Thursday we collected our last data on bird abundance and damage in sunflower fields, harvested the last tomato field, and cut our last alfalfa field. Nearly eight months after starting our first alfalfa experiments, all of the exclosures have been collected again and are ready to be stored for the winter.

This has been the longest field season I've ever sustained. It's been hot, muddy, dusty and dry. I've gotten my car stuck in the mud (but pushed it out unscathed), have scraped myself countless times on chicken wire, and have turned the bottoms of my field pants green from walking through tomato fields. But- it's been a great summer too! I've got (binders full of) data to sort through over the next couple of months- hopefully with some publications to come out of it all at the other end. There are also exciting collaborations with Audubon and PhD candidate Sacha Heath using our bird abundance data collected by Breanna Martinico, Ryan Bourbour, and Sam Lei, and the barn owl pellets to dissect for our owl diet study. 

This summer's team of interns were really the ones that kept everything going. Breanna Martinico in particular who kept things organized and running smoothly whenever I was out of town. Ryan Bourbour, Erin Barry, Joshua Heasell, Brian Vu, Jeffery Haight and Sara Remmes were all dedicated and enthusiastic members of the summer #WildAg team, all willing to get their hands dirty and spend morning hours harvesting tomatoes or sorting through alfalfa samples. I'm extremely grateful to be working at UC Davis, where giving students the opportunity to experience research firsthand as interns is a teaching method.

Now that fieldwork is over, I'll have more time to think and write- so expect a lot more activity on this blog over the winter months. For now, below is a storify of images tweeted from the #WildAg experiment over the past couple of months (follow me on twitter @sara_kross for more photos and news stories about agriculture and wildlife!).

I am Mayra Pelagio, first year student at UC Davis working towards an Environmental Science and Management degree. As a first year, I felt a little lost in the huge campus and I was eager to find an area of interest that will help me distress from school work.  Thankfully, a friend of mine knew about Sara’s project and that she was looking for interns.  The few months I was in the project were really exciting and I learned a lot about birds and agriculture. My blog post is about my experience as an intern.

The Alfalfa experiment

If you were to go out on a field to count birds in any given day, you would be amazed by the amount and variety of bird populations. This is true for alfalfa fields. Many farmers might see birds such as the red-winged blackbirds, and Brewer’s blackbirds as pest species and might considered the use of bird deterrents or even poisons to control their populations.  Whereas they might recognize that birds like barn swallows are insect-eaters and may help crops. The purpose of the experiment is to see if birds are helping farmers.  Since birds don’t eat alfalfa, the idea is that such birds are on the fields looking for insect food: alfalfa weevils specifically.

Alfalfa weevils are considered one of the most damaging insects to alfalfa. As larvae, the alfalfa weevils feed on alfalfa branches, significantly decreasing the yield of the crop.

In the fields

The team of interns and Sara built exclosures to keep the birds away from the area of study, and the areas covered by these exclosures were the treatment space. Each field has two treatment and two control areas from which alfalfa samples were taken.  The work on the field usually consisted of checking on the exclosures and harvesting the alfalfa.  Farmers calculate their gains depending on the alfalfa yield and we mimicked the process of production by collecting the samples, processing them to identify the weevil population on them and then drying them to observe the resultant yield. The expected results were to have more weevils in the areas birds didn’t have access to.

Bird Watching

While on the fields, Sara and I had various opportunities to observe several birds, especially at the beginning of spring when some birds where laying eggs and for others, eggs were hatching. There were some pretty awesome birds we saw that I’d like to talk about.

Birds observed

The Great horned owl; we saw a female at about midday, sitting in a nest with her great yellow eyes looking right at us. She was beautiful, and from the observations Sara concluded that she was incubating.

Great egrets and Great blue herons; this was perhaps the most amazing bird watching experience for me. On a field day, we noticed an alfalfa field (not part of the experiment) that was full of great egrets and great blue herons. The field was being flood-irrigated and as we later discovered, it was infested with voles.  We stayed there for only a few minutes but in that time we witnessed several birds swallowing voles whole!! Some of them ate the prey right way, others kept it in their beaks for a little longer to completely kill the animal.  I had never witnessed birds hunting in such environment and it was such a great experience.

