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!