The mealworms are next to the milk.

The best way to find fledglings that are hiding in the scrub is to feed their parents and helpers at the nest mealworms. Live ones are best. So we keep ours in the refrigerator in a nice cotton sack next to the milk. Finding fledglings is harder than I thought it would be. You feed the adults in hopes that they will then fly off to give those tasty morsels to the fledglings… but they’re just hoping you’ll leave… so they can fly off and give those tasty morsels to the fledglings. I went to a territory to find some fledglings the other day that have a super dad. When Travis was doing provisioning watches on their nest almost nothing could distract him from flying to the pasture nearby to get some food, and then making a bee-line for the nest, over and over again. So needless to say, these little guys were well fed. When I finally located one of them in a scrub oak the little guy flew about 6 meters to try and get away from me. This is huge in Scrub Jay fledgling land. I was only briefly amused though, as I still couldn’t read his bands, and needed to figure out who it was. This is the look that says it all… “Maybe you can’t see me if I sit reallllly still…”


I’ve been out to do “Day 11s” with Travis and Michelle a few times. “Day 11s” are done when the nestlings are 11 days old, and consist of banding, taking blood samples, and taking morphological measurements. The second territory we went to today had some particularly whiny little nestlings. I enjoy how their little heads bobble around and their gangly legs kick, somehow thinking they might get away.


I also went out with Travis one morning to watch him capture an adult male, again, to take blood samples related to a project he is doing, and morphological measurements. To capture the adults we use wire traps. You bait the trap with peanuts, and then watch for when the Jay can’t resist the pile sitting just out of reach, and hops into the trap, tripping the door. The male we trapped was surprisingly quiet. I expected him to make a fuss and be squawking quite a bit. You could tell he didn’t like it. But as soon as he was released with a peanut he seemed a bit soothed. Peanuts make it all better…


In other news, I still hate prickly pear cacti. But they are pretty in bloom.


I’m 75% sure I saw a Coral Snake this morning, and apparently Travis saw Edward and Brad going at it again.

My time here at Archbold is almost done. In a week I will be making my way out west for the next chapter in my adventure. The return to Sheldon, and Badger Cabin is on the horizon… I wonder if Cletus is still there…

The first rule of Gopher Tortoise fight club is…

So this evening when I was driving out on my ATV to get in 2 last nest checks, (I had come in early to hear one of the plant lab, and one of the invert lab interns give their final research presentations), I saw what can only be described as Gopher Tortoise fight club.

Well, not really. It was merely a territorial boundary fight between two males. But it was still pretty cool. Travis, the Schoech lab’s resident herp expert, spotted them on the way out. I guess a fight ends when one of the tortoises manages to flip the other onto its back. The larger of the two, who I will call Brad, almost managed to do this a few times to the smaller of the two, who I will call Edward. I always root for the underdog, so naturally, I was a bit disappointed when Edward backed down and trundled away. (Trundling really being the best way to describe the way they move.)
It was a bit surprising to see how aggressive they were during the encounter. Most of the time I see them they’re either trundling, or grazing on grass. So naturally, as Edward moved off, Brad trundled about 3 feet and began to graze. Like nothing had just happened.

In other strange, (and slightly creepy), news from Archbold Travis found a single grave stone out in the scrub while nest searching at ERRX. Finding the stone is not really too surprising as the section of the station in question used to be a very old town, which has now been reclaimed by the scrub. (I’ve actually found a few interesting little glass bottles out there while wandering around myself.) What makes the gravestone creepy is the following facts: The gravestone has been burned multiple times, presumably from the prescribed burns used by the land manager at the station to keep the scrub in optimal shape, and next to the gravestone is an unburned clay pot… you know, the kind that people plant flowers in. So… There’s a grave out in the scrub, that we cannot make out any inscription on, that has obviously been there a while, either forgotten, or unknown to most, and someone may know about it and feel the need to place flowers by it. Creepy? I think so. I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that field biologists must have one of the highest recovery rates of dead bodies of any profession. This incident just brings to mind Aaron saying that he found a body out in the sagebrush of Wyoming a few years back, and mine and Viddy’s hesitation at recovering a large white tarp out in the sagebrush of Sheldon for fear of what it was hiding. (Nothing, by the way.) Tomorrow Travis, Michelle and I are making the trip out to the stone together to attempt to make a rubbing… because none of us really wants to do it alone.

And in more lifelike news… I have seen my first fledglings! They are incredibly cute. See the little guy sitting on the branch?


I have yet to hear the characteristic begging squeal, but I’m sure that will come soon. I’ve already gotten to hear its approximation, complete with gratuitous wing shimmying, from a few demanding females of their male partners… and once directed towards me when I refused to feed a hand tame bird while trying to nest search. (How am I supposed to observe nesting behavior when all they want to do is eat and cache peanuts?)

a few random facts...

