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.