Loggerhead shrike; this is a small songbird that preys like a raptor. We got to see this little bird and part of its nest one day while we were in the fields.  The loggerhead shrike is one of the few song birds that have the ability, or rather the beak, to prey for large insects and other bigger animals.

Horned Lark; we saw this little guy near a tomato field. Horned Larks have a distinct black-colored frown that makes the bird look mad, even sad. They are beautiful nonetheless.

Other birds that I managed to identify were; king birds, American robins, Western scrub jays, golden crowned sparrows, California quail and over fifty other species. As a first timer, I had seen plenty of birds but never really knew their species, now I am able to identify them and in some cases know more than just their names.

Lab work

The processing of alfalfa was quiet tedious. After we harvested the field, we would end up with an alfalfa sample that we were to process and dry to obtain the yield. In the lab, we took a plastic container, put all the alfalfa in it and shook it for at least thirty times to knock the insects off the plants. After was done, we took the alfalfa out by handfuls and slapped the bunch against the containers walls, again to make sure the insects are off the plant.  After all the alfalfa was taken out, it was weighed and the remaining leaf matter was examined for weevils. The data analysis was done on the amount and size of the weevils found. I did not have the opportunity to work with the data, but the results will be shared with me.

The tomato experiment

Due to the ending of the school year I was only able to help with the tomato experiment for two weeks.  During these two weeks, we went out in the fields examining the tomato plants that were in study, following the same process as the alfalfa. The processing of the data worked differently though.  The plants were examined by observation in the field and the data used was on damage reports.

I won’t be able to help this summer with the rest of the tomato or the sunflower experiments but I am hoping to come back during the winter to continue working on the alfalfa experiment. 

It has been an experience assisting with the #WildAg project. I was to able to do a variety of work including handling data, assisting in the lab, and doing fieldwork. Doing fieldwork was one of my favorite activities and so I thought it would a great idea to share my first experience of going out onto the alfalfa fields. I decided to create a log to document tasks I did, notes that I've taken, new vocabulary words that I learned and new skills that I gained on that first day in the field. My most memorable moment was finding a regurgitated bird pellet, dissecting it and figuring out what the raptor had eaten. It was also exciting to bird watch with Sara and to have her share her knowledge with me about various bird and their behaviors. This experience has led me to think more about what I enjoy most about research and how important it is to be very organized when carrying out experiments.

Date: 3/31/2014

Time: 8am to 11amVocabulary:

· Raptor - Bird of prey that hunts for and feeds on other animals.

· Red winged blackbirds - Males have red and yellow shoulder badges. Males show off their colors to attract mate. Females are streaked and dark brownish all over.

· Northern Harrier - Males are white and gray. Females are brownish all over. We saw a female perched and a male flying around the area around her. From a distance, the bird is described as being “slim and long-tailed”.

· Alfalfa - Related to the pea plant and part of the legume family. Have a symbiotic relationship with Nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Protein rich plant. Can grow up to 1m tall (3 feet).

· Alfalfa weevil - In its young larvae stage, the weevil will feed on terminal buds of the alfalfa crop. In its larger larvae stage, the weevil will feed on the leaflets.

· Pellet (ornithology) - Undigested material that birds of prey regurgitate.

· Sweep nets – Common procedure for monitoring pest insects.

· Hedgerow – Rows of vegetation along the edge of the field that are used for encouraging pollinators, birds and other wildlife.

Fieldwork:

We did the following:

· Collect control (area with birds) and treatment (area without birds) samples of alfalfa.

· Set up exclosures in a newly planted tomato fields.

· Spent time watching birds to ID birds and observe their behavior.

· Look at raptor pellet that we found on top of the exclosure.

· We found the remains of a dead raptor near the entrance to the field. We don't know what killed it, but thought it might have been killed by one of the resident territorial raptors.