Here’s a few fun facts that I’ve learned while working on Archbold…

1. When riding on an ATV at approximately 30 mph, it hurts when a dragonfly (or any insect for that matter) collides with your face. A lot.
2. If someone comes back from the field looking like they’ve been in a fight with a plethora of black eyeliner pencils, they’ve been nest searching at a territory with burnt snags.
3. Scrub Palmetto likes to grow just tall enough to stab a person of my height up the nostril.
4. If you can ride out to nest search in the morning without a long sleeve shirt on, or some layer other than a t-shirt, it’s going to be a miserably hot day.
5. The best way to dry a pair of dew logged binoculars in the field is to hold them up in the sun while crashing through the scrub.
6. Gopher tortoises are the biggest road hazard on the station. (Although it is amusing when they trundle along in front of your ATV.)
7. Florida Scrub Jays are fascinated by human bodily functions. Sneeze, and they’re instantly more interested in you. Think you’re alone, and decide to take a leak… and suddenly they’re sitting right behind you, watching… and grunting.


That’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure I’ll have more later.

For a very brief while we thought that NHMP was going to be no more. First their nest was depredated, then the nest at TP54, which is the territory they budded off from as non-breeders, was also depredated. Travis found gobs of feathers, and three broken Scrub Jay egg shells… and no sign of the TP54 female.
The TP54 male was then seen courtship feeding the NHMP female like crazy… trying to take his son’s girl. But apparently she rejected him. One minute she was accepting his food, the next she’s only taking it from the NHMP male. And today I found the new NHMP nest.

It’s crazy to think that in less than a month I will be back in Sheldon again. I’ve begun to think about the trip out there… I’d like to save money by camping along the way. That would also be much nicer than staying in sketchy smoky motels… I’m going to try and stop at the highest point in elevation in Florida on the way out. Apparently it’s about 400 feet, 2 miles from the AL border. I’m also hoping to get some longer days in in the beginning so I can get out to CO and UT. See Kirsten and Jan. And maybe get some climbing in. Then it will be Badger Cabin time!

NHMP stands for New Hampshire.

A lot has been happening as of late on Archbold. I’ll just touch on a few of the highlights.

There’s been some prescribed burns recently, which strangely, I kind of enjoy the smell of…




I’ve also had to outrun a few afternoon T-storms while doing nest checks/ gathering data for my project.


An update into the life of our hand tame Scrub Jay friend GCB-I is that he does have a nest, and it is indeed with the more experienced female breeder, and they currently have 3 eggs. After nest checks this afternoon we’ll know whether or not it’ll be 4.

I was on a roll in the nest searching department a little while ago, with something like 9 nests in 7 days. I couldn’t keep up that stride forever… however it did allow me a morning off without nest searching. We’ve had a few abandonments and failures since then so another day like that is unlikely.

The convention on the crew is that if you find a “new breeding pair” and discover their nest you get to name the resulting territory. (I say “new breeding pair” because most of the time the birds are banded, we just didn’t know they had partnered up.) I did this by accident one morning while actually searching an adjacent territory. The breeding pair from the territory TP54 (named for telephone pole 54… not very exciting), had flown South and I didn’t see exactly where they went, so I headed in the general direction, when I discovered OCY-I and an unbanded female. The two of them had been helpers the previous year at TP54. Apparently they’re not related, because that morning I found them defending a nest. I named the resulting territory NHMP. For New Hampshire. (Not North Hump as Travis likes to call it.) There’s already a TRAV, a MICH, an ILLI, and an IOWA. So there needed to be a NHMP. If I find another territory I may have to try and name it something along the lines of Destroyer… or banana slug.

I found the most ridiculous nest today… We thought that the female breeder at the territory might have been dead because no one had seen her for a few days, and we thought we weren’t getting the male to bring her peanuts… We thought he was caching them in a pasture just past the rail road tracks. Turns out the tree that I saw him “dive to the pasture” from is growing over another tree that contains their nest. A nest which is about 10 to 12 feet in the air. Most of our nests are between 1 and 3 meters off the ground. Even Travis, who is 6’4” did not see it yesterday. I think I got lucky this morning, just happening to think, “Well, they’re not leaving me, so if there is one, it must be around here somewhere… and when I make a move to walk this way they get a little flustered… so may be I’ll just head over here… what the? (Picture me jumping with a hand outstretched to try and get the birds to squawk.) Seriously….?” Yes, indeed there was a nest about 5 feet above my head.

I have now seen my first “alien babies” as Michelle likes to call them. Little naked lumps of pink bird with shut eyes. A few of them have been well fed enough by their attentive fathers that they could pick their heads up and do a little feeble begging.


