the gallon. Seriously, this saved me hours of picking needle-sharp
<i>Bromus tectorum</i> from my socks at camp each night.
</div>
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But sometimes I wonder what I'm
missing. Part of the reason I got into this work was to connect
myself more deeply to the natural world. Most of the time, however, I
still feel like an outside observer, this clumsy, boot-clodding,
bino-swinging alien, lugging a giant pack full of everything I need
to survive in the wild because I am a human that can't survive in the
wild. I can't exist in nature as I am. Or so I am told by my modern
upbringing, and outfitters who develop high-tech must-have gear for
my every outdoor adventure need.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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Unless you are a member of a nudist
colony, an “un-contacted” tribe deep in the Amazon, or the
Yaghan, original inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, you probably grew
up wearing clothes. In addition to fire, clothing is one of the most
important inventions in human history, allowing our ancestors to
populate every corner of a planet with highly dynamic climates. It
has also been a source of immense creativity, which can be
appreciated by the dazzling diversity of fashions throughout history
and all over the world.</div>
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Today I wandered to the edge of the
prairie, stripped off all my clothes, and stepped in. Tall-grass
prairies once blanketed much of Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota, before
the plow converted it all to corn and soybeans. A few remnants
persist in un-mowed ditches, old cemeteries, a handful of nature
reserves, and private restoration plots like the one I am lucky
enough to be staying by right now.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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If you've never seen a tall-grass
prairie, in late summer it's almost like Honey I Shrunk the Kids. The
Indian grass is starting to bloom and its frilly, lance-shaped flower
clusters emerge from their sheaths around eye-level. In a week, it
will tower alongside all the Big Blue Stem, which waves its
three-pronged tassels a few feet above my head. Wild sunflowers,
descendants of early Native American cultivars, reach even higher,
their friendly faces bowing over the prairie in a hot breeze. And
it's unwelcomingly dense. Every cubic inch between grass stalks is
packed with wildflowers – milkweed and coneflower, boneset and
ragweed, partridge pea and others. Like climbing through a fully
stuffed dress rack at Goodwill and disappearing on the other side, it
feels more like swimming than walking in this mirror maze of
photosynthesis and wings.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As I pressed carefully into the glowing
green curtains, thousands of flying insects buzzed in my ears and
around fragrant goldenrod. Butterflies flit and grasshoppers flung
themselves out of my path. Tiny flower-flies disguised as bees
vacated their positions on stamens to land on my skin and tap their
probosces between my freckles. A pair of mating praying mantis
swiveled their heads to glare at my interruption. I tiptoed carefully
around a wasp as big as my thumb. My toes were surprised to meet
patches of cool damp soil and painful blackberry vines winding
between the shoots. The soft grass flower-heads tickled as they
threaded between my legs.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I continued, glancing back at the
herbal curtain shutting firmly behind me, locking me in. I wasn't
sure what I was looking for. I hoped a bird would flush from a hidden
nest but it's late in the season; only a single Field Sparrow trilled
his bouncing ball song in the hazy distance. It wasn't as bad as I
expected. The sun was shaded by cottony cumulus and I had yet to meet
a mosquito. Slowly, awkwardly, I squatted down into a space the size
of a bathroom wastebasket, watching the towering grasses grow even
taller, engulfing the space between me and the sky. Ringing of
crickets hidden deep in the grass grew louder. The smell of dank
earth and roots reaching deep into soil commingled with the scent of
my own skin, complimenting it: my animal fragrance.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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I laid back, the grass reclining with
me until I was looking up at the clouds. Something about it felt
strangely familiar, and I realized, I'd been here before, but in a
dream. I looked down at my knees jutting up and remembered a vision I
created over a decade ago: ink screen-printed on tan paper with
rough edges, the image of a supine nude body from first person
perspective, surrounded by blonde and auburn grasses, with one nipple
occupied by a miniature girl standing there shyly in pink socks. The
fantastical image vaguely represented my reluctance to let go of a
childhood sense of wonder. Today, I had brought a piece of paper and
pencil with me into the prairie, just in case inspiration struck. But
I didn't feel like I needed them after this revelation. As if
predicting this future moment, I had already painted this scene long
ago, the little girl begging me not to forget what I am constantly
endeavoring to sustain.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Looking up from the cradle of grass,
time warp haze buzzed in my head along with the flies, and a hot sun
burst from behind the clouds. Bugs were landing on me and the grass
was itching my back. Like that awful, disorienting feeling of waking
from a deep nap, I sat up and tried to find reality. The flies were
biting now and a I swear a leaping frog hit my spine and disappeared
into the green. As if refreshed by the beating sun, humid breath
wafted from each trembling blade.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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I stood up, it's time to go.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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I stumbled back toward open air, where
my skin wasn't being licked by a thousand knife-edged leaves. I threw
on my clothes and headed back to the house, in a dreamy, satisfied
state with tiny yellow grass flowers in my hair and a burning
sensation growing stronger on my skin. What I thought was going to be
a mini act of defiance against my own cultural habits had served to
connect me to myself, in a thread through time, as well as to the
sensations of the earth.</div>
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<br /></div>
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After a cold shower, I saw in the
mirror that my back looked like it had been attacked by a hundred
rabid kittens. There's a reason grass leaves are called blades. The
greatest evolutionary feat of grass is its ability to grow back after
being eaten. But it would rather avoid being eaten in the first
place, and has a few tricks to deter ravenous vegetarians.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If you look at a grass leaf under a
microscope, you can see that each edge is serrated like a steak
knife, like a row of shingled shark teeth, ready to slice anything
that slides along it, such as the vulnerably supple tongue of a
herbivore. This doesn't seem to deter the herds that (used to)
blanket plains in Africa or the central United States, but if you've
ever felt the leathery sandpaper tongue of a cow, you know why. Next
time you pick a blade, carefully run your finger down the edge, but
don't be surprised if you bleed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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If you look at the surface of the
blade, even with the naked eye sometimes, you can see tiny hairs,
called trichomes. These hairs help retain moisture in dry or windy
conditions by reducing evaporation. Scientists believe they also
serve to obstruct the passage of potentially predatory insects, and
some trichomes even ooze an irritating substance which causes
additional itchiness. Both the serrated edges and the trichomes are
made of silica, aka MICROSCOPIC SHARDS OF GLASS.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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The silica grinds on all sizes of
herbivorous teeth, causing ungulates to evolve extra high crowns and
rodents to evolve teeth that never stop growing. It also reduces the
digestive abilities of grasshoppers, robbing them of nutrients and
carbohydrates. As if that weren't enough, when some grasses are
damaged by a herbivore (or your lawn mower), it can trigger the grass
to suck up more silica from the soil and incorporate it into the leaf
surface, making it even more irritating to potential predators. Or in
my case, brashly exposed skin. The First Nations who lived along the
Mississippi, growing corn and beans and pumpkins, hunting game and
gathering seasonal foods, wore long buckskin leggings to protect
their legs from the vegetative and arthropodic onslaught when
straying from well-worn paths through wood and field.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Silica and other minerals absorbed by
plants, called phytoliths, persist in soil and the geologic record
even after the plant has decomposed. Amazingly, highly trained
scientists can interpret the structure of phytoliths left in a
geologic strata to tell what kinds of plants were present at the
time. Some of our major crop species – rice, wheat, corn – are
descendents of grass and therefore high in silica. Archeologists can
study phytoliths in excavated settlements to help them understand the
history of agricultural development, piecing together the story of
civilization. Even a few prehistoric human remains have revealed
phytolith traces in their teeth, helping archaeologists to understand
what plants the ancient people ate. In a way, the very defense
mechanisms plants evolved to keep the world at bay now inadvertently
serve to connect us, through science, more closely to the past of
both humans and nature, to understand the bonds we share.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Evolution is a constant, tinkering push
and pull between competing and consuming organisms. Perhaps what's
missing from my current “nature connection” philosophy is meeting
nature on its own terms, allowing it to bite back sometimes. I don't
plan on striding nude through tall-grass prairie again any time soon,
but next time I have a picnic, I don't think I'll mind the itchy
ankles so much.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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Sources:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Environmentalscience.org “Phytoliths:
What they are and what they tell us.”
<a href="http://www.environmentalscience.org/phytoliths">http://www.environmentalscience.org/phytoliths</a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
University of Santa Barbara Science
Hotline: “Why does human skin itch when it reacts with grass?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2105">http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2105</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Indiana Public Media A Moment of
Science: “Plant Hair”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/plant-hair/">http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/plant-hair/</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
J. W. Hunt, A. P. Dean, R. E. Webster,
G. N. Johnson, and A. R. Ennos</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“A Novel Mechanism by which Silica
Defends Grasses Against Herbivory” Annals of Botany 2008</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2701777/">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2701777/</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
MuseumLink Illinois State: “The
Illinois”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/nat_amer/post/htmls/il.html">http://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/nat_amer/post/htmls/il.html</a></div>
Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-37156135150666421712016-07-03T22:16:00.000-07:002016-08-13T13:03:33.652-07:00//////////////LIMINAL\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Dawn splashes amber light over the
vertical stripes of marsh plants all around me, illuminating the
intricately patterned bodies of two silhouettes in a dead cottonwood
tree above my head. The silhouettes swivel their heads to look down
at me. Razor claws gripping dead branches and golden eyes drooping
with sleepiness, they perk up at the hoots of a distant neighboring
pair. The male stands up on his perch, leans forward, almost as if he
is going to somersault into the marsh, and puffs his white-feathered
throat, letting out a low, booming answer. The female joins in with
slightly higher-pitched hoots and few cranky yelps. Then they retreat
into a huge thorny mesquite where they will doze in the shade until
dusk falls and hunger draws them out again. Their nightly pursuits
are written in the sand each morning.</div>
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</div>
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If you've never spent much time in the
desert, or especially if the only time you have spent is staring out
the car window blasting down the interstate at 85mph, you might be
tempted to believe there's nothing but a lifeless wasteland out
there. Endless shades of brown – tawny sand, rust-tinged hills,
dusty mountains carved by winding dry riverbeds, scraggly plants
barely squeezing any green into the landscape. Aside from a few
wheeling ravens, and ramshackle trailers that may or may not still be
occupied by snowbirds, signs of life are slim. That is, until you
pull your car over to the shoulder and step into a dry wash to
relieve yourself (the nearest gas station still 80 miles away). The
glaring sun keeps your eyes low, and scanning the cracked earth you
discover a foreign language scrawled across the sand.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSwDbk9fCVp4JkKagbUSMKtn9qJPIpLX4LpFEU5JyvdDsq3DE4kFufWVcmhenA1Y5GQkvIeWRYsktyb8p5ad2mVhner4mzk_L9MoMp8ZJfkB1FJJF-15GNCsekCjJ7Nj1jIl_7U5tTqr1n/s1600/20160527_080625.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSwDbk9fCVp4JkKagbUSMKtn9qJPIpLX4LpFEU5JyvdDsq3DE4kFufWVcmhenA1Y5GQkvIeWRYsktyb8p5ad2mVhner4mzk_L9MoMp8ZJfkB1FJJF-15GNCsekCjJ7Nj1jIl_7U5tTqr1n/s320/20160527_080625.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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I'm standing knee-deep in a crystal
clear marsh, but up beyond the bank is a sparse mesquite bosque, each
sand-marooned shrub wreathed by tiny footprints – the paired dots
of bouncing kangaroo rats, galloping four-paws of desert pocket mice
and cottontails, patterned tick-marks of little grasshopper feet, and
even the unusual squat-stamps of toads. The night crew of the desert.
