Extended weekend

This weekend is a four day weekend. While not having a schedule to constrain my life is wonderful, I have many projects due in the coming week. Thus, my weekend is not nearly as full of relaxation as I'd like. My winter break will be similarly structured with gift making, thesis proposal writing and PhD professor seeking on the agenda. Hopefully, there will be enough snow for a little snowshoeing too.

Its winter and I have, once again, become very self-reflective. I think this graduate program is helping with this process. I've always loved teaching, but I'm learning more and more about the places I do not want to teach in. I'm also realizing that I truly love natural resources and conservation. Understanding how we interact with the world around us and what we can do to preserve nature. Research is a must in my future. I've also come to realize that meetings really are just not my "thing," particularly inefficient and unproductive meetings. I don't need to have meetings about meetings, I need to have meetings about progressing forward with decisions and what-not.

Anyway, I'm off to an Environmental Education Holiday Potluck. Enjoy your weekend!

Snow Day

My dog loves the snow so yesterday I hiked up the mountain behind my house, hoping to find snow for her. We found a couple of inches at the higher elevations, making for a wonderful way to start the day. On the hike back down the mountain an adult red-tailed hawk and a raven circled over head for a short portion of the hike. In that moment I felt so happy, and so lucky to be alive. To live where I live. To be so completely happy to "just" watch birds. A lovely morning indeed!

Thesis Project

Okay, all you birders out there, I have a favor to ask of you. My thesis project has changed quite a bit from my original idea. In its current form the project is "The Effects of Birder Use of Playback on Bewick's Wrens and Song Sparrow." In putting together the methods for this section I have come across some question that I cannot answer myself. How do birders use playback? What time of day are most birders out birding? Where do most birders acquire the songs they use for playback? What kind of equipment do most birders use when they use playback? If you, or anyone you know, uses playback, or if you have suggestions or thoughts on these questions, please let me know. Any assistance you can provide will be much appreciated! Cheers!

Fall Term

Man, oh man, this term has been hectic! Between class, work, my thesis proposal and planning meetings for the fall outdoor education program that my cohort will be putting on next fall I seem to have little time to stop and think. Or blog for that matter. I've never been in Ashland for more than a day trip, so this fall has been interesting. The irrigation ditch is now dry. The neighborhood bears and foxes hang out closer to my house (both leaving scat behind and the foxes talk a lot!). During the peak of fall migration there were hundreds of swallows performing their aerial acrobatics over Ashland. Turkey vultures also gathered over Ashland before heading south. In one day I counted over 40, and that was after I finally gave up and just stared up at their thermally soaring silhouettes. Now the white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows hang out in the bushes around town and the winter flocks of black-capped chickadees, ruby-crowned kinglets and golden-crowned kinglets have come down from the higher elevations. There are occasional flocks of bushtits and every now and then I hear a brown creeper. Moments of reflection on the cycles of life, circadian rhythms and changes both in my life, self and the nature around me are wonderful distractions from the bustle that my life has become.