Migration madness

In a (slightly belated) celebration of World Migratory Bird Day, Dispatches from the Field is excited to welcome this month’s guest blogger, Jenna McDermott, to share her experience watching hawk migration in Ontario. To learn more about Jenna, check out her bio at the end of the post.

As I watch birds filter back from their wintering grounds during this spring migration, it brings on thoughts of migrations I’ve seen in the past, large and small. Migration in Newfoundland is not as grandiose or hectic as it is in places like southern Ontario, because we are a destination for most of our birds, not just a pit stop on their way elsewhere. Unlike elsewhere in North America, there aren’t really places you can go to reliably see buckets of species that don’t breed in that area. Migration in Newfoundland comes as more of a series of lovely surprises, when you realize another of your favourite species has returned for the summer.

But back in Ontario, both spring and fall migration season can be completely crazy. For a couple of years, I had the pleasure of working as the lead hawk watcher for the fall migration season at a hawk migration observatory. The observatory I worked for is part of a larger network of raptor migration observatories across North America who all funnel their data to the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA). HMANA can then use these decades of data to infer trends in species populations and migration timing.

But what does being a hawk watcher mean, you ask? Basically, I stood on top of an observation tower for 8 hours every day for three months: September, October, and November. If you’ve never seen raptor migration you may think this sounds like a terribly boring job, and on some occasions it was. But most days it was an incredible testament to the power of geography, avian ecology, and the weather.

The hawk tower at Holiday Beach Migration Observatory. Copyright: Holiday Beach Migration Observatory

When raptors, which include hawks, falcons, accipiters, harriers, ospreys, eagles (and vultures, at hawk watches) fly long distances, they are very hesitant to cross large bodies of water. This is because they typically travel long distances by soaring high in the air on columns of warm air (thermals), and then streaming off the top in the direction they desire.Very little flapping and energy is required to do this, and when they get too low, they just catch another thermal up as if they were taking an elevator. But over water bodies, the air doesn’t heat up and create thermals in the same way, meaning birds have to flap the entire trip, which is hugely energetically expensive.

This is where the power of geography comes in. The Great Lakes are a huge barrier to migrating birds, and in fall raptor migration, the lakes funnel birds along their northern shores to locations where the birds can cross south without passing over too much water. As the migration flies by, you can expect different species to come through: for example, the Sharp-shinned Hawks and American Kestrels begin the migration season, and Golden Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks come nearer the end.

One completely unforgettable experience is the few days that the Broad-winged Hawks came through each year in mid-September. It’s such an event that birders visit from near and far and there is often a festival to bring visitors in to see the spectacle. Over a few hours, you can see thousands of these hawks gathering together and rising in slow circles up a thermal (called a “kettle”; imagine stirring a wooden spoon in a huge potful of hawks) until they reach the top and stream out right overhead.

Kettles of Broad-winged Hawks migrating past the hawk tower. Copyright: Holiday Beach Migration Observatory

As a hawk watcher, you often have to count them in groups of 10 as they move through incredibly quickly, while simultaneously looking at the silhouette of each one to see if a rarer species is hidden amongst the hordes. It’s a stressful, exhilarating, awe-inspiring time. On really busy days, I remember having to lay down on the hawk tower to give my neck and arms a break from looking up through my binoculars for hours on end – because looking away for even a minute could mean missing a hundred birds!

Even bigger days came at other times, such as when the Turkey Vultures were going through. Turkey Vultures often start their migration later in the morning than most species, after things warm up and the thermals are really going. During Turkey Vulture migration, you can have a quiet morning with only a couple birds passing by – and then a few hours later, you’ll suddenly see hundreds of dark spectres all floating up above the forest. Some days, nearly 10,000 vultures flew overhead…and that number is small compared to other hawk watch locations. Turkey Vultures are difficult to count because they float around so much. For example, you may think a large group is going by and count them in the hourly tally, but then some of them float back the way they came, forcing you to subtract those from ones still going past. Thank goodness for willing helping hands to sort out that mess!