Alongside the pitter-patter, larger tracks trundle across the open
sand, sometimes interrupted by dug holes and messy attacks– coyote,
bobcat, raccoon, skunk, and Great Horned Owl. The owl tracks are
unmistakable - longer than my forefinger with two toes pointing
forward, one pointing back, and one sticking straight out to the
side. Owls are what ornithologists call zygodactyl – their inner
front toe able to swivel to the back, maximizing the surface area of
deadly talon potential during an aerial pounce. The sand here is so
fine, I even found a full-spread wing imprint of an owl touching
down. But wait, you say, do owls really walk on the ground? These
ones apparently do, quite a lot, as evidenced by their sloppy gait
traced across the dunes. By the time I arrive at dawn to survey for
avian life, the authors of all these stories have tucked in to their
burrows, tunnels, and hiding places under dense brush. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg87ldxMiBLrMRRkHFm2IBbkVJIjgDm_tRxDLZHc9b5Pk7KKShrAFB9T7rPOKqGC47xk5sUg9m-KisXogqXv3SWIYhNsCIqRkhF0GN1mnvO2Uq4aXDcDRCqZ_1VQk7caVLLAd0c_nfMt13c/s1600/20160512_075153.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg87ldxMiBLrMRRkHFm2IBbkVJIjgDm_tRxDLZHc9b5Pk7KKShrAFB9T7rPOKqGC47xk5sUg9m-KisXogqXv3SWIYhNsCIqRkhF0GN1mnvO2Uq4aXDcDRCqZ_1VQk7caVLLAd0c_nfMt13c/s640/20160512_075153.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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POUNCE!</div>
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Five years ago, this whole area – the
marsh, the mesquite – was a sea of tamarisk. This water-guzzling
shrub, also known as salt cedar, was introduced to the west in the
19<sup>th</sup> century for erosion control as the Colorado river was
being dammed, rerouted, channelized, and sucked dry. The trees spread
quickly in the upturned earth and now chokes the banks of much of
what remains of the Lower Colorado. Tamarisk exemplifies all the
worst weed characteristics you can imagine – it grows quickly (up
to 12 feet in a season), reproduces generously (one tree can produce
600,000 seeds annually), colonizes disturbed earth rapidly, and
spreads by the one method you can't control: wind. The roots suck up
and retain water and exude massive amounts of salt, changing the
composition of the soil to levels unsuitable for most native riparian
plants, thereby creating vast monoculture stands, deprived of
birdsong, scurrying rodents, or sun-bathing reptiles. And worst of
all, tamarisk is virtually un-killable: it resprouts vigorously from
cut stumps, after fire, and even herbicide treatment. In other words,
its a BIG problem for conservationists in the west, especially in
riparian areas of the Southwest that have been dismantled by
development.</div>
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An inspiring scene from recreational Park Moabi, north of Lake Havasu City, with tamarisk in the background.<br />
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Not surprisingly, I don't have many photos of tamarisk itself. I think I took this one because I was so startled to find another kind of plant struggling for life beneath the deadly shroud of tamarisk canopy (center bottom).<br />
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Sunrise reflecting in irrigation canal, Blythe CA. Notice anything missing? Plants perhaps?</div>
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Habitat for local wildlife has been
shrinking and fragmenting for centuries, and the effects reach
further than the desert. Before industry started rearranging the
river for its own purposes, migrating birds like warblers, vireos,
and flycatchers followed green ribbons north through deserts and dry
sagebrush basins, thousands of miles of verdant cottonwood-lined
river valleys from Mexico to the Northwest and boreal Canada. Now
there are a few struggling islands of original riparian habitat left,
meaning these tiny birds have to fly further across those barren
bajadas to find fewer resources during their epic biannual journeys. </div>
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The resplendent Bill Williams National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last remaining stands of riparian forest along the Lower Colorado. Just try to imagine this snaking all the way up from Mexico to the Grand Canyon.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But all is not lost. For the last three
decades, coalitions of federal, state, tribal and conservation
groups, including the Bureau of Reclamation, have been developing a
methodology to convert reclaimed land along the Lower Colorado back
into riparian habitat. Old farm fields no longer in production are
replanted with native cottonwoods, willows, mesquite and marsh
plants, and irrigated on an intermittent schedule to mimic historic
flood cycles. Each project is an experiment with varying results.
Some plots attract migratory and breeding birds while others seem to
repel them, and factors change over time as trees grow and are
thinned. Each project provides lessons on what works and what
doesn't. And this is where nonprofit Great Basin Bird Observatory comes in.</div>
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For the past 5 years, GBBO has been
leading the breeding bird surveys along the Lower Colorado for what's
called the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Plan.
Through on-the-ground surveys and data analysis, GBBO documents the
use of virgin, disturbed, and created riparian habitat by breeding
and migratory birds. Each spring, GBBO sends out intrepid field crews
to riparian plots around Yuma, Blythe, Lake Havasu City and Lake Mead
to conduct area search and spot-mapping surveys of bird activity,
with a focus on six of the more-imperiled passerine species. Other
agencies and crews monitor endangered populations like Yellow-billed
Cuckoo, Southwest Willow Flycatcher and Elf Owl. Then in the fall,
GBBO conducts extensive vegetation surveys to link the bird data with
environmental conditions. The analysis of this data contributes to
current and future management plans.<br />
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4am wake-up call never gets easy, but dawn never gets old.<br />
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And this is where I come in. This is my
third spring season with GBBO's LCR crew. The first year I was hired,
I was living in Maryland and looked forward to hiking among dry dunes
and cacti. Contrarily, the LCR surveys are some of the wettest I've
ever participated in! It's true, I've yet to be caught in a
rainstorm. But with the intermittent water flows, I never know when I
am going to be knee-, thigh-, or even chest-deep in marsh water. I've
even had the pleasure of surveying by kayak!</div>
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Today, the marsh seems to be lowering. Last week I was tip-toeing through a channel with my pack
above my head. Now crystal-clear puddles are surrounded by thick mud. I am stationed in Yuma, Arizona to survey
two big habitat creation projects: Yuma East Wetlands on the
north-east edge of town, and Laguna Division Conservation Area about
20 miles up river, straddling the California-Arizona border. Yuma
East is older, with some nice big cottonwood stands, plenty of
bird-life and even a resident bobcat. LDCA is brand new, a baby
habitat growing up fast. In 2011, the tamarisk sea was bulldozed and
re-graded to create winding channels, varied slopes for ecotones, and
larger bowls of open water for wintering ducks and future
recreational fishing. Water delivery and control systems were
constructed to direct water in what are called “pulses”, from
Imperial Dam at the north end and back to the grid through Laguna Dam at the south.
The next season, marsh plants and tiny saplings were planted by these
crazy machines that look like 4-driver tuktuks with a harvester on
the back, but instead of harvesting, it inserts baby trees into the
ground. With this new technology, the painstaking process of
hand-planting trees has been reduced to 10% of the time and energy
once necessary.<br />
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Black Phoebe nest built against the wall of a water delivery canal, LDCA.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMUABp6FVpe5lMbk8Nb21ma2gwk9-EiXCxlz0fyahCeJW4zg5f8VG_SqcrK7rNmHyr6l0fL2bVN9pR3NMTIuGxJQqRcgELi9adzodGXiYqA8RLqutyJqEWivUbSXemrtMFhf-1ruMZYQTD/s1600/20160513_060109.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMUABp6FVpe5lMbk8Nb21ma2gwk9-EiXCxlz0fyahCeJW4zg5f8VG_SqcrK7rNmHyr6l0fL2bVN9pR3NMTIuGxJQqRcgELi9adzodGXiYqA8RLqutyJqEWivUbSXemrtMFhf-1ruMZYQTD/s320/20160513_060109.jpg" width="320" /></a>By the time I arrived early in April 2016,
the marsh areas were fully grown and humming with the sewing-machine
songs of Marsh Wrens, witchity-witchity of Common Yellow-throats,
hilarious guffawing of Yellow-headed Blackbirds, and terrifying
growling of Great and Snowy egrets, White-faced Ibis, and
Black-crowned Night Herons. Cormorants were sunbathing and an osprey
was fishing from dead snags left purposefully by the dozer crews. A
beaver slapped the water in warning and fish darted in the shallows.
The trees are still young, some just reaching above my head. They
were arranged in sweeping rows with willows lining the waterways,
cottonwoods above them, and mesquite and desert riparian grasses on
the drier islands. As I weave between the glowing deciduous leaves,
the air is relatively quiet, except for the bombs going off in the
hills to the east. On the other side of Mittry Lake lies Yuma Proving
Ground, and often my “flyovers” category could include all manner
of mechanical birds, not to mention paratroopers floating on the
horizon. In the midst of current global affairs, I feel a sense of
bittersweet privilege, certain that the explosions are practice and
not intended for me. It makes my heart go out to all those for whom
that certainty is not reality. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklLnKTkBb7C8C_KRidlD0PLmQBm334vHiKpShPFrYfXk8s4sUyvzXYCrinxF4ST45B4ixOlhe809fAvKLi5kj2eHAGp-CY3uqWD5gK9b5J_fIURhTfVxx6HegpuIWp0O5avs1Q_-GW0rp/s1600/105.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklLnKTkBb7C8C_KRidlD0PLmQBm334vHiKpShPFrYfXk8s4sUyvzXYCrinxF4ST45B4ixOlhe809fAvKLi5kj2eHAGp-CY3uqWD5gK9b5J_fIURhTfVxx6HegpuIWp0O5avs1Q_-GW0rp/s320/105.JPG" width="240" /></a>The current lack of birds in the young
“forest” is not in the least disheartening, though! In fact, all
that photosynthesizing lends an excitement to the air, I can almost
taste the potential in the wafting pollen. This liminal habitat may be quiet
now, but in a few years I can envision a winding row of towering
cottonwoods ringing with Yellow Warblers and willow thickets so dense
only small creatures seeking shelter can enter. If Yuma East Wetlands
can be used as a gauge, the future is hopeful. Just across the
highway from downtown, you can be transported into a wildlife
wonderland. Bobcats, mule deer, Gambel's quail, legions of lizards,
even a few rattlesnakes dart among the well-crafted shrubland and
forest plots. Marshy ponds harbor rails and herons, and flocks of
thousands of migrating swallows roost among cattails for the night. The magic is
only interrupted by winks of human design – concrete canals slicing
through cottonwood groves or sputtering irrigation tubes winding around
mesquites and ground-squirrel burrows.
This sort of cyborg nature seems slightly disingenuous – wilderness
on life-support – until you witness the results in blossoming
biodiversity.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBG27FiNoE6KizeKoEM5TIgTHmsBopuvU4tcpLBkqTYOTg7KHhnyHerp-2EoYK2V7fLMex-2DdVwsN6HD_9hxMdACQIECPO2a8L3wC7SScNz1O9YdtaBrAboRHYnurQc7w6anj6WOVuFOA/s1600/021.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBG27FiNoE6KizeKoEM5TIgTHmsBopuvU4tcpLBkqTYOTg7KHhnyHerp-2EoYK2V7fLMex-2DdVwsN6HD_9hxMdACQIECPO2a8L3wC7SScNz1O9YdtaBrAboRHYnurQc7w6anj6WOVuFOA/s400/021.JPG" width="400" /></a>As I sneak along the drying mud in
LDCA, eyes scanning the ground for nighthawks, I see millions of
mammal and heron tracks – the collective treading of animals over
the past three years laid upon one another, never fully washed away
by the gently rising and falling water levels. Signs that wildlife
are already filtering in to this new opportunity. A barely-audible
flickering tickles my right ear, and in my peripheral vision I catch
the frantic flapping of a female Lesser Nighthawk. Her Oscar-worthy
performance of broken wings and seizures momentarily draws my
attention away from her two speckled eggs, laid directly on the sand.
Their camouflage is impeccable, and if it weren't for the nighthawks'
undying parental devotion, I would worry about accidentally stepping
on them. The nocturnal birds spend all day shading their precious
investments on exposed gravel bars, even bringing water from nearby
sources in their breast feathers to sprinkle on eggs that could go
from developing to sunny-side up in sizzling ground temperatures –
sometimes up to 20 degrees hotter than Yuma's average triple-digit
highs. I take a quick snapshot of the eggs and move on, careful not
to leave a dead-end scent trail. Within seconds, the mother is back
on her “nest” – more conceptual than practical, but it must
work often enough! </div>
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Lesser Nighthawk's meticulously crafted nest.</div>
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Water is life on earth, but it is no
more painstakingly obvious than in the desert. Parched by sun and
wind, any bit of water effects the plants and animals for miles
around. The humidity created by deciduous transpiration effects
valley temperatures and weather patterns. A hundred miles upstream,
the Colorado is fed by the Bill Williams River, one of the last
remaining stands of riparian forest. It is now a Wildlife Refuge, and
harbors thirty-four species of butterfly – eleven of which were
historically common throughout the river system, but are now only
found there. Even elusive creatures that spend most of their time on
the dry ridges – bighorn sheep, mountain lion, and ravens – come
down to the valleys and springs to fill their gullets with
life-saving liquid.
