Back From Brazil

Woah, such an amazing trip. 360 species of bird! I will be doing much "retro-posting" over the next few weeks to catch up. Also considering there is an ivory gull in Cape May and other goodies around, you can expect me to be posting about local trips as well!

Salto Marato

Tiger Rat Snake

We arrived in Guanacasava and took a bus up into the Atlantic Rainforest. of the Salto Marato reserve. On the way I spotted guria cuckoos and a black-and-white monjita in a pasture. Salto Marato is a private nature reserve by Fundacao Obotacario. Fundacao O Botacario is a conservation organization funded by the O Botacario cosmetic company.

Salto Marato is a relatively small reserve at 7,000 acres, however it adjoins some much larger reserves. One of the requirements of O Boticario to purchase land for a reserve is that it adjoins another protected area. This is in keeping with the theory of Biogeography, that an intact area of habitat of a certain size will have higher biodiversity than the same area of fragmented habitat.

Upon arrival at the reserve we were shown a tiger rat snake at the entrance by volunteer, Romeiro.
We had our first presentation by Zulekia, the reserve director. During the coffee break I spotted a channel-billed toucan on a bare tree outside the visitor center.

We learned about the severe degradation of the Atlantic Forest to less than 7% of it's original coverage. Zulekia explained how the over harvesting of palmito palm for hearts of palm causes a trophic cascade as it is such an important food source for furgiverous animals. Loss of this species reduces the amount of seed-dispersing birds in the forest.

Lapwing at Coritiba vs Corinthians

Brazil

Lapwing at Botanical Garden, Curitiba

It's been a while since my last post. A month perhaps. I have a lot to cover. Denali, Anchorage, Philly. Pine Barrens, Key Largo and Brazil. I write this in a private Brazilian hospital emergency room waiting room. I'm waiting for program's TA as she has come down with bronchitis and has a high fever. I'm watching a TV show about Cape gannets in Portuguese. I'm in Curitiba, a city of two million in the state of Parana in southern Brazil.

It's fitting that the show I'm watching is about South Africa as I am in another part of the southern hemisphere's sub tropics. I find the southern temperate regions especially fascinating. I want to spend more time exploring these regions. I am especially interested in auracaria forests. Curitiba's city seal is of a Brazilian pine, an auracauria. These columnar trees with strange upside-down umbrella crowns are found thorough the city. Unfortunately I don't think my trip will visit any wild stands auracauria forest. It will have to wait till my next visit when I also travel to Argentina and Chile to see monkey puzzle tree forests.

I guess I'll start in Brazil since I'm here. I'll fill in the rest with “retro-blogs” when I'm home. We arrived in Brazil about two weeks ago. We landed in Sao Paulo and took a connecting flight to Curitibia. Not surprisingly the first bird was black vulture followed by a southern lapwing. The hostel we stayed in was fantastic and had fantastic grounds to bird. Tropical parula, an unidentified spinetail and many southern house wrens and rufous bellied thrush were found from the decks. Rufous honeros are everywhere here and it's really cool to see their mud dome nests on telephone poles and Brazilian pines. We spent the rest of the day eating at a churrascaria (Brazilian barbeque and buffet) and visiting the botanical gardens.

Southern lapwings are everywhere, and I mean everywhere. All over the botanical gardens, even walking on top of the topiary hedges. Lapwings are noisy, the local name, “quero-quero “ means “I want, I want”. It's apt as the birds do sound like a whiny child. I even saw a lapwing with chick remain on the field during a football match. Coritibia aka Coxa (Curitiba's team) played the Corinthians from Sao Paulo. The lapwing and chick never left the field! Occasionally a player would come too close and the mother would fly up and even harass the players. I don't know how the chick wasn't trampled.

OK back to the story. After some morning birding at the hostel and breakfast were off to Paranagua. Brazilian breakfast consists of sweet breads, caramel spread, chocolate cake, ham and of course, coffe. We took the ferry from Paranagua across a bay to Guaraquecaba.