Of course, on some days very few raptors passed through – just a couple or a dozen – but that made a treat out of each individual bird, and also allowed time to count the myriad other bird species in the trees below the tower or in the marsh, including the over 10,000 Blue Jays or American Crows that passed through some days. Or there would be a day of drama, such as when a Peregrine Falcon was migrating past and decided to stick around to see if it could catch a snack. Talk about a first-class seat for the show of a lifetime! And thanks to a raptor banding station at the same observatory, I was often lucky enough to get to release some pretty cool birds that had been banded and needed to be sent on their way again.

Jenna holding a Northern Harrier (captured and banded at the nearby banding station), her favourite of all the raptors that migrated through. Copyright: Holiday Beach Migration Observatory

In the 6 months that I was a hawk watcher, I got frozen fingers, burnt fingers, a wind burnt face, sore neck, sore arms, blurry eyeballs, and really good at eating while simultaneously staring straight up through a pair of binoculars. But all of that is forgotten when I think back to how privileged I was to get a glimpse into each and every one of those birds’ lives as they started their long travel south for the winter.

Jenna loves to be active outside, for both work and leisure, and can often be found with a pair of binoculars ready to look at birds, nature, or far away signs that she can’t read. When she stays indoors she hangs out with a book, her partner, Darrian, and their ridiculous cat, Tonks, while ideally eating some sort of fresh baking. She lives and works in western Newfoundland.

Lowering the drawbridge

Colour-banded bluebirds make frequent appearances in my dreams.

A couple of nights ago, I sat bolt upright in bed at 5:30 am, sweaty and stressed from a dream of chasing a banded bluebird whose colour bands I never got quite close enough to decipher.

This is one of the ways I know it’s spring: the return of the bird dreams. Every year, as Canada’s migratory birds begin to arrive, so do the dreams. Sometimes I dream about birds deftly avoiding my mist nets as I try desperately to catch them. Other times, I dream the opposite: nets so full of birds I can’t possibly get them all out, no matter how fast I work. My nights are full of mystery bird song I can’t quite identify, and colour-banded birds whose bands I can’t see. I can only assume, after well over a decade of fieldwork, my brain has come up with numerous metaphors for the stress of the field season.

But in all my dreams, one thing is consistent – I am always working alone. There’s only one set of hands untangling the endless numbers of birds from the net, and there’s no one to help me identify the mystery bird song. It’s just me – which never seems strange because that’s often how graduate fieldwork actually feels.

However, over the last few years, things have changed: now my field seasons no longer belong to me alone, but also hundreds of volunteers.

Many people have heard the term citizen science (also called community science) – which, at its most basic, can be defined as public participation and collaboration in scientific research. Citizen science programs have expanded dramatically over the last decade, particularly in the environmental field.

When I accepted my current job, my familiarity with citizen science was limited. During my PhD research, I reached out to the birders of the Okanagan Valley, asking them to report sightings of banded bluebirds. A few people responded, but for the most part, the task of data collection was mine alone. I spent all my time managing my field schedule and the data I collected. But now that I run not one, but two, large-scale citizen science programs, most of my time is spent managing people instead.

This has not always been an easy transition. Managing people is new to me, and like many scientists, I have perfectionist tendencies and a strong urge to micromanage all aspects of data collection. There’s a part of me that still wants to collect every last piece of data myself, so I know every step of the process has been done exactly according to protocol.

But living on an island the size of Newfoundland makes one of the advantages of citizen science glaringly clear: citizen science programs allow us to collect data at a geographic scale that simply wouldn’t be possible for a single individual or even a group of scientists working together. For example, between April 1^st and May 15^th this year, more than 50 volunteers across Newfoundland and Labrador will survey for owls along 67 routes spread throughout the province – far beyond anything I could accomplish by myself.

There’s also another, perhaps less tangible benefit to citizen science: it’s a step in lowering the forbidding drawbridge of the ivory tower, making science more accessible. It helps to combat the tendency to put scientists on a pedestal of rationality and knowledge by showing people that everyone can be a scientist.

Citizen scientists survey a cooperative bird in Salmonier Nature Park, NL.

