Back on the island...

Well, I wasn't sure I was going to keep this up. Things are a bit more busy when you're a crew leader. No promises, but I'll try and keep a few updates coming throughout the season.

Things are going as well as can be hoped with all the challenges we've had to meet. The crew are all very experienced so we're staying on top of our nest finding. I've never had so many weather days at the beginning of a field season, (besides maybe spring of 2008 on Sheldon NWR.) It's been a very rainy winter by southern California standards. Which means a good year for insects, thus a good year for breeding birds (hopefully). But it also means that the already gnarly roads on Santa Cruz Island are DESTROYED. Eventually they'll be worked on and repaired, but that won't happen until the threat of more late winter rain has passed. The Field Station plot is fine because we can just walk out the door in the morning and be where we need to be in at most 15 minutes. We can drive up over the island's Southern ridge into Coches Prietos Canyon almost to the bottom. For the first few weeks we were parking at the top and hiking back out at the end of the day. And Portezuela is a hike the whole way. After rains that trek gets especially exciting because the water level in the once completely dry streambeds can get to around knee high. The only way to cross at that point is to take your boots off and wade through. That's quite the way to wake up at 6:30 in the morning.


I'm definitely reaping the benefits of the banding blitz that happened in the fall of 2009. It's great to have at least one, if not both territory holders banded. We've gotten a whole lot of floaters too. It's giving me a whole new perspective on the social going-ons of the Island Scrub-Jays. My goal for this season is to band as many nestlings as possible. (I say that because some of our nests are currently 5 meters up in some trees that are impossible to climb. For others I think we can get away with a ladder. Anybody have a lightweight ladder or some suggestions on how to reach hard to get to nests?)