0645- The phone begins chiming again. I can hear Nora’s phone now ringing and vibrating across the room. Stretch. Sigh. Roll out of bed, stumble over to where my favorite hoodie is hanging, pull over head, push hair out of face, slide slippers on, shuffle to the kitchen. Turn on the lights and blink until my eyes have adjusted to the sudden change. Shuffle to the fridge, contemplate what I want to eat while staring inside. (This morning it was a piece of pumpkin pie that I made the night before… It’s good breakfast food… has pumpkin, honey, yogurt and almond in it, and most importantly, tastes good.) Nora wanders in, probably hits a limb on some random corner of a counter or table, moans/ laughs. Not much is said while breakfast is being eaten (This is how I best function, like some people need their coffee, I need some food in my belly.) Step out of the kitchen, into the bathroom, brush teeth, etc. Back into the room to put on some clothes, socks and shoes. Grab my binoculars and camera, head up to the library. Dump my stuff on the table, change the message on the hotline (“Today is Wednesday, December seventeenth, and the Palomarin nets are open.”) Start filling out the weather for net opening (temp., wind speed and direction, barometer). Walk outside to a good vantage point and estimate cloud cover, type and visibility. Admire the pink underbellies of the clouds if it’s a nice day. Glance with apprehension at the gray blanket if it’s an iffy weather day. Walk back into the library, finish writing the weather in. Meet up with Nora in the banding lab, who is removing all the tools we’ll need for the day from the drawers behind the counter. While she places all the bands on their respective size pegs I pull out the banding laptop and boot it up. Nora organizes the banding pliers and rulers while I plug in the scale. Erase the previous banding day’s data from the white board behind us. Decide what our “Most wanted” bird for the day will be. (Today it was White-crowned Sparrow. It can’t always be Western Scrub Jay…)
0735- Step out of the banding lab, radios in pockets, bird bags hanging from our belt loops, binoculars slung over our shoulders, open the nets. All 20 nets in 14 locations over the 3/8th mile long net trail, which winds around, up and down, a section of the Palomarin property.
0755- finish opening the nets, decide who’s going to go on the first few “net runs” to check for birds, and who will conduct the “area search.” Nora takes the first few net runs, I head back to the banding lab to pick up a clipboard and blank area search form. Head back out to the net trail, check my watch and record the time. I now have 30 minutes to bird the net trail. First bird of the morning… a screaming Stellar’s Jay. A Western Scrub Jay yells back. A Wrentit scolds from the Coyote Brush as I tiptoe past. Two Anna’s Hummingbirds scream by overhead, one chasing the other, all while yelling its little head off. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Bushtits chipping and flitting from one section of Scrub to another. A Song Sparrow barks at me. A few Ruby-crowned Kinglets type away on their typewriters. I continue on and a Red Shafted Flicker pops up from the ground, flies to the nearest Douglass Fir, then takes off, heading further away. A gang of Chestnut-backed Chickadees is foraging overhead, chatting all the while. A Red-breasted Nuthatch pipes up. Another replies. Then another. Pretty soon they’re all whining their “yank yank yank yanks” at each other, nearly in unison. A Hutton’s Vireo wheezes. I hear some scratching on the ground, move to a better vantage point, spot a group of Fox Sparrows all scratching in the dirt together, leaves are flying. A Robin laughs in the forest above me. A few Oregon Juncos call to each other from in the branches as well. A funny wheezy, whirry call… a Varied Thrush. I hope we catch it. The characteristic chipping of Warblers… but which ones? I stalk the sounds, and find a group of 4 Townsends Warblers all bouncing from branch to branch together. Golden-crowned Kinglets overhead. Sharp calls point my binoculars in the direction of the Winter Wren that I see nearly every Palo banding day in his usual spot. Emerging from the forest, back into the scrub I startle 3 Golden-crowned Sparrows foraging in the trail. A Common Raven calls overhead. I check my watch, only a few more minutes. Make a few more tallies, head back to the banding lab. Check out the awesome Varied Thrush that stumbled into one of our nets that Nora is processing. Check the time. Time for a net run.
0905- Net run #1 of many for the day. (Between the two of us we will walk the net trail once every half hour from 15 minutes after sunrise, until 6 hours later.) No birds this run…
1035- I’m on a net run. I come up a little rise and see net 8.4. There’s something big in it. Bigger than what we usually catch. My heart skips when I realize it’s a raptor of some sort. A Sharp-shinned Hawk. I dash up to the net and pinch two trammels together, trapping the bird, before it can flap its way out. He’s not tangled at all… too big for the holes in the net. He’s just a little confused, on his back, in a pocket. I cautiously open the trammels. The Sharpie eyes me. I toss in a cloth bag. He latches onto it with his talons. I cautiously reach into the net and place another bag over the Sharpie’s head. (Helps them remain calm.) I carefully reach in, grasp the hawk around the upper legs and lower body, pinning his wings to his side, lift him out of the net, and head back to the banding lab. Nora and I work together to process the bird, Part Two of the Pyle Guide is our bible. It looks like an after hatch year male. Plumage and wing measurement confirm this. When done we take a few pictures, then I head over away from the nearest net, which has trapped a Hermit Thrush while we were working, and throw the Sharpie into the wind. It doesn’t take long for him to realize he’s free, and he wheels away in a long arc, headed back up the hill, towards the forest again. No doubt to stalk the small songbirds that he likes to eat. Nora hands me the Hermit Thrush to process and heads off to finish the next net run.
1335- The end of the banding day. Nora and I head out together to do one last check on the nets, and when empty, furl them up, and tie them off until another morning. Today was a beautiful day we agree as we furl net 1.4 and look out on the Pacific Ocean and the Farralon Islands on the horizon. We finish entering our banding data for the day, check out our “recap report” (Look at past records of birds already banded we caught that day.) Then we proof our data and make any needed corrections.
1445- Lunch! Change into more comfortable shoes, if it wasn’t warm enough for me to be wearing sandals all day... (note: I wear sandals when most would think is inappropriate, so before you make comments about it must be so warm... it's not really. I just like a breeze for my toes.)
Relax. Band practice tonight. Colin on guitar, Nora on Penny Whistle, and of course, myself on the flute. “The Wintern Wrens.”
No comments:
Post a Comment