Life on a mountain: Week 1

It's been a week..a week and it feels like I've always been here, but at the same time just got here. 

My typical day starts at 6:00 am, just as the sun is waking up. Dressed in all the layers and with binoculars in hand I either assist my grad student injecting females or search for nests. 

These birds, dark-eyed juncos, are songbirds that nest on the ground. Yep, on the ground so they are predated a lot. This means that majority of nests fail (so sad) and we are constantly looking for more new nests or re-nests. When I found my first nest, you should have seen my face. It was the week's highlight. 

That's in the morning. In the afternoon is nest checks, where we check up on nests and/or take measurements/blood samples from the nestlings/parents. These birds are so goshdarn cute. Today I held day 0 (just hatched) nestlings. Nature is incredible. Hands down. Incredible. These little guys are so dang small, so tiny. You can see their hearts beating. 

Starting yesterday, I also started conducting my chipmunk aggression trials. 
They didn't work. Three times. 
Then, today, after 20 minutes of waiting in the hot sun it worked! The female saw the chipmunk effigy and went ham on it (dove at it and attacked it). My grad student and I were beyond excited. Back at the station we soon had celebratory beers in hand.

Life is good. 

 

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