. During the crossing we saw cocoi herons as well as great egrets and little blue herons feeding on mud flats near mangroves. The bay in surrounded by rainforest covered mountains. We had several dolphin sightings. The low triangular and non curved dorsal fins made me think they may be La Plata dolphins, the South American estuarine members of the river dolphin family. However they are apparently shy of boats and occur in low densities. Maybe we saw more than one kind of dolphin? Soon we saw our first brown boobies diving into the dolphin pods. Magnificent frigate birds were constantly overhead and often mixed with black vultures in thermals over islands. Occasionally a frigatebird could be seen pursuing a booby or royal tern. I believe I saw a snowy-capped tern, but I'm not sure if they occur over such open water. I think they are more of a marsh tern. Out n the bay I witnessed one of the most amazing wildlife spectacles I ever witnessed, two rafts of neotropic cormorants in the THOUSANDS!. I never know neotropic cormorants occurred in such congregations. There must have been ten thousand between the two groups. Brown boobies were also in big numbers, in groups of dozens and even some in the hundreds. With the bay surrounded by mountains I suspect the bay could be quite steep and deep, maybe there is a canyon and an upwelling like a mini Monterrey Bay? Maybe it is a seasonal occurrence, the birds and dolphins drawn to spawning fish or a anadromous fish run.

Fairbanks

I left camp on a Department of Natural Resources chopper that was ferrying in the Fish and Game guys who will be sharing camp for three weeks banding ducks. The chopper was a Bell 212 “Huey” , the twin engine version of the classic Vietnam war workhorse. I was thrilled to fly in it. I had to wear a Nomex flight suit. The chopper was used by the DNR's forest fire service and in addition to the pilot the bird arrived with a fire service person who was assigned to the chopper to coordinate fire fighting operations should the machine be called in to fight a fire. The fire service guy was an ex-Navy SEAL who now DJ's parties in Thailand in his off-season. That guy's life is sure dull!

When I touched down in Fairbanks I was struck by the noise, we landed right in town on a busy street. I hadn't heard a car in three months. Remote tundra and boreal forest is extremely quite. You can hear the wing beats of a warbler while inside your tent, a flock of shovelers bombing in to land sounds like a B-52. I was in such culture shock upon landing it was hilarious. I took a cab from the DNR offices to where I would be staying in Ester, just west of Fairbanks. I was staying with Judie Gumm and her husband Richard. Judie has a successful business making nature themed jewelry, you most likely have seen her work in catalogs. The Gumms put me up in their cabin on the grounds of their place in Ester, which also includes a store and workshop.

Ester in a cool little dirt road town nestled in woods on the side of Ester Dome just a few miles out of Fairbanks. Ester is know for the Golden Eagle Saloon, which lets you grill your own hamburgers and steak on a grill. Richard lent me a mountain bike and after the first time I slept in a bed and took a shower in three months I headed into town to get my gear and and help Florian (the manager of the Avian Influenza lab) load up a resupply for camp.

The next day I headed into town to get a sleeping bag and tent for my trip to Denali. I was successful in both missions. I also stopped by Cramer's Fields and the Alaska Bird Observatory and took in some birding. Cramers Fields in a farm mananged fro migratory waterfowl and cranes. Many sandhill cranes were feeding as I passed by. Behind ABO's closed visitor center I found my first two life birds of the trip, Townsend's Warbler and Hammond's Flycatcher coming into their water drip. It is so hot and dry in interior AK that it made sense to find these birds there. Later I met up with a local birder, James and we tried to find some birds around Fairbanks. August is a bad time to find birds in town as James apologized for numerous times. I just enjoyed his company and the freedom to watch non duck birds.
I birded with James the next day and went to see the culminating performance of the Fairbanks Summer Festival. This is two weeks of music, dance and art classes taught by staff brought in from around the world. Fairbanks has a brutal winter to say the least and its location as access point for remote Alaska and having a large University brings in a large temporary and transient population. I get the impression that residents recognize this and have gotten pretty creative in their ways of dealing with it, Fairbanks just has a cool vibe, I wish I had more time to spend there but Denali was calling.

Oh as for spruce grouse, a hen and her chicks were seen in the Gumm's year while I was out birding with James!

Delta Dawn

A few weeks ago my boss' PhD advisor came to visit the camp for two days. Really great guy, he brought his 6 year old daughter for her first field experience. It was a blast having them out. That little girl was a trip. She loved playing with Delta, my boss' dog and expert nest searcher. when she was asked who she was going to miss most, she exclaimed emphatically and with out hesitation, "Delta!".

As I spend my last few hours in camp making arrangements for my travels about Alaska and packing up my kit, I wonder who I'll miss most. It's a toss up between Jolene the moose, Ryan and Delta. But Delta is hard to beat.

Molting Shoveler

We have been doing molting drives the last few days. These are much like duckling drives except we are going for adult birds during the time they are flightless during molting. We caught 108 birds in one two drives two days ago. I got to band an entire drive's worth, about 50 birds! Yesterday I got to band my first blue-winged teal. We also had a duckling goldeneye that got caught in the drive, I banded him too!