Notes:

· Species diversity is calculated using the Shannon-Wiener Diversity Index by looking at species abundance (distribution of species) and richness (number of species in a given area).

· Alfalfa weevils like to climb up to the top of the alfalfa crop to feed on the terminal buds.

· Birds sing to attract mate and to claim territory.

New Skills:

· Random sampling of alfalfa.

· Sampling with sweeping net – Swing net 180 degrees across the alfalfa. With a less vertical angle, strike the alfalfa quickly across.

· Investigating pellet from raptor – Opened up a 6cm pellet which had a dry texture to it. It was mostly colored dark gray with some whites. The pellet contained mostly white and gray fur. There was a small jaw about .5cm across, a pair of beetle wings and some unidentified bones.

· Setting a transect for bird counting. The bird IDers will walk 200m along edge of the field to count all birds that are seen and heard in the edge of the habitat. “They then return to the center of the transect and spend five minutes listening and scanning the field visually for birds, and then spend 5 minutes walking perpendicular to the edge, straight out into the field for 50m to flush birds that are foraging on the ground (get birds to fly out of vegetation).

Time is flying! Yesterday the temperature hit 95 and tomorrow is the first day of May.

We've been busy in the #wildag experiment lately. It was a mad dash to harvest all of our alfalfa samples from the 19 fields we have set up exclosures in before the tractors started cutting. Harvesting involves setting up a quadrat that is slightly smaller than the exclosure itself (to avoid harvesting stems that may have been inside the exclosure on some visits and then outside on others), and then hand-cutting all of the alfalfa within it and bagging them up. In the lab, we then shake the L out of the samples (creating Afafa?) to knock weevils off of the stems and then sort and count all weevils into size classes. It's a labor-intensive job, but gives us a good chance of finding all of the weevils in our haystacks. The alfalfa samples are then weighed and dried in an oven for at least 2 weeks so we can eventually compare the number of weevils per pound of dry weight of alfalfa.

We're also in the middle of setting up most of the tomato exclosures. So far there haven't been any pest insects on the young plants, but as the weather warms up we're expecting to start seeing some damage.

I'm lucky to have a team of amazing interns and mentors who kept the project going while I was in the Great Smoky Mountains for a week-long Smith Fellows retreat. All of the interns are going to be adding their thoughts to this blog in the next few weeks- so keep an eye out for their bios to go up, and for their posts. I'm excited to see what they have to say!

Click on the 'Read More' link below to see the latest storify of our fieldwork adventures

My runs around Davis lately have been peppered by high-pitched, double-syllabic calls emerging from treetops and house roofs. They come from black phoebes, handsome little flycatchers that are keeping an eye on their suburban territories.

If you're a gardener or farmer- these little guys should be on your radar. They are insectivores: ravenous consumers of pest insects galore. On the wing, they are  acrobatic hunters- taking out flying insects and gleaning from leaves and plants.

According to the National Audubon Society, the phoebes (a group of tyrant flycatchers including the Eastern-, Black-, and Say's- Phoebes) are named for their call: which sounds like they are repeatedly saying 'Phee-bee'. I wonder though, if their name comes in part from the Greek Titan Phoebe; who was associated with the moon and was grandmother of the great hunter Artemis. The grey, black and white color palette and hunting prowess of these elegant tyrants certainly seems to match the vibe of those Greek super-powers. 

There are 3 species of phoebe in the US- the black phoebe, the Say's phoebe, and the eastern phoebe:

Phoebes are sit and wait predators: they hunt from a perch and visually sight their prey before pursuing and capturing it. They can often be spotted perching on a good vantage point- bobbing their tails and sometimes expressively lifting their small black crests. They are hungry birds too. One study from California in 1985 found that black phoebes caught an average of 1.21 prey items per minute over the course of a day. If that rate is consistent, one black phoebe can eat 73 prey items per hour; over a ten-hour hunting period that is 726 prey items per day; and over a year that adds up to 264,990 prey items (!). Black phoebe's primarily consume small wasps, spiders, flies, moths, butterflies and grasshoppers. They have even been known to fish small minnows from shallow water. Say's and eastern phoebes have similar diets.

