Day 19 - 25: June 13-18, 2016

The MOUNTAINS Trip Part 2

This trip was the hardcore, work all day, every day kind of study where I truly felt like a professional wildlife biologist.  It began in the afternoon on Monday, June 13, when Vanessa and I arrived at the campground.  Edward was the only other person there, since John had to go back to Raleigh to do stuff.  So we three became pretty tight after that week; we all had to work together to solve problems and just be in each others' vicinity for six days.  We got right to work: tracking one Hermit Thrush each for two hours.  Then we promptly ate and went to bed.  I got three points on my Hermit Thrush: HETH-3, though I never saw him.  The dang bird--these guys are always elusive.

This is how my day looked for the next week or so:

5:30 am: get up and get ready
7:00 am: on the overlook looking at the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, or already working on the study
7 am - 4ish pm:

• For the first two days, this was doing radio telemetry.  I got 9 points on HETH-3 the first day (June 14), wrapping up the waypoints that I needed to get (35 total).  I also finished up Edward's bird (I needed to get a whopping one point for that one) to get HETH-2 to 40 points.  On the next day (June 15), Vanessa and I tracked her bird, who was always hanging out suspiciously in a small, dense spruce forest--not a hermit thrush's usual habitat.  John Gerwin suspected that he was feeding a fledgling there, going back and forth from a more hermit-thrush-friendly, open area to the weird, dense forest.  We got five points on him by staking the place out and estimating where he was. I never saw HETH-1 (V's bird), but I did end up seeing my bird twice.  Once it flew right near my
• For the days following, the three of us walked parts of the Bald Knob Ridge Trail and caught and banded Hermit Thrushes.  I mentioned this in the first mountains post, but one of the goals of this study was to not only track a few birds, but also to band as many as possible to see how many Hermit Thrush pairs there were in one area, and to see if they come back next year to breed.
• Do playback, see/hear another male HETH respond, set up a mist net, do playback to entice the male to investigate, catch bird (hopefully), band him, release him, take down net
• That's what banding specific bird species is like.

We caught and banded seven Hermit Thrushes throughout those five or so days.  That is pretty great work, considering we weren't even sure if, when starting the study, we would have time to band any other thrushes at all.  At two net sites, something very unusual happened: two males were caught in the same net within minutes of each other.  During the breeding season, males are insanely territorial, hence the singing all the time and attacking wooden models that we set up (so that they fly into the net).  They are territorial because of breeding itself: a male innately wants to pass along his genes to offspring, so if he finds another male in his territory, his genetic legacy is threatened.  The females are always scoping out other male's territories, because she wants to produce offspring that survive, thus wants a strong male with great territory to help fulfill that need. So, that being said, two males in the same territory, defending the same area, is strange behavior.  The explanation that all of us full- and half-scientists came up with is that one of the males is a young male who does not have a mate; he is perpetually fluctuating between territories trying to find an available female.  The young male will still defend an area in an effort to take it for his own.  That last part is my perception of the situation, so take it with a grain of granola (we ate that a lot in the mountains :).

The study was very successful, and I was extremely proud of the work we did the last few days.  We did some things outside of work, too, like driving up to Mt. Mitchell and walking to the very top.  The view was astounding.  It was partly cloudy, so we saw the sun bleeding colors into the clouds as it set, and stars speckled the other part of the sky.  It was also very windy, which provided entertainment visually via my hair, and audibly via the ocean-like sound of the trees.

Overlook; view of Potato Knob

Banding equipment: weight scale, wing length ruler, silver "shoehorns" to put on the color bands, pliers to put on an aluminum band, straw for blowing on feathers to collect fat, sex data

Me holding my transmitter bird!

Why did the turkey cross the road? Ummmm, idk :)

Can you spot the wooden model and mist net?  The orange thing is the speaker for playback

We caught a female Golden-crowned Kinglet by accident--but man she was cute! The male was very worried about her, but then they flew off together.

When you are targeting for a certain bird species, sometimes you catch something else.  We caught several Dark-eyed Juncos, and they are everywhere, nesting on the ground and cheeping at you angrily because you're fifteen feet away from their nest. . . or five.  If they didn't put their nests smack dab next to the trail, maybe they wouldn't have to use so much energy defending their babies!  We caught this adorable Kinglet though, and at least I was fawning over her.  The kinglets are small and round little birds, and the female in the picture was undoubtedly making a nest with her mate high in a conifer.

Here you can see the tail feather shape: the ends are a slight S-shape, indicating that it is possibly a second-year bird, and if not, an ASY, or after-second-year bird

The flora of the mountains is amazing and diverse.  Here you can see one of the many types of fern, as well as wild lily-of-the-valley, also known as the Canada Mayflower