Feel the Heat

Let me start by saying that yesterday was our first day hitting the 90s. It’s the beginning of April. Oh lord. Also, I don't necessarily have pictures related to all of the topics here, so it's mostly random pictures I've taken out in the field.

American Robin

Last Saturday, Sheena and I went to the Wild Turkey Tavern, which is a redneck bar outside of town. We were taking advantage of the fact that neither of us had work the next day (first time we’ve ever had the same day off). This place was definitely a cultural experience – lots of crazy bumper stickers, posters, and conversations. Apparently they used to be a lot more outspoken and blatant with their messages (a KKK hood hanging inside, offensive messages on the billboard outside), but the neighborhood real estate agents got them to tone it down a bit to make the area seem somewhat welcoming. By the sounds of it, the employees are all great people, but the manager is kind of a racist. Anyways… we had a lovely time! We chatted with the employees (who all learned our names in about 5 minutes), the cook gave us free gator tail and his special hot sauce to sample, and 6 beers and an order of onion rings only cost us $14. Pretty good night! Small town bars are just great – everyone is so friendly.

Mmm... gator tail

Sunday was chore day, but in the late afternoon I went for a walk on the Lake Arbuckle Nature Trail, which is on the range. (Lake Arbuckle is a huge lake next to the range.) It’s a short walk, but it’s MUCH closer than Highlands Hammock, it’s free, and it’s less crowded. It also has a great view over the lake, so I stayed to watch the sunset.

Sunset at Lake Arbuckle

On Wednesday my car babies hatched!! We really weren’t expecting that to happen because we figured they’d just get cooked in the hot car under all the metal in direct sunlight, but they did! Unfortunately, by Saturday the nest had been depredated. We’re kind of worried something happened to the female when the nest was depredated because we haven’t seen her since then. It’s possible she cut herself on the metal when trying to flee, but we’ll have to keep looking for her.

Eastern Meadowlark singin' its heart out

Thursday we started our April census. We do a census of the birds on the range every three months to keep track of where our territories are, which birds are paired with each other, and who is missing. The benefit of banding every nestling is that we know who all of the birds are on the range and can trace back their family for several generations. There are a few unbanded birds who migrated onto the range who we don’t know anything about, but we band them and keep track of them after that. The April census is pretty easy because it’s in the middle of nesting season, when most of the birds are near their nests (and we know where most of those are by now). Right now we are only missing seven birds (out of 151), and we haven’t done a thorough search for them yet. The July census is apparently a big pain because there are going to be a whole heap of fledglings bouncing around in random places, not necessarily sticking tightly to their home territories. But so far this April census has gone fairly well.

On Friday we did our first banding of the season! That cutie little nestling in my last (?) post turned 11 days old on Friday. We band nestlings at 11 days because their legs are big enough that the bands won’t fall off, but they are young enough that we won’t force fledge them (they’ll stay in their nests after we put them back). We also take blood samples and send them to a lab at Cornell to determine the sex of each nestling. I mostly watched this first banding/bleeding to get a feel for how everything is done. Saturday we had three more nests to band, so I got to help band a couple of nestlings and I took blood from most of them. I’m actually much better at taking blood than I am at banding because I got experience taking blood from adult birds in Peru last fall, but I’ve never used this type of band before – it’s a wrap-around band that you have to use acetone to seal, so you need to drip some acetone on the band, squeeze it shut with banding pliers (to the correct size), then pinch it together with another set of pliers, and do all of this before the acetone dries. You also can’t use too much acetone or the band will turn into goo and you have to cut it off and start all over. And all of this is happening while you’re holding a (sometimes) squirming nestling. I get to practice the banding on a stress ball with a twig sticking out of it (the leg). Not as cute as the real thing.

Eastern Towhee

Saturday was exciting for other, less cute reasons. This weekend the National Guard was doing a bunch of training and drills on the range, so big sections were closed off and declared “hot” so they could practice ground fire with small weapons. We saw the closures on the schedule and planned the weekend accordingly. However, when we were in the middle of our first banding on Saturday, as I was trying to stick a needle into a chick’s brachial vein, I heard RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT behind me as someone unloaded a .50 caliber machine gun on the property we were on. Michelle and I were pretty confused because there was nothing listed on the schedule for the area that we were in, so we just hurried to finish that nest and be on our way. On our way to just check a nest (not band or anything), we encountered some army guys on the trail and had to drive around their tractor. Michelle stuck her head out to ask if they were shooting that day. The conversation went something like this:

Michelle: “Hey are you guys shooting out here today?”
Army guy: “No, we’re not shooting today.”

Michelle: “Oh, okay good.”

Army guy: “Well, WE’RE not shooting today, but THOSE guys are.”

*Points over to area around the bend in the road*

Michelle thanked him and we drove around the bend where we saw a small fortress being erected. There were guys covering a couple of TANKS with camouflaged tarps, setting up camouflaged tents, hiding their military trucks with camouflage, and the whole production was surrounded by barbed wire and guys with machine guns sitting in pits dug into the sand with little camouflage tarps over them… and there we were, tooting along in our truck trying to check a scrub-jay nest. I suppose it’s good Michelle was with me that day, because if I was alone I wouldn’t have made it past the first set of army guys. And again, this was in an area that was supposed to be “cold”, so by this point I was pretty terrified of being anywhere on the range.

My morning commute

After that nest check we had a bit of a drive to get to our last nest to band. There’s normally a shorter route, but it cuts through one of the impact zones that was declared “hot” due to live fire, so we went around. On the way back we took a slightly different route that brought us along the impact zone fence line, and we noticed that the gate was wide open. We have a set of keys to use during the week, but the gate is typically open on the weekends to allow hunters to pass through to get to the river. However, given that that area was supposed to be closed, we figured the gates should be closed.

Michelle: “They are supposed to be firing here, so why is the gate open? I guess we’ll find out!”
*She proceeded to drive straight into the “hot” area*

At that point my heart was in my throat. What’s wrong with the scenic route, especially when the scenic route doesn’t include live fire?? Fortunately we didn’t encounter anyone.

Never a dull moment on the range! It’s nice to keep things interesting, but I find tortoises interesting. Cows are even interesting (and adorable when they’re little). .50 caliber machine guns going off in areas where they shouldn’t be… less interesting, more terrifying! At least I am safely back in my trailer… next to the youth correctional facility… and the prison.