Black- and eastern- phoebes traditionally build their nests from mud on sheer-sided cliffs near sources of water.  Say's phoebes rely less on mud as a substrate- possibly because of their wider range and lesser association with waterways. All 3 species like to have a roof over their heads while nesting. The eaves of houses and spaces under porches and in garages have become new favorite nesting sites for the birds in towns within their range- and have even been attributed to widening the area in which phoebes breed. YouTube is full of home-shot vidoes of phoebes feeding their young- and even a few that have learned to take food from their host (human) family.

Eastern phoebe nests can sometimes harbor unwelcome guests. Brown-headed cowbirds, a bird that specializes in laying its eggs in the nests of other birds (a phenomenon known as 'brood-parasitism'), often call eastern phoebe nests their home. Cowbirds lay their eggs in amongst phoebe eggs, and pass along all their maternal duties to the unsuspecting phoebe parents. Cowbird chicks grow faster than their natural nest-mates by out-begging the phoebe chicks. This can result in very low nesting success rates in phoebes. In some well-studied eastern phoebe populations, only about 10% of parasitized nests fledge both phoebe and cowbird chicks- and in some areas up to 20% of nests can be parasitized. Habitat fragmentation has been linked with the spread of cowbirds around the country, and this has in turn been linked with increased parasitism in phoebe and other host bird nests.

Mark Hauber, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter University, studies the mechanisms of brood parasitism in birds around the world: including the co-evolutionary arms-race between eastern phoebes and brown-headed cowbirds. While many brood parasites actively try to kill or remove the natural eggs of their host parents from the nest, it may not be the best idea for cowbirds in phoebe nests. Dr. Hauber's work with colleagues has shown that cowbird chicks actually have the best growth rates when they allow phoebe chicks to remain with them in the nest. This is because the parent phoebes deliver more food to accommodate for their larger brood: food which the more aggressive cowbird can snag first.

[Side Note: As part of my PhD research, I found that New Zealand falcons brought more food to larger broods, but the chicks that had siblings got less food overall than single falcon chicks.]

Farm Rating: Friends year-round.
If you want to encourage more phoebe's around your property (and everyone should!), keeping waterways flowing and surrounded by natural vegetation is key. Count yourself lucky if you spot a cup-nest made from mud and mosses in the corner of your garage or under an eave at your house- a phoebe nest will give you hours of entertainment as you watch the parents tend to their 2 broods each summer (but be sure to keep your distance), and just think of the pest control services that one pair of Phoebes will give you over the course of a year!

More Reading:
Wolf, Blair O. 1997. Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/268

All About Birds for Black Phoebe, Say's Phoebe, and Eastern Phoebe

The website of the Hauber Lab

Croston, R. & Hauber, M. E. (2012) The Ecology of Avian Brood Parasitism. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):56

This Sunday is Superb Owl Sunday: A day when Americans and owl fans the world over sit down with some fantastic cheese-covered foodstuffs and partake in observing the glory, the superb creature, that is the OWL.

Thanks to Stephen Colbert's wariness of copyright infringement and what appears to be some genuine misspellings of the words 'super bowl' on twitter, the birding world is atweet with witty memes and photos of owls in all of their superb-ness.

Why should owls be receiving any attention in a week when professional athletes will be paid millions, nay, billions, of dollars to run across a field? Here's my shortlist of why owls are amazing and deserve to share the spotlight:

1. Owls can fly- SILENTLY.
As the stealthiest hunters out there- owls can fly without making a sound. Well, they do make a small amount of noise, but the wind that you'd normally hear whooshing around the wing of a falcon is nearly inaudible. This is because of comb-like serration on the leading edge of their wing feathers, combined with a soft back edge that muffles any sound. Owls also have extra down around their flight feathers and on their bodies, both for sound absorption and keeping warm- also, see point 5.