Oh, and Tony is probably the most annoying bird on the Station. I can’t nest search nor do nest checks, anywhere remotely near where he likes to hang out without him showing up, buzzing my head, and landing on a nearby snag, where he then squeaks at me until I give him a peanut. He landed on my hand today without a peanut being present. I’ve wanted to swat him a few times. It’s hard to keep an eye on the birds you’re trying to follow with a ravenous red bellied woodpecker fluttering around your head.

A How to Guide for Dealing with Prickly Pear Cacti.

1. Avoid walking into Prickly Pear while chasing your focal species through the Florida scrub.

2. If you fail at 1 (which frequently happens) you must assess the situation:

a. Is the prickly pear lobe still attached to the rest of the plant? If so, simply take a step back in the direction you came. The spines should remove themselves from your pants. However, you must be sure that the glochids, or small hairs at the base of the long spine, have not rubbed off onto your pants. If you can see them, cautiously brush them off, being careful to not allow the hairs to embed in your hands.

b. Has the prickly pear lobe detached from the rest of the plant? If so, there are a few situations that could arise that you must know how to deal with.

i. The prickly pear lobe has detached from the rest of the plant and is simply hanging from your pants leg, no puncture wounds have occurred - In this situation simply grasp the detached lobe by one of the offending spines, NOT THE LOBE OF THE PLANT, and firmly pull straight out. If multiple spines have punctured the pants you may have to repeat this process a few times. If you make the mistake of using the lobe as your pulling point you may embed the glochids in your hand, resulting in much irritation later.

ii. The prickly pear lobe has detached from the rest of the plant and has impaled itself in your shin. – This is initially very painful, but you need to remain calm and again, assess the situation. Treat the offending lobe in the same manner as before, grasping the spines puncturing your skin and pulling firmly straight out. Avoid the temptation to wince, and do it like a band-aid… carefully, but quickly. You may have to repeat this process if multiple spines have punctured your skin.

iii. The prickly pear lobe has detached from the rest of the plant and is stuck to the front of your boot. – This is an extremely easy situation to deal with once you know the right way to treat it. The right way does not involve kicking your foot forward to dislodge the spines, because if the spines do detach, they will invariably do so at the apex of the kick, aiming the lobe of pain straight for your face. The best way to deal with a lobe stuck to the front of your boot is to step on it with the sole of your other boot. If the spines remain in the boot, detached from the lobe, simply grasp, and pull to remove.

iv. The prickly pear lobe has detached from the rest of the plant and is stuck to the back of your boot. – This happens, but you will never know until it is too late. Proceed to the next situation.

v. The prickly pear lobe has detached from the rest of the plant, and was once stuck in the back of your boot. However, due to walking in the scrub you have embedded multiple spines anywhere from about ¼ of an inch to one inch deep in the back of your calf. – Resist the temptation to swear profusely and loudly. This will scare off the focal species. Treat the lobe the same as most situations. Grasp the offending spines and firmly pull straight out. If the wounds begin to itch, which for many people they do, DO NOT SCRATCH. This will only compound the itchiness and your general discomfort.

Congratulations, you have learned how to deal with the immediate problem caused by prickly pear cacti in the field. Now you should know how to treat prickly pear wounds.

Like all wounds, try to keep them clean and dry. This shouldn’t be hard, as the wounds are extremely small, though painful. In general, the wounds will heal without much help from you, but there are a few things that you can do to ease your discomfort. For bruises that form around especially nasty puncture wounds I have found that a homeopathic cream that contains arnica tends to speed healing. The massaging in of the cream also probably functions to increase blood flow to the area and speed the removal of pooled blood, the cause of the bruising. If you find that the glochids have embedded themselves in your legs you will probably just have to wait for them to work themselves out in their own sweet time. They are generally no more uncomfortable than a small ingrown hair. If they are not fully embedded you may be able to pinch them with a pair of tweezers and pull them out. If this is not the case I have found it best to leave them be, eventually they will work themselves out.

If you have any further questions about how to deal with prickly pear cacti in the field, or the resulting wounds afterwards, just ask any Archbold employee. They will all have their own suggestions. Choose what you think is best.

I am Destroyer.

So I’ve actually been given a nickname that has stuck. Destroyer.