Loons

The last week or so at least 70 common loons have been in front of camp on the lake. Sometimes just beyond our boats. Sometimes they are so loud in the morning they wake me up. Stupid loud loons! Makes me want to throw something at them! (Jokie!) Actually there isn't a sweeter sound. Two Pacific Loons were with them a week ago, unfortunately they didn't come to close to shore that time.

The wind is blowing fierce, hence I have time to post. We can only do our bait trap rounds (twice a day) and do no drive trapping. The wind blows the duckings and our kayaks all over. However the bait trap rounds can take 2 to 4 hours depending on how many birds we catch each and how far out and apart from each other our traps are. We move them often.

Few days left in camp on to Denali

Wild Iris

I have only a few days left in camp. I'll be flying out to Fairbanks on the 30th or 31st. I'll spend a few days around Fairbanks then off to Denali for two nights and to Anchorage. A very nice birder and local artist has offered to let me stay in her cabin near town. What an amazing offer and it goes to show what a strong community the birding community is! I've certainly hosted my share of travellers in my day but now I got to come up with some more traditional accommodations to repay the non punk birders! I'm not sure how many birders would want to stay in my punk house in the anarchist enclave, however we do have a roof top garden and a moon bounce in the back yard. My Aunt does have a house in Cape May and that is how I've been keeping up the more traditionally adult birder accommodation karma up.

I plan to rent a bicycle while I'm in Fairbanks and try to see a spruce grouse.

I doubt I'll be able to post much until I get back to Philly, and my camera is at home so unless, like out here, other people take pictures then I'll have to do just text posts.

Oh, I heard new info on the bear, it was drinking their beer! No wonder they shot it. Amazing!
I learned today that Alaskans don't lock thier cabins in the bush to let people who get into trouble access to shelter, water and food. Also it is common to leave bung wrenches on fuel drums to help out folks who are stranded without fuel.

I'm so exhausted from catching ducks all day, we work till midnight or two sometime even three then back at in the morning. I'm teetering on the brink of exhaustion and barely get enough sleep to function. Haven't had a day off in almost three months Can't wait to just kick it.

The Family

The funny thing about the family is that we have caught at least three hens with them. We have no idea who the real mother is. We should take them on Jerry Springer and do a DNA test.

Bait Trapping

Recaptured Mallard Hen, this one has a reward band.

While we still are brood driving we have started bait trapping. Bait trapping consists of a welded wire fence loop that has the open end for a funnel. The top is covered with deer fencing. The trap is zip-tied to rebar and stuck in a cleared area of mud or shallow water. Barley and corn is spread around the outside of the trap and through the funnel and inside. Eventually once the birds know about the trap only the funnel and inside is baited. The birds can't seem to find the way out, like a fish trap. We roll up to the trap and open a section of the top and fish the birds out with a dip net.

Currently we are catching mostly ducklings and occasionally the attending hen. We are beginning to catch molting males.

We have been catch the same eight mallard duckings for the last three weeks. They are in the same trap at least once a day. We refer to them as "the family".

Bladderwort sp.

This is a really cool carnivorous plant that is quite common here in bogs and marshy areas.

keeping duckings warm

Grebe Chick

Horned Grebe Chick,

Today we got a horned grebe and its chick in a bait trap. The chick was surprisingly docile considering the ferocity of its parent. Brandt despite handling thousands of birds in his day was quite nervous of taking the adult from the dip net, even with his manly field mustache.

The bear is dead

The Fish and Game guys reported that people staying at a cabin nearby killed a bear on their porch last week. The bear turned out to be a grizzly.

We actually met these guys on July 4th. They had a huge air boat and stopped by to say hello. The one guy was super jacked and bald and he was driving the boat high up on his chair. He reminded me of Lord Humongous from the road warrior.

Cold Missouri Waters, Demystification of What's Going On

Wigeon Duckling

I mentioned the song "Cold Missouri Waters" a few posts back. My dear friend Julie sent my Cry Cry Cry's chilling version of it and I am extremely grateful. The song was written by James Keelaghan about the Mann Gulch Fire of Montana in 1949. The lyrics are pretty much the exact story and very little artistic license is taken. Man, this is a strange time we live in, it's cool that you can just google a song and find out the story behind it. However, I wonder if too much demystification is a bad thing? Should we have any information we want so easily at at fingertips? As Joseph Campbell reminds us,mysticism and mythology is important. However Daniel Quinn would argue as he does in "Ishmael" that the wrong mythology can lead to the destruction of a culture and even the world.

For a song that argues for demystification I recommend "Demystification" by the great English anarchist punk band Zounds from the early 80's. I love the line, "I'm not looking for escapism, I just want to escape." Brilliant.

Nest Searching: What a Drag!