2. They can (almost) turn their heads around.
Famous fact known by most school children. Owls can turn their heads 270-degrees- all the better for surveying and listening to their surroundings (point 4) while waiting on a perch for prey to reveal itself.

3. Owls eat a ton of rodents.
Owls are birds of prey, and, depending on the species, their diets can include mammals, birds, lizards, insects and even fish. From my perspective as someone studying the pest-control services from birds for farmers, the rodent-gobbling habits of species such as the barn owl are incredible. Farmers here in California are flocking to encourage barn owls into their fields, since a single barn owl eats a minimum of one rodent per night. Using conservative estimates from data collected at a single California vineyard where owl boxes had boosted the population of owls to 102 individuals, Mark Browning and a team of scientists worked out that over 24,000 rodents were consumed by hungry owls over two years. That's 24,000 rodents in ONE vineyard. We have been talking to farmers near Davis about carrying out similar studies here to measure the economic benefits that they receive from barn owls.

 

4. Owls hear with their faces.
Owls' flat faces and specialized feathers form a facial disc that directs sound to their ears. As the video below says, their face is basically a giant ear. Hunting at night, owls can see much better in the dark than we can, but it's their exceptional hearing that often clues them in to their next meal. Owls can hear so well that they can pick out a nibbling rodent under a few inches of snow (see the excellent photo above by Kay Schlumpf).

5. Owls are fluffy and cute.
Ridiculously so. As we've already discovered, owls are loaded with extra down, making them fluffier than most birds of prey. Their large, forward facing eyes and round facial discs give them the features that humans find adorable. They also have wonderful personalities. Case in point: here is a photo of a baby owl named speckles. He was rescued by my colleague in New Zealand, Diana, who is the local bird rehab guru in the town I used to live in. Now, Specks was found in the middle of a paddock as an owlet (probably dragged out of his nest by a house cat that then got bored and left him). He was so small that he wasn't able to keep warm, and had no feathers. As an introduced species in New Zealand, Little Owls' aren't protected, so Diana raised him by hand at home. He's imprinted on humans, which is not normally something you'd want to do to a rescued owl, but in his case- he's being primed for stardom. Specks will be used for education in local schools to teach kids about owls- and hopefully to get them more interested in their native owl, the Morepork. For me though, I got the chance to hang out with this adorable, friendly, baby owl when he was just starting to take his first flights. He liked the back of his head to be scratched, preferred sitting on my shoulder or head (but was still quite happy perched on one pinky), and he didn't like the family dog. Sitting around the table, he settled down in my lap one night and then neatly tucked himself in by pulling the bottom of my sweater over himself. Awwwwwwwwwww.

This video may have the best opening statements of all times:
"Baby owls are called owlets and they look like a cotton ball that grew a face... and legs.
Owlets are born without flight feathers and because they are vulnerable they camouflage themselves... as muppets."

I see some pretty wonderful halftime ad opportunities featuring owls.

Huffing and puffing, we rounded a corner, climbed a rise and saw them:
25 photographers poised at the helms of their 2-foot-long lenses, watching and waiting.

We'd just slogged through a half mile of deep sand through the dunes at the westerly end of Jones Beach. We easily followed the footprints and tripod trails of those that came before us: the tireless wildlife photographers who'd arrived in the morning and waited patiently for the owl to do... anything.

And there, perched on a tiny hill of sand and scrub, 50 feet from the gaggle of cameras, sat the great white owl. Sleeping, blinking, and every so often turning his (or her) head to glance lazily at the ever-forward-creeping band of tripods.

Christmas music has been bombarding us everywhere for the past month and we're all tired of it. Thankfully, today is boxing day- which means no more Christmas tunes for about ten months... but also that I'm a day late with this post.

At a party yesterday listening to the omnipresent 12 days of Christmas while drinking hot toddies (partially responsible for the tardiness of this post), I realized that the bird-laden song is devoid of North American species. This makes sense because it's an English song, but for new birders like me, I wondered about which of the species are likely to actually be part of our American 12 days.