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Dams and irrigation have created a lot
of opportunity for humans in the forms of agriculture, development,
and energy. It's heartening to know that its possible to give back a
little to the other residents of this verdant desert corridor. It
takes a lot of work but it is proving to be worth every drop. I can't
wait to come back in a few years and see the habitats all grown up!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsCIS6buj4YuOca2uMkJl_iTT-4hfk2NQsYAJRjsy_qP2_vrx6Kuv1KBEm-3_6Q6ikurVsE_kxu0SoRdWZ2DtR5ffNfTRNNtlC4Rws1uGlHHtSGbYyfY7q4JYS_ipXWmgMbU2JlaMAtQnz/s1600/069.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsCIS6buj4YuOca2uMkJl_iTT-4hfk2NQsYAJRjsy_qP2_vrx6Kuv1KBEm-3_6Q6ikurVsE_kxu0SoRdWZ2DtR5ffNfTRNNtlC4Rws1uGlHHtSGbYyfY7q4JYS_ipXWmgMbU2JlaMAtQnz/s640/069.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Great Horned Owl... or desert penguin?</div>
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<br />
This essay was originally written for the Great Basin Bird Observatory blog, which you can read here: <a href="http://gbbofieldnotes.blogspot.com/">http://gbbofieldnotes.blogspot.com/</a></div>
Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-27208747620609846152016-05-02T20:38:00.001-07:002016-08-13T13:22:30.205-07:00Banding Parallax<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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Walking in circles all day. That's the
basis of bird banding. We set up loops of trails in the forest,
studded by ten 12m-long, extremely soft and nearly invisible nets
(hence the name mist-net), and walk them every 40 minutes. The paths
become apparent even after a few days, leaves and little saplings
pressed into earth, soil compacted beneath. The banding trails at
Point Reyes Bird Observatory in California, where I conducted my
training, have been walked by interns for 30 years, and look more
like canals than footpaths: deep, smooth earthen trenches dug by
boots and rain out of the forest floor.
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As birds are flying along, minding
their own business, they might suddenly feel a peculiar but
insurmountable horizontal gravity. The nets are made of thread,
basically – loose mesh diamonds of black thread that flutter
slightly in the breeze. When a bird flies into one, he or she sort of
somersaults into a pocket of mesh and then, confused by this sudden
change in trajectory and paralysis, struggles and gets itself tangled
just enough to be unable to flap back out. Usually the head, if its
small enough, and one or both “wrists” get looped and then it's
stuck until we come along to liberate it. But it doesn't see us that
way. It thinks we want to eat it, and so struggles some more in an
attempt to save its own skin, usually making our job harder. It takes
a lot of training to understand and practice the fastest, safest ways
to extract tangled birds. After awhile it seems as easy as taking a
cardigan off a small child. Every once in awhile, they are so tangled
no amount of training can help you. Then you use scissors. I have yet
to need scissors. I hope I never need to.</div>
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Wattled Honeyeater in net</div>
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Different species react differently to
being in the nets and being handled. Warblers and small hawks tend to
go comatose – just sort of lying there, barely tangled – and
extracting them is like picking a spoon out of the utensil drawer.
Chickadees are tiny and ferocious, thrashing and spinning into
anarchic balls of yarn, screwing their eyes shut with the effort.
Most banders loathe trying to undo the chaos they cause. Woodpeckers
use their tools against you, thwarting your efforts by drumming any
inch of your flesh they can aim at with their pick-ax bills. I saw a
master bander come back from the net with a Pileated Woodpecker
muzzled by a Pringles can, his hands streaming with blood. His own
blood; leaking from a hundred puncture wounds. Most of the time, its
a swift procedure, a minute or less, plus another to take some
measurements, jot some notes, and they are back on the wing.</div>
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As a banding technician in American Samoa,
what strikes my heart with anxiety is finding a Samoan Starling in
the net. They look very much like smallish crows: dark with large
bills and calculating eyes. As soon as they see you
approaching, they start screaming. Ear-splitting shrieks from the
moment you arrive until the moment you let them go. And they are
occasionally “tongued”, which is as bad as it sounds. Their
tongue is shaped like an arrowhead, and they somehow get a few
threads looped around the back points, then they grab a handful of
net with their sharp talons and pull, sometimes until their tongue
bleeds. And then as you try to undo them, they bite, jab, and stab at
all your most vulnerable parts – in between thumb and forefinger,
the wrinkles above your knuckles, the flesh alongside your nails, and
especially wounds from previous starling encounters, over and over
and over. And if they get a good grip, they thrash their heads from
side to side like a prize bass, trying to rip the skin right off your
fingers. It's as if they want to take vengeance for all the birds who
have ever been banded, for all the inconvenience and confusion humans
have enacted on all avian species in the name of conservation.
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Samoan Starling mugshot</div>
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Remember, they are also screaming this
entire time, even with a mouthful of your flesh and a bleeding
tongue. It's traumatizing for everyone involved. And every time, it
makes me wonder. Why the hell am I doing this? Why are scientists
harassing birds, interrupting their already stressful lives, just to
give them an identification number in case we get the chance to
harass them again? As an intern last fall, jarringly presented with
the dichotomous nature of wildlife-handling, I asked this question
again and again: asked my trainer, asked the scientific literature,
asked my soul.
</div>
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Maybe growing up in the suburbs,
sheltered from lions and wolves and anacondas, surrounded by my
cherished and ever-growing plush menagerie, led me to believe that
animals are soft (many are, incredibly) and that touching animals was
a way to connect with them. Raising pets teaches us that animals
enjoy being scratched and patted and belly-rubbed. Children instigate
formative emotional bonds with nature by snatching small snakes and
lizards out of the grass and feeling them wriggle free from their
grasp. Being human with hands that hold and caress and nurture, I
instinctively want to use my uniquely nimble appendages to calm small
creatures in their moments of terror, to hug them and tell them
everything's going to be alright. But the truth is, as a scientist, I
am causing those moments of terror. And the very last thing that will
comfort them is being touched by me. To them, I am no different than
any other predator that wants to rip them into bite-sized pieces.
It's a heart-breaking realization, the power-balance so repulsively
tipped that it wrenches any magic I anticipated out of such an
intimate encounter. It makes me feel content to bridge the space
between myself and wild animals only optically, through binoculars.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The main objectives of MAPS banding
programs (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) such as the
one we are flagshipping on Ofu-Olosega, are thus: to provide annual
estimates of adult population size and survivorship, proportion of
resident individuals in a population, recruitment of hatch-year birds
into the population (AKA survival of their first harrowing year), and
population growth rate using mark-recapture data of adult birds. If
that sounds like a lot of jargon to you, it basically translates to
learning whether adults or juveniles are surviving, so researchers
can further hypothesize about specific threats effecting the
population. For example, if it seems like there are less Cerulean
Warblers than there used to be, is it because something is causing
massive nest failure or keeping young birds from surviving their
first year, but the current generation of adults are doing fine? Or
is there something more overarching that is killing off adults as
well? Are they returning from their wintering grounds? Are nearby
populations doing similarly or is the trend specific to this portion
of habitat?</div>
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Long before the MAPS program was
established, people were watching birds. And counting them. The
Breeding Bird Survey and Christmas Bird Count exemplify programs that
have been estimating bird populations for decades, and it would seem
the information gleaned from this data would be sufficient to
understand bird population trends over time. Because of them, for
instance, we know for sure that aside from a few species that adapt
well to human-created environments (if you're not a birder, these are
the birds you probably see the most of: species that love cities and
suburbs as much as we do), birds are on the decline across North
America. The major threats to birds last century were over-hunting
and specific toxins such as DDT leaching into the environment. Thanks
to management strategies and wildlife refuges, hunting is less of a
problem, at least in the US, and the EPA removed DDT from production.
But the last 50 years added climate change, invasive species, and
rapid habitat loss to the list. I've always hated that term –
habitat loss – as if we simply couldn't find it, though we swear it
was around here somewhere. Although, maybe that describes the
phenomenon perfectly – a forest is cleared for a suburban
development, a few old residents are devastated as they witness a
drop off in biodiversity, and the new ones, growing up in the streets
named for the trees they replaced, have no recollection of what they
are missing.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Anyway, we know birds are declining.
Not just the Passenger Pigeon, whose populations were so mythic in
proportion we have all heard the stories yet have a hard time
imagining it now – flocks streaming across the countryside so thick
they blotted out the sun for hours. Now there are none. Older
generations, who spent more time outdoors, will tell you they've
noticed a lack – it just seems quieter out there these days.
Counting birds lets us know that what the old timers say is true, but
it doesn't provide the answers why. Setting up nets and catching
individual birds, giving them nearly weightless identification
bracelets, and sending them back into the wild, provides a deeper
glimpse into their lives.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But it's still just a glimpse.
Recapture rates are abysmally small – ranging from 1 to 30%,
depending on the banding station. Some stations, especially
breeding-focused MAPS stations, host a lot of resident, non-migratory
birds that are recaptured many times a season. Others, such as fall
migration stations, are located along migratory pathways and catch
birds who come through once a year and might never return.
Additionally, each station is only a few hundred square meters of
reality – a tiny porthole into the vast tanker of nature. But
tracking the individuals we do recapture tells us who is surviving,
and who is returning to their breeding grounds. Sometimes banders
even pull one feather or take a tiny drop of blood and send it to a
lab for analysis. This is how researchers have tracked a wide variety
of data from migration paths, to genetic variation informing changes
in the taxonomic order, to the spread of introduced illnesses like
West Nile Virus in some North American species, and Avian Malaria in
Hawaii. It sounds invasive, but after decades of banding birds of all
sizes, scientists know that the few minutes of confusion and stress
that banding causes birds has minimal effect on their livelihoods.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Backyard banding was a hobby in the
early 20<sup>th</sup> century, but now banding operations are
strictly regulated and conducted only by trained and permitted
researchers, always with the safety of the birds taking precedence
over data. The injury and fatality rate is less than 1%. Accidents do
happen, and I have witnessed both irreversible damage and the
miraculous – I once recaptured a healthy adult bird with a slightly
crooked leg, looked up his stats in the database, and found his leg
had been broken during banding several years before, splinted and
taped before he was released. It clearly healed and he has been doing
fine ever since. Even the Samoan Starlings seem to fair well after
having their tongues lacerated – their ferocity reflects their
tenacity. And thinking about it, I suppose my tongue heals pretty
quickly after biting it, too. Some individuals are recaptured over
and over and over throughout their lives, and because of it,
researchers know that the process has little effect on their
livelihood and have even illuminated lifespan records for many
species.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
MAPS stations across the continent (and
on Ofu-Olosega) also conduct habitat surveys in conjunction with
banding to link population trends with changes in habitat quality.
Birds cannot exist alone in the sky: they rely on evolutionarily
specific environments in which to hide from predators, find food, and
build nests. The data gathered by annual banding stations contributes
to land management and conservation strategies, as well as evaluating
the success of implemented strategies in real time. At least, that's
what I've been told by my supervisors and the scientific literature.
I have yet to witness a specific example, but I am still freshman in
the school of bird banding.