Ryan during a nest check

Nest searching is over officially now and we are on to brood drives and bait trapping. I am glad to see the rope drags stowed away. Dragging a thick 60' rope though floating bogs, flooded grass and over tussocks, frankly sucks! It's cool to find nests and to be out in the field...also the workout is tremendous. However 3 to 6 hours of dragging that rope is brutal. It's often pretty warm out here and the bugs can be merciless. Imagine dragging a rope though chin high grass and tussocks, working up some mean swamp ass only to have to walk through some flooded grass, horestails and much. Every step is in sucking mud and you excite hordes of blood crazed mosquitoes. It reminds me of the opening sceen in Day of Dead when the protagonists are searching with a helicopter the post zombie apocalypse Miami for survivors. At first they find nothing but abandoned city. You even see an aligator walking down the street and a news paper blows by with the headline, "The Dead Rise" or something to that effect. The Cat Stevens looking dude keeps yelling "Heeeelllloooo, Heeeelllllooo", looking for human survivors. At this poit the movie shows zombies starting to wake up as they hear the yelling. Eventually the zombies mass and head toward the search crew. The Jamacian chopper piolot exclaims, "Listen, you can 'ear it over da engine" as the collective moan from the undead horde approaches. This is what the mosquitoes are like, one minute nothing, then you disturb the wet grass and then you can just hear this hum and suddenly you are in a cloud of hundreds of blood frienzied drones.

So now that is over and I will celebrate by posting pictures of ducklings!

Boreal Forest

On our few hours off Ryan and I crossed the late to explore the boreal forest. It was an especially hot day so when we arrived there was little bird activity. We only saw a few black-capped chickadees, yellow-rumped warblers and a gray jay. We did however get to do a fair deal of botanizing. We identified cloud berry, marsh blueberry, bear berry, wild red current, nagoon berry for all you wild berry enthusiasts. The forest is mostly black spruce and willow with stands of alder and paper birch. In the more upland areas we encountered white spruce that actually got fairly tall, maybe 40 to 50 feet tall. The ground cover is mostly the aforementioned berries with ample Labrador tea, fireweed and horestails.

Sandhill Crane Colt

We come across sandhill cranes while nest searching very often, finding nests several times a week. Everywhere we stop in Minto Flats we either flush cranes or can hear them.

Fire Update

The fire across the lake appears to be just smoldering now. The fire department went full force on it with at least 2 belly planes, I other plane dropping retardant and one helicopter working on it. It poured last night and the wind is now blowing West so the smoke is away from camp today. There is still a 175,000 acre fire to the South in Minto Flats, but much further away. It felt like a nuclear war had occurred when I woke up this morning, high wind, orange and purple sky and smoke. It felt like I was in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". I was expecting to have to fend off post-apocalyptic cannibals at any moment. That reminds me of the great Patty Smith song, "Summer Cannibals". There is a great folk song by an artist I can't remember about smoke jumpers dying in a wildfire called "Cold Missouri Waters". I hope I can find that song again, I'll have to ask my pop.

Fire

There is now a fire across the lake from us, about 5 miles away. Ryan and I enjoyed the extremely rare pleasure of having a few hours off by hiking in the forest across the lake. As we boated back across the lake we looked back and saw the fire on the ridge. We assumed everyone at camp had seen it already; we were surprised, however to discover that they were unaware. We could see a plane and a helicopter fighting the blaze. Soon after arriving at camp "belly planes" started landing in the lake to take on water. The plane takes four minutes to make a load up, drop its load and refill. The plane doesn't even land, it just skims the surface. Brandt contacted the proper authorities and alerted them to our presence. We were told to have food and water and valuables at the ready. We were informed we had the ultimate safety zone, the lake. We have a satellite phone and radios and the fire crew knows we are here. I'll keep you informed.

Boreal Burning

There are several forest fires in the area right now. Sometimes the smoke is so thick your boogers are black, you feel like you've been at a bar in Europe and you can't see the mountains across the lake. We had a retired couple land their float plane at our camp because they couldn't make it over the ridge. They were flying from their cabin 15 miles further out than our camp and could not fly any further and decided to land on our lake at our camp so they would be near people. Their Cessna was black with yellow and white stripes so I asked them if they were Steelers fans. I was informed with a chuckle that it came that way.

Forest Fires

Weller Nest Trap

Brood Drives

Currently we are finishing up nest searching and trapping and starting brood drives. Brood driving is catching ducklings! Expect many cute pictures to follow. We set up a holding pen with too long net leads fanning out from them. Two teams set out and each boat drops a person off to walk the flooded vegetation on the shoreline to flush out the broods. When a brood is flushed the boats launch inflatable kayaks to heard the duckings into the nets.

