My First BCVI Nest(s)!

I’m happy to report that this was a really good week, or at least that every day had something awesome happen, starting pretty much from when I left Starbucks last Thursday.

On the way home from Round Rock, I was driving on the freeway and saw what looked like a bunch of exhaust billowing off the road a ways ahead of me and thought “man, someone needs a smog check”. When I got closer I realized the cloud was moving, and then I saw several more clouds off in the distance. Turns out they were clouds of BATS! I don’t mean there were like 20 bats… there were THOUSANDS of them! I immediately took the next exit and found my way back over to where they were coming from. I parked in some random mechanic parking lot and walked to the street corner to take pictures of all of the bats that were flying out from under the freeway underpass. (I was definitely that random tourist standing on the street corner taking pictures in some random industrial area.) I had heard of the “bat bridge” in Austin, but I remember it being over water. Apparently there are other bat bridges, just not as populated as the water one. I can’t imagine how crowded that one must get because the one I was at was crazy! More and more bats just kept pouring out from under the bridge. I don’t know how much a million actually is, but I feel like there were a million bats. These pictures absolutely do not do it justice, but it’s something…

Friday I went to Hickory Ridge (the place I went on my first real day in the field) by myself. That was a really good field day, even though I didn’t find any new nests. First off, it was SUPER foggy in the morning which kept the temperature down all day. It also made driving around the property some kind of creepy adventure, particularly because there were now cows on the property, so I rounded a corner and then out of nowhere six cows appeared on the road in front of me! They were super cute a friendly, and they came up to the car to figure out what I was doing. Unfortunately they also stopped right in front of the car in the one area where there wasn’t room to drive off the path and go around them. I took some pictures and listened to them moo, but then I had to start inching closer and honking to get them off the road. Super cute, though, and a nice way to start the day :)

Besides the cows, I managed to find and follow three different BCVI couples that day – finding a couple is good because the females will hopefully lead you back to their nest, either with food or nesting material. Unfortunately none of the females did that that day, but it was still nice to be able to follow them and get re-sights on everyone. They were all moving very slowly over short distances, so they were easy to follow. There was one couple that I thought might give away some secrets about where their nest was – they started shradding (making short, angry calls instead of nice, melodic sounds), which usually happens when you are too close to their nest. Unfortunately, just after I started looking around in the shrubs next to me, I looked through and saw something HUGE moving on the other side – the cows were wandering through the territory I was in! There were about a dozen of them, so I had no idea who the birds were actually shradding at. I was sad that I didn’t find the nest, but it was a pretty comical situation, so it was okay in my book.

(I really like cows... can you tell??)

Saturday was exciting because of the storm that hit in the early afternoon. The morning was rough – I did point counts with Marisa (each point is 400m from the next point in a grid pattern, and we did 16 points… that’s a lot of walking) plus territory mapping, and it was a warm day (I fear what July will bring). We were doing some of our last territories when the rain clouds started moving. Matt, who was also on the property, was heading to his last nest check when a HUGE bolt of lightning struck in the direction that he was going. Marisa told him to skip it and go to the car instead of getting closer. The funny thing was that I WAS CLOSER. I was on the top of some hill and it struck pretty close by, because the lightning and thunder were right on top of each other and the whole sky lit up with that one flash. Marisa told me to forget the territory mapping and get to the car too, which sounds really easy except that I was in the middle of the thickest understory that I’ve had to work in. There were dead juniper branches intertwined with thorny vines and poison ivy. Somehow the desire to get as far away from that hill kicked in, and I managed to blast my way through everything (minimal rips in my clothes and skin) and get to the car (which was half a kilometer away) just as it started to seriously rain. Phew! That storm was timed perfectly because Marisa and I each had another couple hours of work (and it was already 2pm – the time we would get home on a really good day). However, we still had to do nest checks on another property, so Marisa had us wait in the car outside the property for a break in the rain. We only waited 20 minutes, and then we dashed out to get our nests done. I think we only got half of them done before the lightning came our way again and we had to bolt to the car. We didn’t end up getting home until after 4pm, which is a crazy long day considering that we leave at 6:30am and are on our feet the entire time. At least it was an exciting way to end the day!

Animal blind on one of the properties (hunter sits in the seat up top) - very crafty!