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All of this is what I try to tell
myself when I find a Samoan Starling caught in a net by his tongue,
and spend minutes drenched in sweat, struggling to free him while he
pummels my hands with his knife-bill, screaming until I want to
scream myself. All the feel-goodie conservation stuff gets flushed
from my psyche when I suspect injury in the bird I am handling. When
I suspect my good intentions have caused grave consequences for the
very thing I am trying to “save”. It makes me sick to my stomach
and declare this to be the last banding job I ever sign up for. It
makes me think the whole thing is a farce, that biologists don't gain
any vital information from all those numbers, that its just an excuse
to hold a beautiful, wild creature in your hand while you take a
selfie that you can post online when you get back to civilization. It
makes me think science is too focused on the species at the expense
of the individual. Even the terminology is suspect – birds are not
just banded, they are “processed”, like a cut of meat in a
factory. It starts to feel like modern conservation is relegated to
deciding between the lesser of two evils: invasive intervention or
environmental destruction. My erupting emotions make me want to drop
out of banding academy altogether. I return to our field house in the afternoon with heavy heart and a knot in my stomach.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And then a few days later, we catch a
Fruit Dove. A resplendent, shining piece of feathered rainbow, a male
Purple-capped Fruit Dove lay docile in the net after a whole morning
of empties. My heart fluttered with excitement as I carefully removed
netting from his magenta-lidded face. His eyes were bright and clear
and somehow reminiscent of dinosaurs resurrected in our collective
memory by Jurassic Park. His underbelly pulsed with all the hues of
the most vibrant sunset you've ever seen – fiery orange, lemon
yellow, flamboyant fuchsia, moody burgundy – as refreshing as a
sno-cone in the dog days of summer. His only expression of discomfort
while I held him for banding were his toes clenched tightly around
each other – like the hands of a worried little monk clasped
beneath his cloaksleeves. He never struggled, never bit or clawed
out, never uttered a peep. And he smelled so wondrously sweet like
flowers, I wanted to bury my nose in his soft plumage forever. Then
we sent this rainbow back into the sky where he belonged, his wing
beats strong and thrumming with wild vitality.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And I realized: I am sucker for this
banding stuff after all. Many young scientists, including myself, are
at least partly drawn to banding birds by the fleeting moment you get
to hold a vibrating piece of wilderness in your hand then send it on
its way. And for many, even and especially veterans, the motivation
to continue is fueled by the desire to understand and conserve.
Science claims to liberate itself from human bias, but what human
activity isn't at least motivated by our fickle emotions? Emotions
that cascade into opinions and passions but also action,
determination, discovery. If the data collected really can help
ensure the abundance of these gorgeous, mysterious, even ferocious
creatures into the future, then maybe it is worth a few moments of
discomfort – the birds' and my own. Maybe. I'm still not sure.
Anyway, I still have two more months of walking in circles to decide.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWsEGq2aIxug7pdYKYUy0EoZsAny3kdBBuRjLiLhqOwPHvqAhknoxUhPdtbL5nEFNDHauFPi4Ya9MFieZzdnx1eVXhTZKqQRtrPU_ZbCbxaHv1BNdZvtzGpYsLlRmiRp0nGeK6HgyyJhyC/s1600/IMG_3390.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWsEGq2aIxug7pdYKYUy0EoZsAny3kdBBuRjLiLhqOwPHvqAhknoxUhPdtbL5nEFNDHauFPi4Ya9MFieZzdnx1eVXhTZKqQRtrPU_ZbCbxaHv1BNdZvtzGpYsLlRmiRp0nGeK6HgyyJhyC/s320/IMG_3390.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Resources:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Bird Bander's Code of Ethics
<a href="https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBl/resources/ethics.cfm">https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBl/resources/ethics.cfm</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Study into the Safety of Banding
<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110629203014.htm">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110629203014.htm</a></div>
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Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-64200206791910803622016-04-07T16:48:00.000-07:002016-05-23T17:15:13.402-07:00Encounters with the curiously familiar faces of Khao Sok National Park<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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Dusky Langur at Khao Sok National Park</div>
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I heard the whoosh of a tree branch
swinging upward, suddenly relieved of its occupant high above my head
- what I was quickly learning is the sound of a monkey jumping
through the canopy. I crane my neck back and peer into the dense
mosaic of leaves. Up near the heart of a towering palm, I see an
impossibly sweet face, like an otherworldly doll, staring back down
at me. The face is surrounded by soft black fur and attached to a
human-like body holding something that wiggles and then turns to
stare at me too – its impossibly adorable baby, clad in a striking
cloak of golden fur. I fumble excitedly for my camera, but find
nothing! Then it dawns on me – Bobby and I are hiking along the
main trail of one of Southern Thailand's biggest outdoorsy tourist
attractions, Khao Sok National Park, and I set my camera down when we
stopped for a snack a few minutes ago without picking it back up
again! </div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That was super smart thing #1. Then I
commence super smart thing #2, which is to start sprinting back down
the trail <i>without</i> leaving my bouncing backpack and swinging binoculars with
Bobby. It was, of course, much further than I thought, as I huffed up
and down the rocky roller-coaster dirt track through woolly curtains
of humidity, past confused hikers, scanning the leaf litter for the
log I remember squatting on as I scarfed down some salty dried fish
and fruits. It didn't seem like the kind of park that would draw
opportunistic thieves, but I wheezed and jogged as fast as I could,
just in case. It had been 4 months since my last jog, and I could
feel it. Several hundred meters down the trail I spied my camera
waiting patiently by the log, snagged it, and ran/hobbled back. I
passed a bewildered couple and tried to explain myself in between
gasps, but the man shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said
something to his partner in French. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggbPtySDUjwKA8FqBWEajyO8BOhHXcvAOBDNdcmpVgEajgCVqYAmbCSbmPEdrqVwBNmiKhOLu_qIKoofx_XlcEEpUSwuoA15L2mkC7datCjkOm9CMxtG_E7kNss2nKEr6WnA2Xv9r7_rqt/s1600/DSCN7046.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggbPtySDUjwKA8FqBWEajyO8BOhHXcvAOBDNdcmpVgEajgCVqYAmbCSbmPEdrqVwBNmiKhOLu_qIKoofx_XlcEEpUSwuoA15L2mkC7datCjkOm9CMxtG_E7kNss2nKEr6WnA2Xv9r7_rqt/s400/DSCN7046.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Dusky Langur</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
By the time I got back to where
Bobby and now a few other hikers were staring up into the trees, the
langur with its golden child had evacuated, and I was so completely
drenched in sweat I could have wrung it out into a reeking, DEET-spiked cocktail. This was made even more embarrassing by
the fact that I was wearing my old mosquito-ridden-jungle field
clothes from Samoa: ill-fitting long sleeve button down and dorky-but-practical quick-dry pants, which were being held up by a fannypack because I
neglected to pack a belt. Quite surprisingly, after all the
internet research we had done, there were no mosquitoes, and most
other tourists were hiking along in fashionable tank tops and booty
shorts, as if they were strolling back from the white sand beaches of
Phuket. Thank god we didn't take all the chat forums' advice and buy
leech socks – what seemed basically like heavy canvas tubes that
you wear under your hiking socks and pull up past your knees! We had
clearly arrived in Thailand during a pleasantly mosquito-less,
leech-less and of course rain-less dry season, and I looked forward
to reassessing my wardrobe tomorrow!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDNQjBzSfTjDoaRFcLDkpdDpGnAHJsgP1D4_gnoaOqwZnuc9RYEFGpillKnXwVQjAJcNy0-FLklku26BYxqkpwygZF8S_r2k7wIS3xHrRyxZgSOs9OLhCY-6jMAFUT_TPdqvRPmUa6pPsM/s1600/DSCN7053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDNQjBzSfTjDoaRFcLDkpdDpGnAHJsgP1D4_gnoaOqwZnuc9RYEFGpillKnXwVQjAJcNy0-FLklku26BYxqkpwygZF8S_r2k7wIS3xHrRyxZgSOs9OLhCY-6jMAFUT_TPdqvRPmUa6pPsM/s400/DSCN7053.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
A legitimate gibbon, called White-handed Gibbon, glimpsed through the canopy later at Sri Phang Nga National Park</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Meanwhile, I scanned the canopy anyway
and spotted a few dusky loiterers. Two were playfully grooming and
wrestling each other on a fallen log, but were edged out by
approaching macaques – another long-tailed monkey species that seem
much more comfortable around the hordes of tourists. An American
woman dragging two bored teenagers came up and asked what we were
looking at. I mistakenly called them gibbons, because that's what the
owner of our lodge had mentioned last night as part of the expected
morning chorus. She got excited, having never seen a gibbon in the
wild, and began rummaging through her backpack for binoculars. As I
struggled to direct her gaze toward the retreating langurs, her sons
snickered and shouted, MOM! We both turned around to find a little
macaque galloping away with a gigantic bag of Lays potato chips. He
had apparently snatched it right out of the closed backpack slumped
at her feet, and proceeded to settle on a branch at eye-level along
the trail, deftly rip open the crinkly packaging, and stuff
his face with BBQ snacks as the other gawkers filmed it from
smartphones and ipads.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi27fh_Acl1p4j2QW2dUGXIg1olvxu3ICFQ3YmpNqjyyQ_LB2mwvG_hngoORFRXL6Wzv6177PeRInW2KYaBEDJVijWvAo1gly5mH567g51wEoIrFE6n7T1bZPCyW47dffOM0O46pDsEaksR/s1600/DSCN7031.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi27fh_Acl1p4j2QW2dUGXIg1olvxu3ICFQ3YmpNqjyyQ_LB2mwvG_hngoORFRXL6Wzv6177PeRInW2KYaBEDJVijWvAo1gly5mH567g51wEoIrFE6n7T1bZPCyW47dffOM0O46pDsEaksR/s400/DSCN7031.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Macaque with prize</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Bobby and I planned this trip for the
birds, but I have to admit that seeing monkeys in the wild was almost
more thrilling than all the exotic sounds and colors flitting through
the canopy on wings. There is something so strange about having this
little human-shaped creature walk alongside you, look up at you with
expressive eyes, pick up objects with tiny, dexterous hands, and sit
hunched over like a little old man so it can manipulate, contemplate,
and nibble. Observing these little beings, I could really empathize
with the original storytellers of these parts, who wove epic tales full of spirits and
sacred beings that have their own agendas and lives. Monkeys are so
familiar to us, even without science constantly confirming their
genetic links. Across the globe, primates are used as pharmaceutical
proxies, their sacrificed lives making medicine safe for us, research
into neurology possible, cures for diseases reality. But in the
jungle, coming face to face, what matters is this: their forward
facing eyes can look into our own, like sharing a gaze between eons
of evolution. Not to suggest evolution as a linear path - them to us.
Who is to say which is more advanced? The humans who are cleverly
inventing their own demise, or the monkeys who snatch chips from
their backpacks?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-XPbM1XEQXhEw_EQ8VpEHokMvOf4VBYkubG74fO9Q4nk8Dp6OOLWl8z7-AhVTgUv-JFyXXNAX6q09xaqZSAj7l_HDbD638dL-AyNFhfiuvEZetAmSi-2BVa2im744OQJ0-sM5JcWKR8d/s1600/DSCN7022.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-XPbM1XEQXhEw_EQ8VpEHokMvOf4VBYkubG74fO9Q4nk8Dp6OOLWl8z7-AhVTgUv-JFyXXNAX6q09xaqZSAj7l_HDbD638dL-AyNFhfiuvEZetAmSi-2BVa2im744OQJ0-sM5JcWKR8d/s400/DSCN7022.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Young macaque pensively nibbling</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy229NwGZowybw0zfphZ3KgZaCGFgCMesDamQ0uuWK9qn9ZnnjJxrRCdVU5eXM2a8Y-a_fnlMu4NTKEZVBe9QVMBCK9yb7SWdEPXbwAWxasZCnM8DeIuL-8dlApFztV5WCEHQMv0TEiaLS/s1600/DSCN7024.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy229NwGZowybw0zfphZ3KgZaCGFgCMesDamQ0uuWK9qn9ZnnjJxrRCdVU5eXM2a8Y-a_fnlMu4NTKEZVBe9QVMBCK9yb7SWdEPXbwAWxasZCnM8DeIuL-8dlApFztV5WCEHQMv0TEiaLS/s400/DSCN7024.JPG" width="400" /></a> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Ok, the birds were amazing too: Wallace's Hawk Eagle with squirrel breakfast, seen screaming over the trail moments before this story! </div>
Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-1005356749716885242016-01-03T20:51:00.000-08:002016-04-19T20:59:22.660-07:00Dawn<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
(ok this is actually a sunset, but you get the idea)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I woke up before 4am and couldn't
sleep. We usually wake at 4am for work, and usually I am an enormous
pain in the ass to drag out of bed, but today was Sunday, our
obligatory day off, a day to sleep in til 7. For some reason, though,
my mind started cranking and I could tell it wasn't going to stop. I
got up, walked down the dark hall to the main room of the house.
