Day 42-49: July 4 - 10, 2016

Monday, July 4, 2016

America Day! Whoop whoop for the US.  We have some things we could be doing way better, but that's what the future is for, right?  Anyway, the day was really nice, filled with chilling out and planning the family three-week Spain trip (!!!!!) in September (!!!).  I went on a run with my mom, and promptly died, as I am, um, not the greatest runner, and my mom is in pretty amazing shape.  Goals.
My family did celebrate the Fourth of July, surprisingly, with America's number one staple (especially on the fourth obviously): burgers.  Well, besides the fact that they were soy burgers, and my mom had a soy hot dog, it was exactly like a typical American's dinner.  And oh my goodness the grilled pineapple was amazing as a dessert!  Nothing beats that except for West Wing, an awesome tv show that EVERYONE should watch--but we watched a couple episodes that night, so it was great.

Tuesday-Friday, July 5-8, 2016

It's so cool to have a job.  My sister and I have been doing various volunteer/internship stuff with the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, and our mentor, John Gerwin, decided that since we're 18, we should get paid for the particularly tedious jobs we do.  Fine by me, especially since the things we get paid for I actually enjoy immensely.  The huge project that we are working on with mainly Edward, as well as two Young Naturalists named Andrew and Ashley, is eggs.  Egg collecting was outlawed in the US in the early 1900s, so almost all of the eggs in the museum are from the late 1800s and early 1900s.  However, there are exceptions of ones from mid-1900s of collectors still illegally collecting these eggs or those who just happen to find abandoned eggs and send them somewhere.  The Museum received a huge collection that UNC-CH had acquired but no longer needed, so it's our job to identify the eggs that have lost their labels (almost all of them), and record any data that we can find.  Organization, patience, and attention to detail is required for this, because you have to look at the egg, see if there is a tiny number on it to indicate the date it was found, number corresponding to a know numbering system for eggs (to determine what species), or set mark, a number telling us how many eggs were in that clutch.

If there is any data regarding location or date, we write it on an official Museum slip so that it can go into the archives where scientists or artists can loan them to do research or draw them. The others are still fit with a label, but it’s just a slip of archival paper.  All of these eggs go into little plastic or cardboard boxes.  It’s pretty great, doing this, staying down in the bottom level of the museum, and getting $$$ ;)

Hummingbird egg!

Day 34-41: Beach Week

June 26 - July 3, 2016

A blog post in pictures.  Beach week is a week my entire dad's side of the family spends together at the same two cottages on Atlantic Beach they've been going to for generations.  The pictures are pretty self-explanatory: beautiful cousins, bubble-blowing, beaches, and steps in one way or another.

:

Day 26 - 33: June 19 - 25, 2016

This was the chill week; a fresh, relaxing week sandwiched between two busy but awesome weeks.  It consisted of reading, cleaning out my and my sister’s room, doing the survey at Prairie Ridge where we count the birds we see and hear, and going to the Museum of Natural Sciences.  There were a few noteworthy events that were fantastic.

• Sunday, June 19: Vanessa and I drove back from the Black Mountains.  Our parents joined us on Saturday, and we got to show the trail and how we set up the mist nets.  We attempted to catch the first and third Hermit Thrushes that had radio transmitters on them in order to take the transmitters off.  We saw both of them, but they did not go into the net.  For the first HETH (who we call .615), he responded to the playback vocally and flew a few times just over the net.  That was frustrating, but at least he was responsive.  The third HETH (.715) was seen only once, and the other times he did not respond at all to playback.  We caught another thrush that we had only color banded two days earlier instead of .715.  That’s how it goes!  Anyway, our parents saw the struggling side of the study, which is fine, especially considering the success of banding 13 total birds throughout the study.  Vanessa and I left separately of our parents in order to go see our friend Leah in Asheville.  She was my closest friend at NC Governor’s School, an absolutely incredible program created for gifted students who enjoy learning.  I went to Governor’s School last summer (it’s 5.5 weeks of amazingness).  We met at the parking lot and walked throughout Asheville to find a place to eat.  We saw a famous street Asheville band.  They were the bluegrass hippie type that dressed in mountain country clothes, and used instruments such as the harmonica and kalamazoo.  The lead singer had a beautiful, unique voice.  We ate at an all-vegetarian place, and I got a piña colada “mocktail,” and some really good bean and corn cakes with an interesting nutty sauce.  We walked to a beautiful bookstore after that and spent some time browsing the used books.  There was a candy store that we went to too that had the best sarcastic signs and some, ahem, colorful candies.  Then we walked to the best place ever: The French Broad Chocolate Lounge.  I got a delicious, gooey coconut macaroon chocolate brownie, and Vanessa and Leah got the heavenly chocolate creme brulee.  V also got a chocolate chip cookie that was about a half-inch thick and half the size of her face!
  
  

  
  

   

  

  Creme brulee + cookie and books = happiness

  
  
  

  

  Creme brulee and coconut macadamia brownie

• Tuesday, June 21: My family went to see a tap dance-drum duo at Page Auditorium.  Part of ADF (the American Dance Festival), the tap dancer was Savion Glover, and the drummer was Jack DeJohnette.
  

  • They were both amazing!  Savion Glover just tapped on a smallish tapping board for forty minutes or more, and then was accompanied by Jack DeJohnette.  He did a long drum solo before going to Glover’s space, tapping for a second, and then they did a rhythmic, erratic duet.  It was one of the strangest (in a good way) concerts I’d been to, but I enjoyed it immensely.

  Wednesday, June 22: My mother, her friend Marjorie, and my sister and I went to a Hillary Clinton rally in downtown Raleigh.  It was so neat! I’d never seen a presidential nominee (hopefully our soon-to-be president) before, but I was in for a treat.  Hillary was very nice as she spoke to the several hundreds of us without a teleprompter, notes, or anything.  She was amiable and talked not condescendingly, but as equals, as she described her plan to improve all American lives.  She was detailed in her planning, listing out five steps to tackle the US’ economic, social, political, and foreign issues.  It was very fun to be a part of that enthusiastic crowd; all of us cheering at certain parts or clapping excitedly.  And Hillary Clinton made cogent points about Trump’s hateful rhetoric--his idea of scapegoating Muslims and slandering all minorities was a roadblock for America’s future, not a promise or a plan.  It was nice to hear actual, detailed goals and steps to ameliorate our problems, not details about our (sometimes nonexistent) problems.  Through living, we can understand our own issues pretty well.

  Saturday, June 25: I did a bird banding again!  It was fun, and always challenging and rewarding.  It was a little slow though, always a factor in banding, and we mostly caught Cardinals (they bite really hard, too! But they’re tough as the rest of them of course) and House Wrens with their baby fledglings.  The fledglings are quite adorable, all feisty like their parents except fluffier.  With it being so hot, banding ended around 11, because it’s not safe for the birds to stay in a net or be handled when it’s really hot--they get more stressed out.  The most important thing about banding is this: stress--we want to reduce it as much as possible, and we do.  If there was another way to collect data about bird species’ locations, ages, populations, etc. we would do it in a less stressful way, but for banding, the stress is for a short amount of time only.

  
  

  After banding on Saturday, I got packed to go to the BEACH!
  
  

  

  See what I mean? House Wrens are adorable.

  
  

  

  Juvenile Red-winged Blackbird

  
  

  

  Heck yeah for awesome, decadent nacho lunches!