Apparently the name had its origins during the hiring process for my job. When deciding between the last 3 candidates our names were on a whiteboard in the office. One of Travis, Michelle and Gina’s friends walked in and, without looking too closely at the names exclaimed, “Wait? Is one of them named Destroyer?!” So somehow my last name was transformed to Destroyer. And the friend’s vote was for me. On the basis of his mis-reading of my last name. When he came to visit about 2 weeks ago he only referred to me as Destroyer. It’s gotten to the point now that I will actually respond to it to when people call me from the other room. It’s a fitting nickname, as I have done quite some damage to my ATV already. Ran out of gas one day (and didn’t have any reserve because it was switched the wrong way… oops…), broke the kick shift another day (it was going when I got it), had a water bottle explode in the back welded on box (which promptly turned spilled dog food used for supplemental feeding of territories to a nauseating mush), broke the box of my first aid kit, and somehow had my fire extinguisher explode in the back, coating everything in a nice fine yellow dust. In my defense, the sand roads are actually pretty rough. There’s all these washboard like bumps at strange intervals that make for quite a bumpy ride, as well as rolling lumps that make you feel like you’re on a mechanical bull at times. Travis says that his go to karaoke choice while riding the ATV is Eddie Vedder, a la Pearl Jam. The washboard bumps enable him to get that signature vibrato just right.

I’ve started my own research project which if I get some interesting data, hopefully I should be able to write something up… and possibly get it published in a small journal. I’m testing the theory that as the stages of the nest progress, from empty, to with eggs, to with nestlings, that the breeders will defend it more vigorously, because a loss of that nest to predation later in the process represents a greater loss of time and energy that they had invested in their genes in the next generation. I’ve been collecting data with all my nest checks that I conduct in the afternoons. I’ve been doing it for 4 days now and I’ve already got lots of data. I’m excited that I’m going to have such a large sample size. I’m also excited that I’ll be able to look at the overall population, as well as individual breeding pairs fit into this theory. And I’ve only been pecked by angry momma jays 3 times, (2 of those times being by the same one.) Here she is… looking rather cross with me. I had to give her about 5 peanuts, and then pretend to walk away from the nest before she hopped off and I ran back… then got pecked.


I’ve also been on a roll as of late. I’ve found 7 nests in the past 4 or 5 days. I’m definitely getting the hang of it. The birds are crafty. Today I had a male who I’m sure knew I was looking for his nest, because he led me right to a nest that was probably about 3 years old, filled with old crusty leaves. But I stuck around… and with a mix of luck, and strategy I found the nest… with the female on 2 eggs. Sometimes it really is a battle of wits out there. The birds are still winning, but I’m trying to close the gap.

Lots of nest checks.

So we've got about 30 nests that we are monitoring now. Some are starting to have eggs. Which means that when we head out there we make a small dot with a sharpie on the broad end of the egg indicating laying order. The eggs are speckled brown, so a few small dots blends in enough that the birds usually don't notice. Then we pull out our scales and weigh the most recent egg. All the while the parents are screaming at you from approximately 1 meter away. Scrub Jays are loud. I usually take out all the supplies I'm going to need before I get to the nest and disturb the breeders. I feel it's best to get in there, and get out, while most importantly, being careful not to do any harm to the eggs.

The latest in the GCB-I saga is that we still do not know who he is breeding with for sure. We think it may be the more experienced female, CL-B, who moved into his territory from hers after her old mate died last year. H-FCP, the other younger female, is almost as ridiculous as GCB-I. She's not hand tame, but she's definitely not afraid. She'll sit in a scrub oak 2 feet from me and just stare. Waiting for a handout. The tameness of the birds works against you when trying to nest search. Instead of acting like a normal Scrub Jay should, they sit and stare. Not helpful when you're trying to watch their behavior for clues as to what's going on where. They're more interested in the possible peanut you're going to give them than plucking fibers or breaking sticks to build a nest with. Yesterday while trying to nest search and SSHC without giving him anything GCB-I decided to sit on my head. Then when I didn't feed him after 10 minutes, and was clearly more interested in what CL-B was going to do, (because she still acts like a normal Scrub Jay), GCB-I got upset, started making his grunting noises, and then proceeded to peck me twice on the head.


Scrub Jays are not the only hand tamed birds on the station. There is a red bellied woodpecker, who we affectionately refer to as Tony, who is also hand tame. Of course, I didn't know about this the day he decided to introduce himself to me. It's one thing to have a Scrub Jay flying straight at your head to land... It's another entirely when a woodpecker is headed for you. They use those bills to inflict some serious hurt on some trees. Eventually I was informed that you give him a peanut, and he goes away. I had to pay the Tony toll at the ATV gate across State Road 8 just an hour ago.


I had a day off this Wednesday and drove out to Sarasota to visit with Memere and Pepere. We played some cribbage, and went to Siesta Key for the day. It was a very relaxing break. The Great Blue Herons who were nesting in the tree in their backyard are still there. The 2 fledglings are huge now. They barely fit in the nest together. The first got very upset when the second decided it was sick of sitting down and almost toppled the first out of the nest. They also fought when mom came back with a crop full of food.


I've got the beginnings of a research question formulated that I think may work out... Time for a brainstorming session.