Didn't switch the light on, knowing it would beam into the bedroom
windows where Bobby was still asleep. Sat in the dark for a little
while, then stepped outside into the night.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was dead quiet. No wind, no crickets
chirping or katydids sawing, even the sea's ever-present roar seemed
hushed. I saw a gleam flash in a breadfruit tree as I scanned the
yard with my headlamp. It was a bat's eyes, two shining marbles
hanging down from a branch. They blinked out as the bat took off
silently. Still looking at the place where the bat had been, I
suddenly saw the breadfruit tree, in its wholeness, as a being that
started as a seed and captured the sun's energy to grow its giant
leaves and produce fruit that fall to the ground and become mushy fly
buffets writhing with the possibility of more trees. The stuff I knew
intellectually could be sensed, quite viscerally, all at once; its
lifespan crunched into a moment. The sort of visions only possible in
the hush before dawn.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I walked down the slope to the beach. I
put my feet in the edge of the ocean – the ragged fringe of a quilt
that covers half the globe, ever billowing in the wind, its wrinkles
crumpling up on shores everywhere. The water reflected strangely in
the glow of my headlamp, like a rack of eerily undulating buns. I
wondered if sharks were slicing through the wet dark, inches from my
vulnerable toes. A sliver of moon hung high above and a few stars
winked through the clouds. As the first light of dawn appeared, I
could just barely make out forms of bats flying over the reef and
ghost crabs standing on the sand. I wondered if they'd been there in
the darkness or just awakened by the promise of day. It was lunchtime
on the east coast, where many people I know and love were probably
enjoying mimosas and Sunday brunch after a weekend of ringing in the
New Year.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I walked up onto the runway to see the
sun rise. A small window of pale peach and tangerine opened on the
horizon between Olosega and Ta'u, framed by curling gray clouds. A
San-Fransisco-like belt of fog drifted between the islands, too,
silhouetting the towers of Olosega Point. The sky filled with black
shadows circling in the still air above the mountain and the shore:
hundreds of bats! What were they doing up there, far from the fruit
they eat? One was moving too slowly, wings held rigid like passenger
plane – a frigate bird sailing west. Two others were moving too
fast, darting and curving together – a pair fairy terns, their
identity revealed like a magic trick, black silhouettes against the
dim dawn transformed instantly to white with the shadowed ridge as
backdrop. Plovers, poised like ghostly ballerinas, appeared on the
runway – were they always there? As if suddenly noticing me, too, a
rail shrieked and darted across the road. It was almost chilly.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't often get to experience dawn so
peacefully; standing still, watching the palette transform,
witnessing animals start their day. Usually I am happy enough to
catch glimpses of it between scrambling to start my day. Standing
there, I realized how unbearably lonesome life would be without the
multitudes of other creatures going about their own lives, whether we
care to notice or not.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sunlight had yet to penetrate the
kitchen when I returned. I flipped the light switch and saw a gecko
run across the wall. A crab clung to the counter's edge and another
perched on the sponge. They all skittered away to their daytime
hiding places, and, despite the mess they make, I was glad to know
they were there.
</div>
Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-47464210042236602372015-12-31T20:46:00.000-08:002016-04-19T20:47:18.327-07:00Seabirds at Olosega Point<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Last week of December, 2015.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's been raining for days. We haven't
been able to conduct our last banding station of the month, which
perches on the southeast ridge of Olosega and is only reachable by a
slick hike up a crumbling cliff. But Bobby and I are starting to get
cabin fever, so at the first hint of slacking rain, we decide to go
scout the trail, make sure it still exists, and that we remember the
net lanes we set up over a month ago. Halfway up, it starts pouring
again, but we soldier on and check things out anyway. The trails are
decent, though the nets are weirdly placed and I become aware of how
much we've learned about setting up a banding station since then. The
way down is a little more treacherous, as any seasoned hiker should
expect, its harder to keep your balance on sliding earth as you stare
past your feet at certain death hundreds of feet below.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj27ZJHMiB7PdxQU_xr57LhP_h7ccs9I6t1rtecuOEbuO8prdefds3hmn5B98ae10cOx3eftxiNrArjkHPdTnyKmc3aaivttHD2rs_O3BtP8fwFp1ClOwE0D-28zJfChiAx9KpDoqbg2QJx/s1600/DSCN6620.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikeg1ddd9ThGUAVT8CmkFHNFugO01aiyN3k5UWsbUk_TYLSGmvvwF0IlPQ9TX2wuEhfEBHweXVfo2zRANoka4jRXlJYZMTsTPAJpgROziUQgka3-ts6QbMXFZQA_CE0O8DdGRtBWHxgszK/s1600/DSCN6091.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikeg1ddd9ThGUAVT8CmkFHNFugO01aiyN3k5UWsbUk_TYLSGmvvwF0IlPQ9TX2wuEhfEBHweXVfo2zRANoka4jRXlJYZMTsTPAJpgROziUQgka3-ts6QbMXFZQA_CE0O8DdGRtBWHxgszK/s320/DSCN6091.JPG" width="320" /></a>We round the corner overlooking the
point, a dragon's tail of towering basalt cliffs that curls out from
the southeast tip of the island. The view beyond is nothing but a
sheet of steel grey stretching from sky to shore, engulfing the
hunched silhouette of Ta'u eight miles southeast. It looks more like
Scotland than 14 degrees south of the equator. As if knitted out of
the cloud wool, graceful shapes materialize above us. First a
frigatebird; lazily drifting through the howling wind, its crossbow
wings appearing to contort and curl with each new degree of
perspective. Then brown and red-footed boobies, unfazed by the
storm's rage, loft and lean into air currents with the enviable ease
of seasoned surfers, sometimes whooshing by our heads, staring down
their huge bills at us, before being sucked back into the grayness.
The only hues rebelling against the monotone are the waves, glowing
glacier-blue as they pile and jostle into form from the gunmetal
swell, then explode against the basalt tower with rumbling force,
shattering into whitewater that shudders and boils its way to the
rocky shore.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Suddenly a cacophony erupts in the air
in front of us – two aptly named Blue-gray Noddies, barely larger
than robins, are shrieking and tap-dancing on the wind as it races up
the cliff face. Then they tuck their dagger wings and dive down
toward the section of shoreline hidden far below our feet. Seabirds
are amazingly adapted to this steel gray world of the ocean at its
fury-est. They live for the weather that sends us ducking for cover,
searching for safe harbor, craving clam chowder. I watch a pair of
Brown Noddies sheer along the crest of a curling wave, zip
effortlessly up as it crashes, and shimmy the salt spray from their
tails, while a frigatebird calmly reaches its face back toward its
foot, to attend an itch in midair. A Brown Booby eyes a tastey morsel
beneath the roiling surface, folds its wings back origami-style, and
drops like a torpedo into the swell. It rises back into the air with
a few easy flaps of its enormous wings.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Beyond, I suddenly notice a white wall
blotting out the southern horizon and marching straight towards us.
My instinct is to run for the truck, but I am mesmerized by this
god-sized curtain advancing quietly over the roar of the surf. Within
moments, the view of Ofu to the west is obliterated by white. The
curtain gathers its folds around the point until we can see raindrops
slanting against the black cliffs. Then it hits us. Instantly
drenched, soaked to the bone, what's left of my vision blurred by
splattered glasses. We hold our ground, chests out to the ocean,
shirts glued to wet skin, grinning. That rejuvenating moment when you
realize its summer and rain doesn't kill you, so you jump in a
puddle, raise your face to the heavens, and let it pool in your smile
lines, sensing the moment with your whole body like a child.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But then the wind smacks us out of our
reverie, sending rare goosebumps up our sleeveless arms, launching
more and more water at the cliffs below and above us, as if furious
at our lack of terror. We bumble down the slick trail, still beaming,
absentmindedly slicing at the vines with our machetes, dreaming of
seabirds. Those bad-ass motherfuckers. We strip down to our underwear
before getting in the truck, to the dismay of the modest constituents
of Olosega town, who are out walking and playing cricket and
volleyball in the rain as we drive through.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When we get back to Ofu, we are
informed by Scott, the NPS super, that the great white curtain is
actually a hurricane, passing just south of Ta'u as we speak.
Cyclones have been devastating to these islands in the past –
Hurricane Olaf hit the north side of Olosega just ten years ago,
destroying an entire village that now, crumbling and abandoned, is
being taken back by jungle. We set up a banding station there, our
trails cross through the windows of now-roofless houses and past
laser-embossed granite headstones tossed aside broken graves,
everything carpeted with moss and choked by thick vines like a set
from Indiana Jones. But Scott doesn't seem to have an apocalyptic
attitude about this hurricane. He's mostly worried that his plane
won't leave tomorrow. Looks like we won't be banding for a few more
days.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>
Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-36712036915569351692015-12-17T19:21:00.000-08:002016-04-03T19:22:02.914-07:00Banyan Tree
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First part of the climb is up a
wobbling staircase of giant volcanic boulders that threaten to roll
out from under our feet or crush our ankles into pulp. Clutching
these boulders and very much holding the cliffside together is an
enormous Banyan tree – also known as Strangler Fig for its habit of
using other trees as scaffolding, sending roots down the trunk and
branches up over its host's until the original tree is no longer
recognizable. This particular specimen comprises several enveloped
trunks leaning out over the cliff slope at a precarious angle, but
has sent down support roots like an organic, overly-enthusiastic
suspension bridge cable. Some of these cables braid into and down the
muscular trunks like sinew, porpoising as convenient handles for
hoisting oneself upward, but not as helpful coming down. Bobby,
having done the climb just a few days before, takes the lead as I
carefully follow, hand-over-hand.</div>
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I am sitting in my own piss. I was so
excited about climbing this monster that I forgot I wanted to unload
at the base. Suddenly aware of my urgency, I try to aim through a
hole in the braided branches, without looking at the forest floor 70
feet below, but don't quite hit the bulls-eye. Then I look up, and
realize that climbing further is a little more treacherous than I am
ready for, and the place I just peed is actually the most secure spot
to hunker down. Resigned, I try to move a foot to the right, resting
only my left thigh on the damp trunk and my right thigh on the spongy
root-ball of a dead epiphyte. Surprisingly comfortable, except that
the possibility of this clump of dirt suddenly losing its mortal grip
on the trunk, launching me into a backward somersault to my death,
sort of keeps me from relaxing.
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KEE! KEE! KEE! KEE! KEE! A Collared
Kingfisher calls triumphantly from the canopy. I hesitantly loosen my
white-knuckle grip on the trunk and raise my binoculars. Looking up
at its chin, I can see the bird's chest heaving with each gasp
between yelps. This is awesome. A honey-eater darts past, and a
starling whistles. The sun is briefly blotted out by the silhouette
of a giant bat. Then, my eyes zero in on leaves shaking 30 feet ahead
of me. It's our quarry, the Many-Colored Fruit Dove!
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A graceful ball of lime green, white,
and magenta feathers, it hops along the branches like an arboreal
Easter bunny, picking at tiny fruits with its gentle dove bill.
According to the Samoan biologists, Many-coloreds are particularly
fond of banyan fruits, and this tree apparently serves a buffet to a
whole congregation of them, as my eyes quickly adjust to this new
perspective and begin picking out more and more individuals among the
canopy. Despite their flamboyant costumes, they are amazingly well
camouflaged and can disappear behind a leaf, then emerge many
branches over. They tiptoe along impossibly small twigs and slide
strip-pole-style down dangling vines. Watching their aptitude, I am
aware of my inescapable loyalty to gravity, which seems to be pulling
harder on my body now than it ever does on terra firma.
