Aloha!

I meant to get this posted sooner, rather than while waiting for my flight to board, but packing and cleaning took longer than expected (I blame being sick... The Walking Dead marathon had nothing to do with it). But yes, I will soon be on my way to HAWAII for nearly 4 months! I'll be banding birds for the USGS on the big island. The work will be in Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, and my weekend home is in Volcanoes National Park. Real brutal stuff, I know. My first day of work is on Monday, so I've got the weekend to explore and get settled a bit. Getting excited!

I meant to do an entire post about this, but during my 2 months at home I volunteered at a nearby banding station - the Coyote Creek Field Station in Milpitas, run by the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. That was a lot of fun because they catch SO many birds there! I think my biggest day was in the 50s (or low 60s?), and the "slow" days were still all over 15. I'd say average was high-20s. Slow days at Palomarin could be 1 bird, and we thought 15 was a busy day. Plus the diversity was a bit different - we caught a lot more white-crowned sparrows here, a ton of yellow-rumped warblers, had the occasional house finch, and there was an explosion of American robins! No really - since 2008 the most they ever had in an entire year was 48 robins. This January we caught OVER 50. In one month. Compared to 48 in an entire year. In 2014 they caught 7 between January 1 - December 23 (the explosion began on Chistmas Eve with 6, I believe). So yeah, that was a lot of fun working for a local banding station, especially one with such high capture rates!

This is my first attempted post via my blogger app, so I have no idea how these pictures will be formatted, but here are some of our captures:

Yellow-rumped warbler (Audubon's)

Common yellowthroat (the black mask means it's a male)

American robin

I can't wait to post pictures of the awesome birds that I'll be banding in Hawaii! Just bear with me - we have Internet at our weekend house and cell service at our field house, but it's not clear if there will be Internet there, too. Somehow I think it'll be okay :-)