Capture Highlights:
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| Varied Thrush |
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| California Quail |
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| Anna's Hummingbird (they can't fly off when they're on their backs!) |
First of all, I passed my certification tests, so now I’m
an NABC (North American Banding Council) certified bird bander!! The field exam
turned out to be pretty easy – the two trainers who were grading me were really
chill and there was never any pressure. It was just a normal day of banding!
The specimen exam made up for that, though – it was definitely the most
difficult part, but turned out alright in the end.
Our banding season is slowing down now. Migration is
tapering off as we head into winter, and we cut some of our off-sites at the
end of October. Now we are only going to 3 off-sites, and we’ve switched from a
7-day period to a 10-day period. So, instead of 7 days to visit 5 off-sites, we
have 10 days to visit 3 off-sites. After Thanksgiving banding will drop even
more, with only 3 days of banding at the main station instead of 6. Though, my
last day of work is November 21, so I won’t be around for that. With the
arrival of some of our winter interns (more on that later), and with a lighter
banding schedule, we actually have work days that DON’T involve banding. We
call them etcetera days because we basically just work on a bunch of random
tasks, such as data projects, grounds maintenance, cleaning, etc. In some sense
it’s kind of nice because we suddenly have a bunch of time to do things that we
were previously doing after a regular banding day. However, considering that
I’m used to being outside for 7 hours a day, it’s incredible how 7 hours of
sitting in an office can totally drain me. My only activity is walking to the
bathroom or the kitchen, and yet I need a nap at the end of the day! It’s also
weird because after a normal day in the field I can spend a while catching up
on emails or news that I missed in the first half of the day, but when I spend
a day in the office I’m constantly staying caught up, so my afternoon
activities are already taken care of. Anyways, it makes me appreciate my last
days in the field that much more.
I mentioned that some of the winter interns have started
showing up – two of them (Adelle & Hilary) started on November 1st,
Emma started yesterday, and the fourth one should arrive late tomorrow. Hilary
actually interned here this past summer as a nest searcher, so now she’s
getting some banding experience. Adelle just came from another banding job in Boise.
The weekend of Halloween I had an entire THREE DAY
WEEKEND! It was great to have a decent chunk of time to spend at home
considering that it’s a 5-hour roundtrip drive. I got to spend time with
college and high school friends, I went go-kart racing with my brother and
sister-in-law (SUPER fun), we had a family brunch at their house to celebrate
my brother’s birthday while watching the 49ers game, and to wrap up that
awesome weekend I got a cavity filled! It was great.
Two weeks ago I went up to Petaluma to prepare for the
Tern Society Luncheon (more on that later). Since I was already up there I decided
to swing by the Lagunitas Brewing Company to check out the place and hopefully
thank the CFO for sponsoring my internship. I called the main office and left a
message for him, and he ended up calling me back while I was on a tour of the
brewery! They do their tours a bit differently than other breweries and give
you beers to sample before actually going on the tour, so I had just finished
tasting everything when I bailed. But hey, if the CFO tells you to meet him in
the Tap Room for drinks, you’d bail, too. He met me 10 minutes later (during
which time I was just awkwardly sitting at the bar by myself). It’s pretty
great to go from awkward-loner to person-meeting-with-CFO. We had some great
conversation – I thanked him for sponsoring my internship, he asked how things
were going at the field station, and we chatted about jobs and families and
everything. It was great. He also texted someone in the Lagunitas store to pull
out some beer for me to take with me! Then he left for a meeting with someone,
so I chatted with these other two people next to me at the bar. The girl was
new in town, and the guy played clarinet in the Santa Rosa Symphony. He ended
up getting our emails and gave us free tickets to his performance this past
Monday night! I tried to pay for my tab, but the bartender just smirked and
said, “You’re hanging out with Leon… you’re good”. Then Leon saw that I was
still around, came back over and told me that the store had closed so I’d have
to leave when he left if I wanted my cases of beer, and then he ordered me
another beer and sat around chatting with us for a little bit. I found out
after the fact that the other two people I met ended up getting their tabs
covered for chatting with the CFO. Lagunitas is awesome!!! When we finally
ended up leaving, the CFO himself wheeled out a dolly stacked with beer cases
and loaded them into my trunk. I wrapped up that night with 3 free beers (a
combined one from the tour way earlier), a ticket to the Santa Rosa Symphony,
and 4 cases of beer for later (96 bottles). Not a bad day :)
So I mentioned this Tern Society Luncheon thing… the Tern
Society is made up of people who have put Point Blue in their wills. It’s a pretty
generous thing to do, so people at Point Blue wanted to show their appreciation
by having a luncheon with a few interns to do a Q&A panel. That way the
donors can get a better idea about what the internships are like, how we
benefit from them, and why their money is important for the success of the
internship programs (and other aspects of Point Blue). I volunteered to be the
intern representing the Palomarin Field Station, there was another woman who
was a STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) intern last year and
is now a more permanent technician, and there was an intern from the Farallon
Islands connected via Skype. I was pretty nervous after the run-through the
week before because it wasn’t a totally spontaneous Q&A session (like I was
used to from being on Proctor Panels back at Harvey Mudd), but rather a highly
structured and prepared series of questions and answers. But anyways, it turned
out much better than expected (perhaps the free wine helped?) – we only got to
about 4 of the 15 questions we had prepared for, but that was a good amount.
The lunch was excellent, the people were interested in what I was doing and
where I was off to next (oh, more on that later), and as thanks for
participating in this first-annual luncheon, I received a gift certificate to
REI and a Point Reyes Bird Observatory tote bag! Well, everyone at lunch
received a tote bag, but still! All in all it was a fun event.
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| The Farallon Islands viewed from Palomarin Field Station |
Now the big question… where am I off to next? (Just play
along if you already know.) Starting in February I’ll be banding birds for the
USGS on the big island of Hawaii!! It’s a 3.5 month project based in Hakalau
Forest National Wildlife Refuge. We have a 10-day-on, 4-day-off schedule. The
10-day weeks are spent living and working in Hakalau, and on our 4-day weekends
we stay in Volcanoes National Park. I’m super excited! This sounds like it will
be a really fun and interesting project. The work is in an area that is closed
to the public, so I’ll be working with some highly endangered endemic species
that not many people get a chance to see. And I’ll be returning to the tropics
with the added benefit of English! It should be a great experience. Now, just
one more week here at Palomarin!
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