Finley Day 2

I'm back home after another five hours at Finley. I forgot to reset the alarm from this weekend so it didn't go off until 5:30 (I'm supposed to be at Finley at 5:30). Thanks to my organizational skills I was out the door by 5:33, three minutes to get dressed, throw my shoes on, grab my gear, give Julie a hug and run out the door. It was a HOT day. I also ran the lines in a different order today, hoping to make things faster. It didn't work, I just ended up in the plot that takes 1-2 hours later, with the sun almost directly in my eyes when I looked up at the bushes/trees. However, I saw many wonderful things today. I saw another MacGillivray's warbler (heard a few in the bushes), heard my Wilson's warblers again, saw two and heard two Western wood-pewees, watched a juvenile Brown-headed cowbird, saw a ton of immature Cooper's hawks, a White-tailed kite, a handful of House finches, and a juvenile Yellow-headed blackbird.

For the most part I'm hoping we get to band out there next year, or that these calls start sinking in a little better than they are! My call ID is not what I'd like it to be and sometimes I get overwhelmed thinking about the potential ramifications incorrect IDs on my results. Though in reality there are quite simply a lot of Lazuli buntings, Common Yellowthroats, and Savannah sparrows (to name a few) and not many of the others, making it more obvious when a new bird is in the mix. As I reach hour 4 things start to sound the same (a little) and then I know I'm in trouble.

I find the results of these two weeks of surveys to be quite interesting, even if they are slightly inaccurate (though I don't think they REALLY are). Wilson's warblers aren't scrubby birds, there were Northern flickers in the black hawthorn, they certainly didn't nest there. Eh, I don't know what'll happen, either way I like what I'm doing so I suppose it doesn't matter too much.

Data entry is not going as quickly as I'd hoped. I still have several pages from my visit to Finley last week. Oh well, I suppose I have a little while to work on the data entry portion of the program. Now, back to homework, data entry, maybe a nap, and hopefully some necklace making (though that may wait until this weekend).