Partridge have been introduced to the Americas (although we do have pear trees), turtle-doves are not found here, and French Hens are a specialized breed of domestic poultry, so they don't count.
We do have swans that a-swim and geese that a-lay, and because those laying geese are most likely the domesticated breeds that grace some Christmas tables, let's talk about our own wild swans.

In New York, where I grew up, we had mute swans in the estuary behind our house. As kids, we used to feed one of the resident pairs from the dock and always named them Pinocchio and Penelope, despite the fact that sometimes there were 6 pairs of Pinocchios and Penelopes. They had adorable cygnets but were nasty and terrifying and kept us off of the beach.  Beautiful as they are, these large, introduced Eurasian waterbirds can slurp up a lot of vegetation and out-compete smaller waterfowl, making them a conservation concern for many native species. In places like New Zealand (where they are also introduced) mute swans are considered the property of the queen. But in the Americas flocks are starting to get so large that they need to be controlled. The flock in our little estuary now numbers in the hundreds every year.

So, that leaves us with the trumpeter swan and the tundra swan. Both of these are cold-weather birds, and are not common in most of the lower 48. Trumpeter swans only grace Canada's plains, Alaska and part of the Prairie Pothole and Great Lakes regions. Tundra swans breed in the arctic circle and migrate to spend their winters along estuaries on the Pacific coast, parts of the Mid-Atlantic seaboard, a little of the great lakes and in some of Utah. If we were going to spot seven swans a-swimming in either my childhood home of New York, or my current home in the Central Valley- they'd probably be tundra swans.

Tundra swans are monogamous species that grace our wetlands and farmlands in the winter. Chicks stick with their parents until the next year's breeding season, so family groups and flocks may be spotted. Traditionally spending their winters on wetlands, tundra swans are now forced to over-winter on open fields in some areas where wetlands have been drained: sometimes leading to conflict with farmers. In places like the central valley though, initiatives like the Migratory Bird Conservation Partnership between Audubon California, The Nature Conservancy, and Point Blue Conservation Science, are providing the science, funding and logistics to target flooding of rice and arable fields in the winter so that waterbirds and waders have the habitat that they need to survive. In many cases, flooding fields instead of burning them can lead to lower pest pressure, better breakdown of stubble, and habitat for native fish species. A California-based study by Bird, Pettygrove & Eadie from 2000 showed that foraging waterfowl could increase the breakdown of rice straw by 78% compared to areas that waterfowl did not forage in: meaning that in some cases, waterfowl could replace autumn tilling in the mechanical breakdown of straw. These types of win-win situations where conservation and farming can be mutually-beneficial are some of the most exciting studies, in my view.

Trumpeter swans are the largest waterbird in North America and can weigh up to 12 kilograms (about 27 pounds). Because of this large size and their long milky-white feathers (which were used for making superior pen quills), the species was hunted almost to extinction by the early 1900s. Conservation efforts have helped the birds bounce back, but they are still threatened by competition from the mute swan, loss of their wetland habitat, and lead poisoning.

Trumpeters are monogamous species and mate for life after establishing a bond in their first 2-4 years. Birds can live to be over 20 years old, and have one clutch of 1-9 eggs per year. Eggs are large, roughly the weight of 6 large chicken eggs, and take over a month to incubate. Hatching takes 12 hours and is exhausting for the chicks. Because nests are built on the ground they are open to predation, so chicks need to recover quickly to leave the nest and head out onto the water within 1-2 days. These big birds take a long time to grow and develop their feathers and flight abilities- with most chicks fledging after spending over 100 days with their parents. 

I've never seen a trumpeter swan, but do remember reading The Trumpet of the Swan by Charlotte's Web author E.B. White. This story of a young boy who helps a swan who can't trumpet learn to write and play a brass trumpet, was one of my favorites growing up and would be a great festive gift for young readers next year. For me, I'd love the opportunity to see and hear a trumpeter swan in real life. Perhaps even seven-a-swimming.

Here is a video about 'Ultimate Animal Dads' that may stretch the analogies a bit.
'He's a big-daddy, a handyman, a good cook, and a stud rolled into one'
HA!