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I shake off my jitters and pull myself
up the last few meters to a massive horizontal branch where Bobby has
been perching. It's more precarious than my pee spot, but the view is
much better without the trunk obstructing the dove-dappled outer
limbs. Beyond, I can see the top fronds of beach-side coconut palms
and a steel blue horizon. A swift breeze rushes through leaves around
me, conjuring my treasured last days of the Mid-Atlantic summers
where I grew up, when autumn winds are just starting to blow the
sweltering humidity back to the ocean from whence it came, whispering
of much-anticipated amber hues and crisp nights by a campfire.
Meanwhile, the roar of the Pacific breaking on the near-shore reef
shelf is a constant reminder of where I am now – on the sweaty
forehead of an ancient volcano in the middle of the greatest expanse
of water on our planet. Water that is heating up, killing coral and
causing more intense cyclones that devastate both villages and old
growth forests on these tropical oases. How many eons have these
colorful doves frolicked among figs on this tiny dot of land? How
many years will they continue? I notice a resplendent male dozing at
the end of my perch, aloof to the havoc we humans are causing, and
amazingly unperturbed by the sight of two of us high above the
ground, infiltrating the realm reserved for winged creatures. I feel
a jealous pang for his ignorance, send silent thanks to them for
graciously tolerating our clumsy presence, then start the slippery
slide back down to where my feet are happily tethered.</div>
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Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-89624464326111185812015-11-22T18:45:00.000-08:002016-04-03T19:23:34.516-07:00Mt. TumutumuThe rain, which had been gently commingling with sweat in my damp t-shirt all day, suddenly obliterated sight and hearing in heavy sheets. We were taking a break at the top of Tumutumu, Ofu's pinnacle, and this was the signal to start heading back down the slippery jungle two-track. I decided to finally pull out my thrift-store rain jacket, which stuck to my wet arms as I tried to drag it around my already sopping body. Day three of our so-far unsuccessful recon mission to find the elusive Shy Ground Dove was coming up short. This small brown dove is declining across its Polynesian range, and, amongst the main islands of American Samoa, has been detected incidentally only on Ofu-Olosega by biologists and locals a handful of times in the past decade. Each new fact-hazy anecdote we are told strangely adds doubt, rather than hope to our search and in turn, my suspicion takes on tall-tale proportions as well (...maybe everyone has been mistaking other species for it, maybe none of the local biologists are that great of birders after all, maybe the specimens from historical collections were mislabeled...). One of the main purposes of our banding project here is to gather much-needed natural history information about this species before it goes extinct on American Samoa, unless it already has. We are all trying not to think about that possibility. <br />
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“If they're out here,” Bobby says hopefully, “we will find them.” He's probably right. No one has made a concerted effort to be outside every morning observing birds on these twin islands in many years. There is still hope. A flash of wings darts past my peripheral vision – could it be? Excitedly pulling foggy binos to my eyes, I see not a dove, but Pacific Golden Plover uncharacteristically riding the wind like the White-rumped Swiftlets cruising openings in the canopy above our heads. Seems weird to see a shorebird at 500m, but I've stopped having expectations about anything in this place. I wipe rain out of my eyes and continue after our field party, two Samoan naturalists and a bat biologist who are probably halfway down and already making plans for tonight's barbecue.
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The hike, besides painfully reminding me of the existence of my glutius maximus, was illuminating in other ways. Bobby and I saw two new species – plump, sweet-singing Polynesian Starling in the canopy, and a pair of of courting Samoan Shrikebills chattering like wrens in the undergrowth. We scouted promising locations for a banding station, and took in breathtaking views of the coastline and Ofu's famous canine-teeth cliffs from a windy overlook. The footpath to the overlook was flanked by orchids, epiphites, gigantic ferns towering above our heads like relics from the Jurassic era, and a rocky cave with a geo-cachers bucket of treasure hidden inside.
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I was leading the lagging half of our party that consisted of birders – me, Bobby and Kim – when suddenly I heard the soft trill of wings erupt near my right ear. Looking up, I saw a vase-shaped clump of organic matter covered in moss and perched on the crown of a scraggly sapling. I tried in vain to peer in the top of the clump, mumbling excitedly about a possible nest. Bobby, deft and practical, pulled out his phone and reached up to take a picture – revealing two speckled eggs! We backed up the trail to wait and see what expectant parent would return. The moment we settled into a crouch behind some dripping branches we heard the voices of our companions coming back down the trail from the overlook, threatening to thwart our patience. Kim ran ahead to intercept them, and only a few moments later, two chattering birds chased each other past the sapling, and one snuck up to the nest and settled down, its head and tail poking out the top of the mossy vase – a Samoan Shrikebill! It seemed endearingly naive to our presence, even as Bobby crept closer to take a photo. It sat still long enough for the others to approach and for me to make a decent little field sketch in my rite-in-the-rain. Kim said it was the first Shrikebill nest she'd seen in her two years here.
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Not suspecting to top this moment of the hike, we continued to the overlook. After peeking into the cave and using a rope to scale the last slick slope, we popped out of the jungle onto a small grassy platform that seemed to perch impossibly on the edge of a drop straight down to the shore. White-tailed Tropicbirds floated above the glimmering turquoise coral reef and an ominous gray cloud perched on the peak of Olosega like a Russian fur hat. The wind nearly blew us all to our deaths and we basked in the surreal beauty of the twin emerald islands before us, made all the more sublime by curtains of sooty fog and approaching rain.<br />
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Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-47696546871167464152015-11-21T18:32:00.000-08:002016-04-03T18:34:31.982-07:00Sili<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGsTQk-O807qFEPH5YsvKfnZK9j7kH3Ufqom5Y42wuaKkgLmpHwDznRUC-LK-EdEsGxz2Wnjdm2rBtRsRNM5wp0mdL7xdC946K6oWPq9OWFQOcabgg8jRV-g-HSoeDUETAOwO_GhvAYem/s1600/20151120_104922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGsTQk-O807qFEPH5YsvKfnZK9j7kH3Ufqom5Y42wuaKkgLmpHwDznRUC-LK-EdEsGxz2Wnjdm2rBtRsRNM5wp0mdL7xdC946K6oWPq9OWFQOcabgg8jRV-g-HSoeDUETAOwO_GhvAYem/s400/20151120_104922.jpg" /></a></div><br><br>
Eight hours. Lurching into the dark, a rusting mini-tanker called M.V.Sili carries passengers and cargo to Ofu. Consciousness comes and goes like the waves crashing over the railing, soaking Bobby and me, then sloshing across the floor, boxes and shoes swirling around underneath the steel bench where I attempt to sleep, cushioned by a few chipping layers of paint. Everything saran-wrapped or else. Large palettes hydroplaning. Unlatched metal gates swinging open and clanging shut. Deafening chug and choking odor of diesel engine. I get up to have a look, stumbling to my feet, slipping on wet and gyroscoping floor. Grasp for the railing, look out into blackness pierced only a few meters by floodlight. Through stinging raindrops I see swells so big they seem almost to swallow the boat and spit it back out with each pass. I bumble back to my bench, curl up as tight as I can, and wait. Am I asleep? How did Polynesians do it in canoes? <br><br>
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The darkness gives way ever so slightly to cloudy steel gray. I head for the bow. Seasickness, miraculously avoided until now, creeps into my belly. A hunk of land growing on the horizon. Noddies look as tiny and fragile as butterflies flitting between the swells. Boobies careening. Dolphins surfacing beneath the bow. A palm-studded cove invites us to dock. Tinny sounds of K-Ci and Jojo's All My Life beam from a teenager's pocket. Unrecognizable dawn chorus, tempered by rooster cries, wafts down from a looming slope. Home for the next 4 months.Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-27595948101530724012015-11-15T18:13:00.000-08:002016-04-03T18:15:31.901-07:00RainThe rain doesn't pour in American Samoa, it pummels. The roar is deafening, like an army of HVAC exhaust units, the percussion of billions of heavy raindrops hitting billions of thick, leathery leaves, not to mention rooftops, cars, roads, trash cans, piles of detritus, puddles turning into ponds, and of course, the ocean. Even indoors with the windows shut, you have to converse in decibels usually reserved for busy sports bars on game night. You can hear the deluge approaching well before feeling a single drop.
Being fourteen degrees south of the Equator, there is no proper summer or winter here, only a rainy season from November to May, and a slightly less rainy season May-October. Clouds are a near-constant, amazingly unpredictable aspect to the scenery here, billowing up the steep cliffs as if birthed from salt spray, gathering in ominous bouquets then just as suddenly evaporating, marching along the horizon like celestial tankers, or reflecting a psychedelic palette with hues that mix and splatter as the sun sets into the ocean. A black cloud usually squats over each island's highest ridge, threatening though not always delivering. But when it does, it really really does. Luckily, the deluge rarely lasts long, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few days. Sometimes it's pouring on your house while your neighbor enjoys sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it doesn't even rain all day. But the sheer force at which clouds can throw water on these islands is why annual rainfall for the territory can average two to three hundred inches per year. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Wvc6SFhxMt6F_6FxPt12QmfNB6vFGxU6lnzCre_Bf2BpVyS_l7cJJG0W-mCaMcmDhU1yHBYZk8Yov-rJvjpM-ubbOJQyu4588QbZEBGlxEd6iEFvEc4nOWlsDUuoDSaO-eGbSPfrWuJ0/s1600/DSCN5116.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Wvc6SFhxMt6F_6FxPt12QmfNB6vFGxU6lnzCre_Bf2BpVyS_l7cJJG0W-mCaMcmDhU1yHBYZk8Yov-rJvjpM-ubbOJQyu4588QbZEBGlxEd6iEFvEc4nOWlsDUuoDSaO-eGbSPfrWuJ0/s400/DSCN5116.JPG" /></a></div>Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-40939146081888485092015-11-14T17:59:00.000-08:002016-04-03T18:12:14.696-07:00Welcome to American Samoa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI9-hV5bg-xTXb6-VnD5Z0uvuptsoMqIRssUH9_wrL3LyCvpuBQ4mod9nqPxBLHIibTEoGdhqBtJo-8vzl4cmzXMWP0IduBdGSDVp79R8cDqR9uQH7lJZfJJuSqWJV37T1Lq1e4NTSOBnk/s1600/DSCN5105.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI9-hV5bg-xTXb6-VnD5Z0uvuptsoMqIRssUH9_wrL3LyCvpuBQ4mod9nqPxBLHIibTEoGdhqBtJo-8vzl4cmzXMWP0IduBdGSDVp79R8cDqR9uQH7lJZfJJuSqWJV37T1Lq1e4NTSOBnk/s400/DSCN5105.JPG" /></a></div>
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“What's the latest gossip?” I ask my crew leader, Kim Kayano, biologist for the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources of American Samoa. She's heard that we might be able to load supplies onto the Sili tomorrow and depart on it the next day. We've heard this rumor, or some version of it, about seven times in the past week, since arriving on Tutuila, American Samoa's main island. The Sili is a mysterious boat that brings semi-weekly supplies and travelers to the people living on the outlying Manua islands of Ta'u and Ofu-Olosega. The Sili has been in “dry dock” for repairs for over a month, and right as it was getting ready to dip its belly back into harbor, the local power company decided to charter the entire boat for their own purposes, with various promises to bring us, or our supplies, or just one truck and one human and no supplies, with them to Manua. We, meaning myself and my partner, Bobby Wilcox, are here on contract with Institute of Bird Populations to conduct a bird banding survey on Ofu-Olosega through the end of March. With the Sili's current reputation, we can't really afford to travel there without the stockpile of food we bought at Cost-U-Less that we hope will carry us through the very real potential of no resupply until we return in late March. We have learned quickly that frustration is futile; the only reasonable reaction is to laugh and say “sounds perfect.” After all, this particular Limbo offers ocean views and decent snorkeling, how can we complain? Not to mention, we are staying with a bat biologist who is currently taking care of two little orphans that enjoy papaya and belly rubs, and practice flying around their aviary (batiary?) at dusk. At least once a day, I think someone has thrown a basketball at the house, then I realize it was a falling coconut. There are certainly worse places to be indefinitely detained.<br><br>