It's a load of fun, but can be stressful.

More Moose

Return of the Bear.

So the bear came back early this morning. At around 5:30am I awoke to the sound of something sloshing through the water. Our camp is located on the shore of a peninsula between two lakes and moose are frequently in camp. I wasn't sure whether to investigate because it was probably just a moose. Then I heard Delta bark and then there was a bit of movement and splashing and the beast started making a pig-like grunt and a wet snarl that sounded like an orc from Lord of the Rings. At this point I shot up out of my sleeping bag and grabbed my desert camo shorts (commando, bear spray and put on my rubber boots, I grabbed a case for my glasses but it was empty. I could hear the beast moving across the peninsula to the other lake. I emerged from the willows and could see the head of a bear popping up through the marsh blue-joint grass all the while making its orc noises. Since the bear was galloping away from camp, I didn't feel the need to wake alert the camp to the now passed danger, so I climbed the observation tower next to my tent with my (Kowa Genesis 8.5x43) binoculars but could not relocate the bear. I climbed back down and went to Brandt's (my boss) tent and told him about the bear He informed me that he just had a moose “bug out” of camp. My faith in my sighting was a bit shaken but I was pretty goddamn sure I saw a brown colored bear-like creature making orc noises high-tailing it out of camp. I returned to my tent to find it filled with mosquitoes. I was getting hammered by bugs on this warm still morning. I hurried over to the communal cabin and retrieved one of the electric tennis racquet bug zappers and cleared the tent of the wretched swarm and returned to my slumber.

At breakfast Brandt informed me that there was indeed a moose but something else. Tom had heard a moose and the grunting orc-beast noises too. Brandt saw a year old moose swim out in the middle of the lake. So what probably happened was the bear and the moose had an altercation next to camp and the bear bugged out in one direction and the moose in the other.

I have nice named the bear “Gothmog” in honor of the orc in Return of the King. Also in the movie Gothmog is portrayed as being very pale, and this bear is somewhat pale in its pelage. Brandyt keeps referring to it as a black bear, he hasn't seen this bear yet. Ryan, Tom and I have and it is brown in color. I know black bears can come in many color phases besides black, no one who has seen this bear has definitely identified it as a black bear. It may well me a small young grizzly. Considering the Fish and Game guys saw a young grizzly not very far away and that bears are scarce in these parts, I think t is highly likely that it was the bear they saw. We'll just have to wait until it is seen well enough. Although black bears are in season and at least one guy in camp has a tag, maybe it's just wishful thinking.

Bear in camp, thoughts on bears

Sloth Bear, Sri Lanka

Last night we had a bear visit camp. Ryan spotted the bear from his tent as it approached camp. When it got close to camp he woke the rest of us up. I was actually listening to the Ting Tings in my headphones when Ryan opens up my tent door and alerts me to the bear. Thank god I wasn't doing anything more intimate! I didn't respond to Ryan's yells, so he had to take a more direct approach. I arrived at the cabin and saw Brandt and Tom outside with shotgun and rifle at the ready, and Ryan with his bear spray. I joined the search party and we jumped in the mud motor, which is a very load weedless boat engine and went down the shore of the lake a hundred meters to where the bear was last seen. Brandt revved the engine to move the bear away. The marsh blue top grass that grows here is about chin high so only Tom standing on the bench was able to see the bear's ears and top of head as it bounded it away. Ryan thinks it was a cinnamon phase black bear a sit was small. However Ryan has no field experience with grizzlies and the Alaska Fish and Game guys, who study pike in the area, saw a small grizzly a few miles away last week. After a little while we returned to bed. We sleep with bear spray and some of us firearms and we keep food and toiletries out of our tens, so we have little to worry about. Although interior Alaska has it's share of bears, we are in the middle of a mosaic of lakes, rivers, bogs, marsh and patches of boreal forest and therefore the bear population is very low.

I was disappointed I didn't see the bear. I've never seen a grizzly or brown bear (same species) and am am really hoping to see one while in Alaska. I've seen polar, black and sloth bears in the wild but as of yet no grizzly. I included a picture of sloth bear I saw in Sri Lanka, as I had no picture of our camp's visitor.

I visited Sri Lanka during my band's second tour of Asia in 2006. We didn't play in Sri Lanks, we just visited there for a week. I arranged a two day safari for the band to Yala National Park. I'll post more about this later... but Yala is an amazing wildlife spectacle. It's on the dry side of Sri Lanka in acacia scrub. It is famous for its leopards and elephants. We had a fantastic trip, seeing 100 species of birds, elephants, sambar and axis deer, wild boar, mongoose, and jackals, after we spotted the slot bear on the side of the road our guide turned around and said, "I have nothing left to show you".

