42 days of nonstop field work

Wow, so this field season has been C-R-A-Z-Y. I have a moment to breath (while the rain pours) so here is an update on the season thus far :)

LOWA were first heard at Tremont on March 14. Of course, the birds beat me to the Smokies. I was in Arkansas until March 18 prepping for the field season. Notice all the orange flagging? Yeah, I'd like to see this equipment just try to get lost...well...not actually of course.

 

Back to the birds. Individuals slowly trickled in throughout March with most birds arriving by the first of April. And some birds wasted no time getting to business--nest building was first observed March 28! The first egg was laid April 3, which is a whole 9 DAYS earlier than the 2015 season. And I've already found our first successfully fledged nest (meaning the babies made it out alive) on April 28!!! There has been no rest for the weary LOWA researchers this year.

Only 13/20 banded birds monitored last year returned, and 2 returnees stayed in their previous season's territories for only a few days before vacating to who knows where, after which other individuals took over the territories. This has resulted in banding many new birds this year, a challenge I didn't have last season. In all, we've banded 13 new birds, though 2 of them were free roamers out of territory who we're not following. The remaining 11 include 2 very feisty females (JenJen and Bullet) who both have nests with eggs.

We've found 28 nests to date (1 has fledged, 4 have failed, 2 have nestlings, 14 have eggs, 2 were just completed, and 5 were abandoned during/after building). Some have rather interesting stories, such as Obafemi's (named for the former Seattle Sounder's Major League Soccer forward Obafemi Martins). He built a nest for 7 days all by himself; the female was never observed building but would forage and preen on the water's edge below. Oba completed his nest, but his female must have found it lacking because she built another one downstream and is now incubating 5 eggs.

April has been an amazing assistant, finding the first 4 nests of the season. She's also the bomb at setting up the net quickly, which is key to our banding successes. Here she is taking the net down after banding a male named Durham.

 

Other exciting news: I received two more grants for the project! One is a Conservation and Research Grant from the Tennessee Ornithological Society. The other is an E. Alexander BergstromMemorial Research Award from the Association of Field Ornithologists (AFO). This one is pretty exciting because AFO is a national ornithological society, and having them support the project feels pretty dang good :) Both these grants will help tremendously to cover room/board costs.

We band our first nestlings tomorrow (May 1), so be on the look out for another update! I promise I won't wait another 42 days ;P