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American Samoa is situated approximately halfway between Hawai'i and New Zealand, which is to say it's in the middle of effing nowhere on the big blue side of the Earth, along with a smattering of hundreds of other volcanic sneezes with high proportions of vowels in their names. The only flights to American Samoa launch from Honolulu or Apia, Samoa - what used to be called less ambiguously Western Samoa, the independent half of this 9-island archipelago, which also happens to be a significantly more important tourist destination, for infrastructural reasons that are becoming all too obvious. Heading southwest from Honolulu International Airport, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself a minority on the tin can that lofted us nearly to the date line – most people traveling to American Samoa are American Samoan. The main reason for this, and the lack of tourism, is that ninety percent of land here is communally owned by indigenous family dynasties and it is illegal to transfer ownership to anyone less than half-Samoan. How they managed to maintain this traditional system after becoming a US territory in 1900 is impressive and commendable, or close-minded and an obstacle to development, depending on who you ask. The National Park of American Samoa, part of the US National Park system, actually leases land in 50-year increments directly from its family owners, allowing subsistence agriculture and fishing within its boundaries. Bobby and I have yet to make it over to the area of the Park north of Pago Pago, partly for lack of transport but especially for fear that we may miss the fateful call that the Sili is loading for departure!<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyLleMiOmDe7nA8JngkZzEuDGYZ7cZ-bT_K-qId131STMIek9ff5HG0Jrta3ybjM4jsuVgUuKJ_19n6fX-Ogs71z-gZIPPaW1QwTkGycrmXI9NVFzLl3p2lRRVT-ZrZZC8o9OYVaPyWLYY/s1600/DSCN5076.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyLleMiOmDe7nA8JngkZzEuDGYZ7cZ-bT_K-qId131STMIek9ff5HG0Jrta3ybjM4jsuVgUuKJ_19n6fX-Ogs71z-gZIPPaW1QwTkGycrmXI9NVFzLl3p2lRRVT-ZrZZC8o9OYVaPyWLYY/s400/DSCN5076.JPG" /></a></div><br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGPoB8Aj2PIb7Ev9eFfi2Zs7s1SMCe9pmFLwUPrxSEBMrzc0yRFSTLi80JQuTYeZFaD3UO5qlInCzOyj20tyb5ikMfx-GyxCtI1jNAt5-o44dLlYdkcX6yHhLWzJBMnhZPwYcQjQl2Og0D/s1600/DSCN5084.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGPoB8Aj2PIb7Ev9eFfi2Zs7s1SMCe9pmFLwUPrxSEBMrzc0yRFSTLi80JQuTYeZFaD3UO5qlInCzOyj20tyb5ikMfx-GyxCtI1jNAt5-o44dLlYdkcX6yHhLWzJBMnhZPwYcQjQl2Og0D/s400/DSCN5084.JPG" /></a></div>Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-25598215736607363872014-05-14T14:18:00.000-07:002014-05-14T14:18:54.090-07:00There's an all-you-can-eat buffet on Lake Havasu every night
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IF you happen to be a Lesser Nighthawk - one of estimated 800 that gather to feed over the waves each evening as the sun sets over the violet Mohave Mountains. Trickling at first, you can see individuals and small groups of these graceful flyers skip over rooftops on their way to the lake. But look through binoculars (or even better, a spotting scope) above the dimming surface of the water, and you can see a vast ballroom of shadowy dancers pirouetting past each other as they gorge on swarms of flying insects. I managed to capture a snippet of this amazing phenomenon in some shakey digital footage: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2SQIqscPp8&feature=youtu.be">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2SQIqscPp8&feature=youtu.be</a> <br><br>
Lesser nighthawks have a unique flight style, they flit and bounce as if they are weightless, changing direction haphazardly, rocking their wings like showman pilots. If they fly close enough, you might hear their flight call: a soft-spoken, trilling coo, that sounds almost inorganic.<br><br><br>
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These beautiful creautures are masters of camouflage. Most birds solve the problem "Where to sleep?" by hiding in dense foliage at night, thereby thwarting most daytime predators and catching some peaceful zzzs. Nighthawks, like many other species of the nightjar family, rely on their cryptic plumage patterning to make them invisible to predators as they doze on open desert slopes in broad daylight. But that begs the question, are nighthawks aware of this phenomenon? Do they know how clever their camouflage is, or do they just rest easy because 99% of the time, everything walks right past? <br><br><br>
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Either way, it works. I know because we are lucky enough to have 2 pairs that regularly roost in the empty lot across the street from our field house. Its not an exciting place, just a rocky patch where a house might be built someday, with a smattering of small creosotes. There's nowhere to hide, but even the neighbors' dogs don't seem to notice the sneaky nighthawks napping in plain sight. I've walked within meters of one, specifically hoping to catch it in my camera, and didn't see it until it launched into the air. Luckily, I managed to keep an eye on it and saw where it landed again.<br><br><br>
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The craziest thing is these birds are so confident in their camouflage, they don't even build a nest for their eggs! They lay a pair of small, speckly eggs right onto the sand. They are doting parents, keeping the clutch warm at night and shading them from the sun during the day. But parents' gotta eat sometimes, and the delicate coloring of the eggs keep them hidden in plain sight. I've wanted to find a nest and photograph it, but realized that walking around looking for perfectly camouflaged eggs might be a recipe for disaster - for the eggs, that is! <br><br>
For now, I just look forward to each evening when their soft trilling echos over our roof.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLR3G99KoIphQ-1RFWY5OIR-Y1wH04mH8MEAsywS_XYAMFWQnXnTFK68u57nLbdco7td_ulR261glkSnnp6vzl3gof7kQPphjtRRjeIjAEQH-uESYpsUDQbZTnXUBwneyfUc7YBZDp9Wfo/s1600/DSCN1988.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLR3G99KoIphQ-1RFWY5OIR-Y1wH04mH8MEAsywS_XYAMFWQnXnTFK68u57nLbdco7td_ulR261glkSnnp6vzl3gof7kQPphjtRRjeIjAEQH-uESYpsUDQbZTnXUBwneyfUc7YBZDp9Wfo/s320/DSCN1988.JPG" /></a></div><br><br>Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-10029424550823611202014-04-24T19:46:00.000-07:002014-04-24T19:46:51.974-07:00Kayaking the Bill Williams River!5 April 2014. Hello dreamlife, when did you become real?? Bobby and I spent a free day kayaking up the river from <a href="http://www.fws.gov/refuges/profiles/index.cfm?id=22551">Bill Williams NWR</a> practicing both our boating and birding skills for OUR JOB! It's so crazy to me to think that just a few months ago, I was in Baltimore daydreaming about a fantasy life out west, and now here I am! Right in the middle of it!
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We launched later than we had planned (5am alarm just didnt go off!) but it was a good thing because when we arrived at 8:15, the refuge entrance was blocked by a sign that read "closed for maintenance". A pair of pick-up trucks with kayaks strapped to the top were pulled over near it, and one of the drivers hailed us over. We met two Friends of the refuge, both named John, who were there for a volunteer clean-up day and a little fishing afterward. They informed us that the refuge would be opened again at 9am, so we birded from the highway until then (4 whole species!).
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We pushed off the gravel shore into a breezy cool morning and headed toward hay-colored cattail stands. Our goal was to practice identifying the sounds of marsh species, in particular the rails. I've been wanting to do some field recording but my phone has been having major battery issues, so I have to consult the almighty xeno-canto.org for the sound bytes in this post.
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Our first encounter was a raft of the ubiquitous American Coots. I say ubiquitous because you can't find water in the desert without spooking a few of these guys as they loaf around like gangly aquatic chickens. They don't have webbed feet like ducks. Rather, their toes are extremely long and "lobed" with skin flaps to make them like 6 slender spatulas. You can see it in the struggling way that they paddle, as if running underwater. In fact, they're so ubiquitous, I haven't even taken a photo of any yet, as if it would be a shame to waste pixels on such a banal aspect of the landscape hahaha poor things! Anyway, they are abusive parents so I shouldn't feel to bad. That's right, apparently these unsuspecting goofballs have an unsightly habit of producing large clutches of eggs and then culling out the young they can't afford to feed by bludgeoning them every time they beg until they either stop begging or drown. Can't wait to witness this stomach-turning form of parenting later in the season...
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Well before I finished this post, I stopped in Rotary Park and got a couple mediocre shots. Here you can kinda see their crazy spatula toes: <br><br>
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And here's a raft offshore with a little taste of the local scenery <br><br>
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Their calls are fairly ubiquitous too, but vary widely and therefore can be tricky to identify. Here's a sample recorded by the ubiquitous Ian Cruickshank (he's submitted over 2500 recordings):
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Something like a drunk (and therefore hiccuping) trumpet <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/160780">www.xeno-canto.org/160780</a> <br>
Cute monkey calls <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/160569">www.xeno-canto.org/160569</a>
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And a sample of their general croaking <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/143696">www.xeno-canto.org/143696</a> by yet another ubiquitous recorder, Paul Marvin (1801 recordings), from the nearby Salton Sea.
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Coots can be difficult to distinguish from their moorhen cousins, the Common Gallinule, who also inhabit these reedy desert waters. Easy to identify in the field by their bright red nose-piece, Gallinules are skittish and rarely seen. SO we have to rely on our ears (this is a theme with marsh birds) for them. The voice is similar, but as if coming from a smaller bird, so pitch is slightly higher. I find them to resemble the sound of an actual (not drunk) trumpet.
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This recording is a good sampling of different calls <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/29369">xeno-canto.org/29369</a>
(Andrew Spencer)
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This recording (PM) is described as a rattle call given after a gunshot edited out. <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/64552">xeno-canto.org/64552</a>
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We continued down a channel past the coots and towards the 95 bridge. As we loped along, we were greeted by the hollow-plastic-scraping-on-concrete call of Western and Clark's grebes, represented here: Clark's <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/143568">xeno-canto.org/143568</a> and Western <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/14870">xeno-canto.org/14870</a>. Interestingly, both seem underrepresented on XC, perhaps I can remedy it, as soon as I get my recording set up back in action! Here's a photo of Clark's that I took further downstream when we first arrived up here in Havasu:
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These slender-necked waterbirds are similarly dressed, with the Western pulling its dark cap lower over its eyes. Their legs are positioned on the very back of their bodies for optimal water propulsion, which also means they are incapable of walking on land!
They dotted the channel all the way up to the riparian corridor, diving out of the way and popping out behind us. I even saw what looked like a practice mating dance, a pair mimicking each others' suggestive grooming movements! I really hope I can catch the full duet at some point this season (if its not too late already)! <br><br>
I also finally got a good look at some eared grebes. In fact, one let me drift within feet of it, so I got a chance to study its unique, diminuitive physique (somehow reminiscent of Fantastic Planet's Oms!): tiny spade-shaped head, poppy-red eyes, golden ear plumes and funny boule-shaped body with nothing but what looked liked matted fur for tail feathers. I didn't want to spook it, so I left my camera in my dry bag. I didn't hear them vocalizing, but here is a recording for reference: <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/70456">xeno-canto.org/70456</a>. Kinda eerie, reminds me of a sora, which is in the elusive rail family.
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Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-29448670515733847072014-03-25T17:00:00.000-07:002014-03-25T19:12:00.695-07:00Survey Training day 2 - western grebe, lucy's warbler, ladderbacked woodpeckerDidn't have a camera for this one :(
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I did a practice survey with Alicia as my guide at Castle Rock, in the Havasu NWR. It was an interesting plot, a wide dry shrubby canyon ending at a marsh, partitioned by its namesake, a large rock formation with steep walls. On the east side of it, a stand of trees, with one especially tall willow which saw a lot of action over the day. On the west side, a crispy tam and mesquite graveyard. The north end was open shrubby desert, we never even made it up there.