I've seen 3 of the 8 species of bear. Grizzly will put me half way there. Although I doubt I'll ever see the last four. Asiatic Black and Sun bear are hard enough, but from what I understand Panda and Spectacled Bear are almost impossible. I wonder who in the world, if any has seen all eight?

Mew Gull Lunch

Sorry, could not get a photo of this. While boating on "Wacky Duck" lake we heard the mew gulls all up in a commotion. I scanned the sky looking for the raven or bald eagle that usually evokes this response. I was excited to see a juvenile peregrine falcon was the culprit. I've only seen one other peregrine the whole time I've been up here. The only birds of prey we see are harriers, bald eagles and short-eared owls. I'm surprised I haven't seen more raptors. When I glassed the falcon I could see a gull chick struggling in it's talons. I know it's a bit morose, but I love seeing predation in the field.

What's funny is that when a predator takes eggs from a nest it is termed "depredation", then why aren't predators called "depredators"?

Web Tagging

When we find a nest with hatching ducklings or when we catch ducklings by driving them into a net or with a dip net we will "web-tag" them. A web tag is a small monel metal tag with a four digit number that is attached through the webbing of a ducklings foot. We do this because ducklings under a certain age cannot be banded yet. We gain valuable data about these ducks movements and for our research survival relative to avian influenza infection. It's pretty awesome to get to handle these unbelievable cute duckings, but it can be stressful because of trying not to injure them. It's also a bit unnerving and messy when you web tag a hatching ducking just breaking out of the egg. When a ducking begins to hatch it it referred to as "pipping". Let me tell you, pipping ain't easy.

Moose in Camp

We have moose in camp regularly. Despite their huge size, they often slip by unnoticed in our sleep and all we see of them is their poop in the morning. It is pretty cool when we have a moose, always cows so far, come through camp. One knocked down Tom's clothesline. Another moose woke Brandt up in his tent, when he looked outside the moose was right up against his tent platform facing away, he reported that all he could see was a giant moose vagina filling his entire field of view. We've had at least two different momma moose in camp one with a single calf and another with twins. The twins were licking our solar panel support beams. I've named the most regular moose, a calf-less female, Jolene. She's a real beauty despite not having auburn hair nor eyes of emerald green.

"Spooner Face"

Nest Trapping

After we discover a nest and determine that it is of sufficient age and depending on if we have a fecal sample etc, we will put a trap on the nest. This is called a "Weller" trap after that famous waterfowl biologist who invested the trap. The trap consists of a welded wire cylinder with a top that sits over the nest, the hen trips a treadle entering the nest that depresses a trigger rod holding up a trap door. The trap is staked down. This way the hen can incubate the eggs until she is processed and released.

Upon capturing the hen we band the bird, do an oral and cloaca swab for avian influenza, weigh her,and measure the wing chord, tarsus and head.

This was the first time I was able to handle a northern shoveler as we didn't have any hens to use during decoy trapping. Apparently it is very difficult to keep shovelers in captivity and especially hard to keep the hens healthy as use as decoy birds. Shovelers have a difficult diet to replicate. They use that amazing bill to sift through mud and water for small organisms. Check out that amazing bill!

Horned Grebe Attack

After Ryan releases a horned grebe that got caught in a decoy trap, it repays his kindness by trying to spear him.

Delta and Tom calling in ducks on a slow day

What quality is that poop? The glamour of nest searching

The next phase of our work here is nest searching. Avian influenza can be detected in the fresh feces of ducks. We are looking for epithelial cells that are shed when the birds defecate, not the feces itself. Ducks often poop on their eggs when they flush. This can be a deterrent to predators from eating the eggs.

When we find a nest, we record, the number of eggs, the GPS coordinates, the flush type (hen absent, human, rope or dog)the egg age and if there is poop and what quality is the fecal sample and whether it was on the eggs or the vegetation. One person records while the other crew member calls out the information, so often one of us will say, "What quality is that poop?". Egg age is determined by candling the egg. The egg is placed against the end of a foam tube and rotated while being held towards the sun. We have a chart that we use but eventually memorize that correlates what we see to the age of the egg. We can predict to the day when hatch will occur.

We nest search by dragging a 60 foot rope with cans tied at intervals through nesting habitat to flush the hens. Brant also had brought his awesome yellow lab, Delta, to find nests. She is obviously the best nest searcher, it it amazing to see here work. Quartering back and forth the grass and willows Delta sniffs out nests and indicates in her body language that Brandt can read where the nest is.