Read more: Mitchell, Carl D. 1994. Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator). In The Birds of North America, No. 105 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C.

This week, the burrowing owl won a hard-fought battle to become Audubon California's bird of the year.

I want to declare my own winner for a slightly different competition- Grumpy bird of the year (which the burrowing owl might have had a shot at winning). That's right, the horned lark is the world's grumpiest-looking bird.

I'm sure that this statement will get me into hot water amongst birders and will bring out comments about owls, swallows, boat-billed herons, and pretty much any passerine nestling. But, with his black lores and cheek patches forming a cartoonish frowny-face, and what appears to be an 18th-century handlebar mustache on his head, the male horned lark above is about as grumpy-looking as a bird can be. If anything, the horned lark has a pretty habitual 'Not- Impressed' look on his face. Possibly not to the point that it can compete with the grumpy cat, but, for a bird, these guys are pretty surly looking.

I can't help but giggle every time I look at these pictures!

In October I was lucky enough to have the chance to visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is a mecca for avian scientists around the world.

The Lab's reputation as a world center for science, conservation, outreach and outside-of-the-box thinking is overwhelming for a young scientist like myself- and going there to meet some of the team was an inspiring experience. Below are a few of the amazing projects that the Lab runs which I think are worth sharing:

On my visit, I met Nancy Trautmann, director of education, who told me about the Lab's many programs for teaching people about ecology, conservation, and of course- birds!
'Bird Sleuth' is a program for K-12 students that gives both students and teachers the resources needed to integrate bird-related research into the school curriculum. Students are encouraged to get outside and use their powers of observation and exploration to shape and answer questions about birds. In addition to teaching kids about biology, animal behavior and ecology. In doing this, they put the scientific method to use to answer questions that they are interested in. This experiential learning can be an incredibly powerful tool to teach critical thinking and creativity. Students also learn to appreciate and understand science, and to learn about conservation in their region. The annual publication of individual and group projects about birds conducted by students is brilliant (and their artwork is great!)- I highly suggest giving it a read.

The lab has an extensive series of teaching resources for the Physics of Animal Behavior, further reaffirming my belief that birds are a great mechanism for learning about a lot of different topics in science. Physics would have been much more interesting to me in High School if we'd learned about it in the context of animal movements.  

The bioacoustics section of the lab is world renowned. As an undergrad at Cornell, I did a research project with Carlos Botero, who was doing a PhD at the time. My input into his project involved listening to and identifying the songs of tropical mockingbirds which were recorded at his field sites in Bonaire- but which I listened to on a computer in a windowless room in Ithaca in the middle of the winter. I used a program called Raven, which was developed by the Lab of O and which is being used for bioacoustics research around the world. Participating in this project as an undergraduate research project gave me my first taste of real science- and led me down the path to becoming a researcher myself. I just loved the idea of discovering something for the first time, and enjoyed the detective-like work that was needed to pull together different sources and previous research to write the introduction to my final report. Thanks bioacoustics research program!

eBird, which I talked about in a previous post, has been used to develop detailed and informative spatio-temporal exploratory models (STEM). These models are built from the citizen-science sightings of a given species across North America, and then combined with information about habitat, weather patterns, and bird behavior to predict the likelihood you'll have of spotting a bird in a given area of the country. The resulting 'heat maps'- which show areas where birds are expected to be seen as white flare ups on the black background of the USA- are at once inspiring and jaw-dropping. The movements of birds like the Horned Lark (map shown below) can be visualized as the seasons change through the year- and the predictions look like storms moving across North America. Geographical features such as California's central valley and the Mississippi river become visible as either brightly lit beacons, or dark patches, depending on the season. On closer inspection at the Lab, Marshall Lliff and I spotted the Sutter-Butte mountains as an obvious light patch in the northern central valley- the data is that detailed! Part of my purpose for visiting the lab was to brainstorm with some of the scientists there about the possibility of using this high-powered data to investigate trends in bird ranges and agriculture- a side project that I'm hoping will develop more over the next two years.