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We started out listening to a lumpy male Costa's hummingbird sing his tiny kazoo song at the tip of a palo verde right by our parked cars. Then we followed the CH-CH-CH-CH song of a male black-tailed gnatcatcher coming from the east side of the canyon toward the <a href="http://www.xeno-canto.org/sounds/uploaded/YQNGFTBRRT/XC144131-LUWA_Hassayampa_7Apr2013_Harter.mp3">SWEET SWEET SWEET song</a> (recording of a different individual by Lauren Harter) of a warbler (yellow or lucy's??? I still can't tell! Alicia is a good teacher and let me figure it out in my own time) in the stand. On our way over there, we spotted a pair of ash-throated flycatchers and caught the DEET DOOT of a verdin south of us (then we completely stopped listening to them - whoops! others saw up to 7 PAIRS! gotta pay better attention next time!). A raven flew from the east wall to the castle rock, and appeared to be eating something (dirt? water from a tiny pool?) from a ledge.
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We tried to see where the pair of ash-throats were going, and walked toward a wall of arrowweed, like a moat around the lush mesquite and willow stand. We knew there was water on the other side of it, but we weren't sure how far. A male gnatcatcher flitted about the arrowweed right in front of us, as if taunting my camera-less disposition (after failing miserably to capture his brethren on film in Blythe last week), and Jenn spotted the female over by the castle rock. I should have paid better attention to make sure they were a pair. I caught a brief glimpse of the aformentioned warbler, grey with a dark red rump patch - a <a href="http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Lucys_Warbler/id">Lucy's</a>! as it dove into a nearby fruiting mesquite. The ash-throat pair were hopping about in the large willow when a male ladder-backed woodpecker showed up, causing a tizzy. The woodie won, the ash-throats dispersing, but not before confusing us because we caught a wiff of a call from behind us in the scrub. Are there more than 2? And how many Lucy's? We only hear one singing at a time. They only sing until the nest is built, so its important to pay attention to their countersinging early in the season!
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Deciding we needed a bird's eye view to clear all this up, we begin ascending the side of castle rock, which you should never do in front of fellow crew members watching from below, because they will chastise you as you awkwardly scramble along a sloping inches-wide ledge with a clipboard in your hand and binos swinging across your chest. We ignored them and managed to get up to a fairly stable viewpoint. The view was great, but suddenly the birds shut up and stopped showing themselves. It was only 9:15, seemed a little early for the midday lull. After awhile of looking at coots paddling in the marsh, a strange visual phenomenon of small insects flying up and down in place whose wings only reflected sunlight on their way down, giving the impression of desert snow, and the ladderback not doing much in the willow, a harrier blasted out from behind and soared along the cliff wall then out over the marsh. Perhaps that's why it was so quiet? Then I spotted a raven on a shelf in the cliff wall decorated with white wash and a pile of sticks - a nest! Is it in use now though? The raven slowly ambled along the shelf, then hopped up into the nest and got comfortable! Ravens have enormous territories, so if this were a real survey, it would be best to consider it 25 or 50%, although we did see a few crossing the plot over the course of the morning, meaning the pair or family group were using the area extensively today.
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I glossed over the waterbirds, because I need to brush up on them, but also need to not forget about them on the map! Apparently coots ARE territorial and the one we watched swimming with its head held low over the water did not have a stomach ache, but was acting aggressive towards a trespasser. There were two pairs of <a href="http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Western_Grebe/id">western grebes</a>, whose mask dips down over its red eyes, but has a similar tinkly ratchet call as Clark's. I thought I saw some pied-billeds, and others say they saw an <a href="http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eared_Grebe/id">eared</a>, which only winters here and has a loon-like call. We heard what Rudy IDed as a common gallinule <a href="http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/common_gallinule/sounds">calling</a> from the reeds. It sounds a lot more trumpet-like than the coot, its tone often cracking and bending.
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After overhearing an awkward interaction between Bobby and some unseen tea-party fishing enthusiast (handled gracefully by Bobby though), we decided to try the other side of the rock. Some rough wing swallows were flying over the blackened corpses of tamarisk and mesquite, possibly swinging close to nest sites in the cliff, but we never caught a definite landing. We heard 3 gnatcatchers chitting at the same time - which is not considered countersinging, a term reserved for patient communication between rivals, with pauses to listen to neighbors. We ambled towards them, noticing a strange crackling sound emanating from the downed branches at our feet, when we spotted a ladderback on a small burnt snag. Glassing it, I exclaimed, oh its a female! and Alicia responds, uhhh are you sure? when we realized we were both looking at different birds - a pair which promptly copulated for our viewing pleasure! The male then flew to the very base of a thick mesquite bush and began foraging. I've never seen a woodpecker so low to the ground (except the red-bellied's slurping worms from Patterson Park's lawn!). He moved on to a downed branch only a couple meters from our feet, and I watched his meticulous tapping/chipping away at the outer layer of wood to expose a small hole, then use his tongue to flick a fat white grub out of it! This is a real treat, considering they usually do this high up in treetops, far from the view of us landlubbers. While we were watching, we heard a drumming nearby. A rival male? Nope! It was the female, drumming on a burnt section of the aforementioned snag, in somewhat of a fresh indentation. Was she signaling that she would like to create a cavity there? Wish we could go back later and find out!
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<a href="http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ladder-backed_Woodpecker/id">Ladderback</a>s are like the downys of the desert. Small woodpeckers with especially contrasting black and white barring on their wings and back, and dusty yellow, faintly spotty breasts. The males have a rouge crest that the females lack, but which both sexes possess when in the nest! They make the familiar PIK! call and squeaky laughing call like hairys and downys of the east.
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The pair took off and disappeared on the east side of the castle rock. A Lucy's shot past us with a male gnatcatcher in hot pursuit. The same Lucy's as the east side? How many are there? These are the things I need to pay better attention to for the "real" surveys. The little Costa's was back on his perch when we returned to the lot, zinging away.
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I felt a little less overwhelmed today than yesterday, but there was a LOT that I missed! Apparently violet-green swallows and white-throated swifts were seen foraging overhead and even approaching holes in the cliff walls. I practically ignored the waterbirds out of ignorance, but rather than forget about them, I need to remember to take notes, recordings, and look them up when I get back to the field house.
Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-75682112890355591662014-01-12T22:57:00.000-08:002014-03-25T19:12:41.704-07:00East Oregon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PmyCSg8w1lxq-6a4hDYsZNCoSv-B04sImYAQbvJPgyxWjVlp35S94CBGj7IOAQ0m6CNCyGbpIHkw9BtBHi1ki9AEzU1zoqvGjr6B5Dr335o8BOZWchay7UFCMbTN34dkGBbCguGS0v9Z/s1600/First+leg,+Portland,+Kauai,+to+Rapid+City+001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PmyCSg8w1lxq-6a4hDYsZNCoSv-B04sImYAQbvJPgyxWjVlp35S94CBGj7IOAQ0m6CNCyGbpIHkw9BtBHi1ki9AEzU1zoqvGjr6B5Dr335o8BOZWchay7UFCMbTN34dkGBbCguGS0v9Z/s320/First+leg,+Portland,+Kauai,+to+Rapid+City+001.JPG" /></a></div>
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January 7, 2014. I suddenly find myself on the other coast, driving from Portland to the Pacific on a wet, windy Rt. 6 through temperate cloud forests. I spied this juvenile bald eagle perched, drenching, just a few meters from the road, a river burbling below. Bobby guaranteed that I would see an American dipper on this drive, and just like he promised, at the first turnout we picked overlooking the river, several dippers were plunging into the icy stream, its waters sliding off their waterproof feathers like mercury. We made it to the coast, but it was spitting rain and I didn't want to ruin my new camera. We walked out on a jetty speckled with sooty grey, rich umber, and seaglass green rocks, between surging emerald waves pocked by curious sea lions and oppressed by a heavy grey sky. Gulls glided silently past our heads. We looked out into the seemingly empty surf, and if we looked long and hard enough, birds would suddenly materialize in the chop: horned grebes, surf scoters, and two kinds of cormorants: snake-necked pelagic and pale-chinned brandt's. On our way back up the jetty to land, we spied peeps shivering among the rocks near the water: surfbirds, rock sandpipers, black turnstones, and a gull calmly choking on a giant sea star. At Meares Point Park, we barely made out the ghostly shapes of common murre, pigeon gillemot, and white-winged scoter dashing through the mist hundreds of meters below our sheer cliff lookout. An unusually friendly hermit thrush greet us on the path back to the lot.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixn9Y_wpO9J3AQsFL3sZfud-TnH2xtzX7kX-JCjlDO9kFWyx-3T18YlwbHHQ7UWCRSp4Rf1eI8YqxwkFW4qlyG1sq6-XvoSGMLFo7MLeX1VRr8xkBuWk9ip7wnNGaRWCDIK-jGFZuKPpLj/s1600/First+leg,+Portland,+Kauai,+to+Rapid+City+016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixn9Y_wpO9J3AQsFL3sZfud-TnH2xtzX7kX-JCjlDO9kFWyx-3T18YlwbHHQ7UWCRSp4Rf1eI8YqxwkFW4qlyG1sq6-XvoSGMLFo7MLeX1VRr8xkBuWk9ip7wnNGaRWCDIK-jGFZuKPpLj/s320/First+leg,+Portland,+Kauai,+to+Rapid+City+016.JPG" /></a></div>
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We traveled down to southern Oregon to see a little homestead Bobby used to work at building cob cottages. The landscape was beautiful and striking, with pinyon pines, cacti, and madrone. The madrone has red bark that peels in mesmerizing patterns, revealing silky smooth green sapwood. The air was filled with robins, hundreds of them, gorging on berries alongside cedar waxwings and beautiful stellar's jays.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGvf-33zBlm2UEk02ljJvZ_VeS43djIEX2ptHSDMKad6XnZH0x2wZWkTc5WJGUlhoH85Vwv6fgl9tYmEbsJrkkGo2MNI27F1rbdV5FNRO6BUPneAtWnKTjh0X6b3BxLYuYD013IA7fLJCs/s1600/First+leg,+Portland,+Kauai,+to+Rapid+City+012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGvf-33zBlm2UEk02ljJvZ_VeS43djIEX2ptHSDMKad6XnZH0x2wZWkTc5WJGUlhoH85Vwv6fgl9tYmEbsJrkkGo2MNI27F1rbdV5FNRO6BUPneAtWnKTjh0X6b3BxLYuYD013IA7fLJCs/s320/First+leg,+Portland,+Kauai,+to+Rapid+City+012.JPG" /></a></div>Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518428701609624814.post-43484973741009950432014-01-01T16:19:00.000-08:002014-03-25T19:16:20.001-07:00Embarkation03-22-14, Blythe, CA. Blogs come and go, this one is dedicated to my exploration of the world of birds and traveling. Its mostly for my own benefit, to help me gather my thoughts and understand what I am seeing, experiencing and learning. If anyone else finds inspiration in these posts, all the better. I wish I had started this when I embarked on my new life approx 3 months ago, but internet connection and mental focus was a bit shaky up until now. So I'm going to try to catch up in a summary-type fashion, then move on from there. So why not start with a photo from the balcony of where I left in January, Whole Gallery in Baltimore, MD.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiznTysfQe5U30yGuGhLM1h5YqczO7VEG1elRjaOz8CJP1LfPF2oxN4p0o0SpOAcda3em6NzMU-clphD19aklHy2BnvYcUfFpdWetTlmTWsdqjBORBXHjOUCBtrnSRWrHW5ZkKIAgDjs-9c/s3200/20131221_164433.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiznTysfQe5U30yGuGhLM1h5YqczO7VEG1elRjaOz8CJP1LfPF2oxN4p0o0SpOAcda3em6NzMU-clphD19aklHy2BnvYcUfFpdWetTlmTWsdqjBORBXHjOUCBtrnSRWrHW5ZkKIAgDjs-9c/s320/20131221_164433.jpg" /></a> Kaitlin Murphyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03396025611114863165noreply@blogger.com0