Delta loves to nest search, she gets so excited when it's time to go out. When we are doing nest checks or something else that doesn't involve Delta, she'll still jump on the boat, hoping to go out in the field with us. On morning while gearing up to go out, I head a bird sing that I didn't recognize. I went over to behind the cabin to look for the bird and Delta followed me. Delta could see I was in search mode and started hunting across the trail and looking back at me, she was so excited. It was funny that she was trying to help me find the bird but actually causing more noise and distraction. She was so unbelievably cute.I never did find the bird in question, I believe it may have been a gray jay.

Mew Gull Release

This is an experimental try at putting on a video, if this works many more and more exciting videos will be added This was the only one already loaded on my computer.

Horned Grebe caught in duck trap

We sometimes catch horned and red-necked grebes in our decoy traps. Unlike ducks which just try to escape, the grebes will try to stab us with their bills. Ryan even had a horned grebe attack him after he released it! There is video of it, hopefully I can upload it.

Lesser Scaup Pseudopenis

Since the drakes are coming into the trap because they are attracted to the females, I guess they are still excited when we catch them and sometimes when we turn them over to swab them for avian influenza we find this!

Ducks and Geese and thier close relativet are the only birds that have an extendable sexual organ. Not all of thier copulation is what you would call consentual. We often see a group of male ducks forcing copulation on an unpaired hen. The sex ration in ducks is extremely skwed towards males. This pseudopenis and aggressive sexual behavior is one of the resonas there are so many duck hybrids seen in the wild.

Mew Gulls are attracted to the "floating" duck foot pellets we feed our decoy hens and sometimes get caught in the traps

Do you trust me?

On a boat like Leo!

Pintail and Wigeon

After we get the birds out of the trap we place them in kennels and store them on the boat until all the kennels are full or we empty all of the traps. The kennels have mesh netting inside to keep the birds from resting in their own feces. We split into crews of two and each has ten traps to check. We stop the boat away from a trap (to not distress the decoy hen any further) and process the birds. First we put on the band, then swab the bird's cloaca for avian influenza, then take measurements of the tarsus (leg), wing chord (folded wing), and head (tip of bill to back of head) and then weigh the bird. The study compares the body condition of birds with bird flu to those without. We need the morphometric measurements as a reference to the mass of the bird, as different sized birds can be expected to have different mass. After the bird is weighed it is released.

Ryan and I removing birds from decoy trap

Lesser Scuap in Decoy Trap

Decoy Trapping

Comparison of Lesser and Greater Scaup in photo.

I arrived in Fairbanks and was met by my boss Brandt. If you don't know birds, Brandt is the name of a cormorant and Brant is a type of goose, so having a boss who is a duck PhD student named Brant is hilarious. Actually I worked at a goose camp in the Canadian Arctic with a fellow named Drake! What's crazy is his sister is named teal and his brother Woody!...Anyway Brandt looks like Corey Feldman, but blond and also he looks like he's 19. He got carded when we went to a bar later.

I spent the next few days gathering up gear and food for camp. We loaded up Brandt's huge pick up with decoy hens from UAF's animal quarters and 10 rolls of welded wire to make traps. We drove up to Murphy Dome to meet the helicopter. Here I became acquainted with Troy, a true Greek God of chopper pilots. He has a tiny machine and it took three sling loads of welded wire and the hens went in the machine in kennels.

I flew out the next day with the satellite Internet guy in his Cessna 206 on amphibs, which are pontoons with wheels. We took off from tarmac at the Fairbanks airport but landed on the waters Big Minto Lake.

When I arrived at camp we put away the food and gear and aided Will as he set up the Internet system. Then we build traps for a week. We built 20 of these welded wire decoy traps. These traps consist of a center pen where a captive hen sits with food, she has a platform where she can get out of the water. The hen is surrounded by four pens with trap doors, that have a treadle that trips a fishing line set to the trigger of an old leg hold trap. When a duck comes into the trap to investigate the hen it depresses the treadle, trips the trigger and the door swings shut.

Mostly we catch males of whatever the species the hen is but sometimes we get territorial hens or even other species of ducks and even grebes and gulls.

We have hens of four species, pintail, lesser scaup, greater scaup and wigeon. We also have a pintail-mallard hybrid we named Blondie, who could barely attract anything.

For the next three weeks we checked the traps twice a day after breakfast and then after dinner. We wear stocking foot waders, which are breathable neoprene chest waders, but with booties that you wear under a wading boot. We do so much walking that rubber boot-foot waders would be too hot.