I don’t actually remember much of Sunday, but that night was our Mexican-themed group dinner! Michaela made enchiladas, Marisa made guacamole and mango salad, Matt made rice and some kind of bean and bell pepper stir-fry, Chelsea had taco basics, and I made Mexican caramel sundaes for dessert. It was super yummy, and the first thing we’ve done as a group. It was kind of in honor of Matt’s last days at Balcones – yesterday was his day off, and this morning he left for Oklahoma.

Rock quarry on Younquist property

The four nestlings in my first nest!

Yesterday was a really good day – I found my first (and second) BCVI nests!!! Chelsea and I were working on Simons, which is a really nice property. The first territory I went to had a TON of birds, which was nice because I got to see a bunch of different species, but annoying because it made it way harder to pick out my bird’s song among the racket. A bit later I went to an area known as “the clump” because the shrubs tower over you and are more densely packed than any other territory I’ve been in. There are not pathways between them, but rather crawlspaces below them… if you’re lucky. Apparently every year all the birds try and grab some space in the clump, so this year there are about six BCVI territories in an area that might be enough for only one or two territories in a less densely-packed area. The first bird I tried to follow liked hanging out in the middle of the clump, so after a little while I decided to go in after him. Big mistake. I got five meters in before being trapped on all sides by thorny vines. Every part of me was being held in place by some dang vine. All of the effort to get unstuck pretty much scared off any bird nearby, so there was no hope of seeing mine. I gave the second bird a lot more space and mostly wandered the outside of the clump. Since I couldn’t see him, and he was being relatively quiet, I lost him pretty quickly. After not hearing him for a good 20 minutes, I pretty much gave up and was ready to call that territory quits. I was on my way to my last territory (in a more open area) when I heard the second guy again and was able to follow him for a little while. I got to a spot between two giant shrubs when he started shradding nearby, and then flew over to a branch a couple meters away to shrad AT me. Bingo! I HAD to be close to a nest! I was crawling on my hands and knees for a good ten minutes with him shradding at me the entire time before I finally found the nest (in a completely different tree). I WAS SO HAPPY!! I walked around to check the contents and saw the female sitting in it, and she would NOT move. I got within a half meter of her before she finally flew off, and that’s when I saw four nestlings inside!! My first nest AND my first nestlings!!! BOOYAH!!! That was super exciting and I was walking on air for a good half hour. Yay :D (Turns out that finding a new nest means a lot of paperwork, so enjoy the feeling in the field because it’s kind of annoying when you get back home :P )

My day got even better when I went to my next territory in the south part of the property – I wasn’t in the territory for more than two minutes before hearing my male, looking up and seeing he was with a female, getting re-sights on both of them, watching the male forage for a worm, following the pair to one… two… three different trees, and seeing the female drop to one of the lower branches in the third tree, putter around for a minute, and then fly off with the male. I went over to check out what she was messing with and saw a clump of spider webs on a branch! I know, I know – spider webs, big deal. You’ve probably got more in your house than there were on that branch (no offense, I’m sure you have a very clean house). But the female returned two more times with more webs, and I could see her arranging them with her beak. That is totally the start of a nest if I ever saw one! Usually we find nests that are >30% complete, as in they have the basic nest shape but need more material for structural integrity. This was so incomplete that she must have started it no more than a few hours beforehand. I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t end up building a nest there (BCVIs sometimes build a nest in one location, decide it’s not right, take that nest apart and build a new one in a different location), but it was still exciting to discover!

Female BCVI in her nest

The last wild thing of the day was the snake I nearly ran into. It was towards the end of the day and I was wandering around doing nest checks, crossing a flat, rocky area when this gigantic, tan snake starts moving out of nowhere a couple meters in front of me. I have seen many snakes, both captive and wild, but this was the biggest (and fastest) wild snake I’ve ever seen. It was at least 1.5m long and it took OFF! Have you ever seen a snake really move? Caged snakes don’t have anywhere to go, and the snake that I saw on the ground last week just sat there. This guy could MOVE. He took off so fast I nearly choked on my heart. A small part of me thought “well I saw where he went… I could follow him and try to get a picture” while the rest of me could barely move, let alone think. I told Chelsea about it and, with the help of her herpetology book, she is pretty sure I saw a Lined Snake. Not venomous or anything, but big and fast. Field work definitely keeps me on my toes!

Last night it was just Matt, Chelsea and me at the house – Michaela and Marisa were at the university. We celebrated Matt’s last night by eating leftover Mexican food, watching whatever channels we could get on TV, and staring out at the giant thunderstorm moving in. Yesterday will be a hard day to beat!