The expedition is underway

We are gethering in Abaco. Pictures and reports will be coming in when we can get to the internet.

Field expeditions are about much more waiting around and handling details and hoping you got everything right than they tell you in school. In this case, I missed a connecting flight and could not get to Marsh Harbour until today. But the rest of the volunteers on the trip are hard at work. A change fee and hotel bill in Fort Lauderdale later, I will join them this afternoon.  Humility is strictly enforced in field boilogy. And the chaos and self-inflicted errors are part of the experience.  

On this first week of the trip, we will have my friend Sam Plecer and several staff of the Bahamas National Trust. Our ship, S/V Avalon, is anchored in Little Harbour, about a 1 hour drive south of Marsh Harbour Airport.  Abaco is a huge island. It takes many hours to drive from the north to the south end.

We are expecting terns to be in the pre-laying stage of nesting. We have bands and mist nets, but we expect most of our work to involve identifying the islands where nesting will occur this year, counting adults, and banding species that are well into the breeding season, if possible. We will also post signs near the colonies to notify visitors to avoid the colonies until nesting is completed this summer.