Canvasback

Why I'm in Alaska

I am in Alaska as a paid technician on a PhD student's avian influenza study he goes to University of Minnesota but this project is in conjunction with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which is who pays me. This is the first study in North America of the effect of avian influenza on waterfowl fitness and population dynamics. Most of the people who study A.I. are virologists, very little of the bird science has been done.

I am getting paid. However I am here for another currency, the access to remote habitat that is prohibitively expensive to visit. I am in the boreal forest, at the edge of the tree line. I am in a location only accessible by boat, helicopter and float plane. This is what I live for.

From the World Series of Birding to Alaska

I can't really begin my Alaska tale with out telling you what I did immediately before I left. I work as an environmental educator at Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center in Philadelphia. On May 8th I hosted a group of high school students and led them in a macroinvertebrate identification center. When that was done I headed to school to take my ecology final. I headed home and got ready for the World Series of Birding (WSB). The WSB is a 24 competition where teams compete trying to identify as many species of bird within the state of New Jersey in a 24 hour period. Teams raise money like the Race for the Cure or other charity events, in this case you raise an amount per bird. We raised funds for the American Bird Conservancy. The event started at midnight May 9th.

My team competed in the Carbon Footprint Cup, where you cannot use a motorized vehicle. We used bicycles and had a 90 or so mile route. Our team is called Ridin Birdy and we are sponsored by Kowa Sporting Optics My companions were Matthew Halley, Dan Kubza and Bull Gervasi. Bull is my room mate and former bandmate, he played bass. Matt is my neighbor and is a musician (www.mattheyhalley.org and nicebird.org) and field ornithologist. Dan is in nursing school and has done work for NJ Audubon. Bull served as our mechanic.

We started at Jake's Landing, which is a boat launch in a salt marsh. My roommate Vince drove us to the start. Dan was already down there scouting. Jake's Landing Road goes through pine woods before it goes out into the marsh. We picked up sora, Virginia Rail, whip-poor-will and some other marsh birds that happened to call at night. From there we went to Belleplain State Forest to get barred owl, chuck-wills-widow, and screech owl. Dan got us a campsite and we got two hours of sleep.

We woke up to Arcadian flycatcher and yellow-throated warbler. We hit all the spots in the forest and got most of the birds but missed Louisiana waterthrush but getting bowhite and prothonatary warbler.

In Belleplain we met up with Birding Adventures TV (birdingadventurestv.com) who filmed us throughout the day. The host is a charismatic South African professional bird guide. He passe us in a SUV and said "looks like I caught you riding birdy!".
We also met our competition, Team Dodo, which featured members of NJ Audubon who hosted the event!

From there we headed north despite having to end up at the bottom of New Jersey in Cape May. We wanted to go to Heislerville Wildlife Management Area to pick up salt marsh birds, ducks, gulls and shore birds on the mud flats. To our surprise we ran into Team Dodo at Heislerville, I didn't think another bicycle team would go back north like we did. We figured our advantage was the miles we would put in.

We headed down Route 47 which runs along the Delaware Bay shore and hit a few spots to pick up bald eagle, glossy ibis, surf scoter,royal tern red-headed woodpecker and a few other goodies. We missed gull-billed tern, and blue grosbeak. However we had a coup and Matt found us a black-billed cuckoo! Black-billed cuckoo is considered one of the hardest to see birds in our parts, a true skulker!

We crossed to canal to Cape May proper and hit up Higbee Beach and got our blue-groabeak! We headed to the Cape May Meadows and picked up oystercatcher and piping plover. We headed to the jetties at the point and got common tern our final new bird. We went over to a mudflat area called the "magnesite plant" The bugs were bad and it started to rain so we headed to my favorite cafe in Cape May for a meal. We tried for least bittern afterwards at Cape Island Preserve, but the frogs were so loud we gave up. We headed to the finish line and tapped out. At the finish we were informed by Team Dodo we had vanquished them.

The next day was the award ceremony. It was great to catch up with some friends and folks I rarely see. This was Sunday the next day I was on a plane to Alaska!

Arrival at Minto Flats Alaska

Welcome to Radical Naturalist. I'm Tony Croasdale an avid birder and horticulture student at Temple University, currently working with ducks in Alaska. I was asked to start this blog for my university's news. I will continue to post after my work in Alaska is done. I'm headed to Brazil for three months after Alaska, so there should be much fodder there. I will also do "retro-blogs" about my extensive overseas traveling with my punk band and for nature observing and field research. I only have a satellite connection here in Alaska so I'll be keeping these posts short for now, hopefully they will get longer and feature more photos when the work slows down and I have more free time at night.