And although sometimes managing a large group of individuals to accomplish a single goal can feel a bit like trying to herd cats, it’s also an amazing experience to help people develop their scientific and naturalist skills. Every spring, I get numerous e-mails from owl survey participants, telling me about their encounters with owls and other wildlife during their late-night foray into the woods – and those e-mails have become one of the best parts of my day.

So in honour of National Volunteer Week here in Canada, I’d like to give a shout out to all the amazing volunteers and amateur scientists who donate their time and enthusiasm to citizen science programs across the country. I, for one, am thrilled to lower the drawbridge and open the gates to the ivory tower. Citizen scientists, please come on in – many hands make light work.

Getting bogged down

We are excited to welcome Megan Quinn back to our blog today. Megan works for Nature Conservancy of Canada in Eastern Ontario and today she shares a funny (and tiring) story about fieldwork in the Alfred Bog! This post was originally from the NCC: Land Lines blog. For more about Megan, see the end of this post.

Megan Quinn leading the field team through the Alfred Bog (Photo by NCC)

It’s easy for me to get to most of the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC) properties in eastern Ontario. I load up the driving directions on my phone, and the GPS takes me right to the trailhead. I might have a strenuous hike when I get there, but 90 per cent of the time getting there is simple because the property is right by a road.

Then there’s Alfred Bog!

The Alfred Bog, ON (Photo by NCC)

In 2021, NCC purchased a parcel of land in the middle of the Alfred Bog – the Horlings-Gleeson property. Located an hour east of Ottawa, Alfred Bog is one of only three raised bogs in southern Ontario. A raised bog is higher than the surrounding landscape and because of its domed shape, the only water entering the system is from precipitation. Alfred Bog is designated as a Provincially Significant Wetland and an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest. The bog is highly acclaimed for its classic peatland formations, which are rare to find this far south in Ontario. This results in a variety of interesting species calling Alfred Bog home, including moose, carnivorous pitcher plants and important waterfowl. Over the last 20 years, NCC has helped protect almost 1,800 hectares of the Alfred Bog.

I was incredibly excited to finally visit the property as part of my 2021 field work. There was only one problem: there are no roads that go to the Horlings-Gleeson property. The property is entirely landlocked.

So, how do you get to a property when there are no roads? Answering this question taught me a few things. Since this ecosystem is so sensitive, this NCC property is not open for the public to visit, but hopefully you can get a bit of a taste through the lessons I learned. NCC staff are privileged to be able to steward this important place. Our visits are timed to have the least possible impact as we carry out our vital work to check for threats and ensure we can write accurate conservation plans to protect the area.

1) Plan before you go

This trip required a lot of planning. My team and I spent time in the office looking at maps and satellite images to plan the best route in advance. We also collaborated with the local municipality and neighbours to learn more about the local area. After much deliberation, we came up with a route that traversed unopened road allowances, drainage ditches and old game trails, but we didn’t know if the plan would work until we got there.

2) Bring the right gear

Megan Quinn wearing hip waders to stay dry while working in the Alfred Bog. (Photo by NCC)

I knew that Alfred Bog would be wet; it is a wetland after all. But I wasn’t expecting our access route to have so many water crossings. It seemed like every few hundred metres, we had to cross a stream or were stepping in puddles up to our knees. Luckily, the team wore chest waders, so soaking our boots wasn’t a problem.

3) Bring multiples

Strenuous hikes always use more resources than you think. It was important to have more water, more food and more pairs of socks than we would normally bring for a field day. There was no running back to the car if someone realized they’d left their lunch, so staying organized and having all the equipment readily available made the day run much smoother.

4) Stop to take a break (and appreciate where you are)

Pitcher plants are one of the unique plants you can find in the Alfred Bog (Photo by NCC)

Taking regular breaks was a necessity, but it was also an opportunity to appreciate how beautiful the Alfred Bog is. Whether it was taking the time to study moose tracks or admiring the beautiful pitcher plants poking out of the moss, these are not things we get to see every day. The Alfred Bog is a unique ecosystem, and it was such a treat for us to be able to experience it first-hand.

5) It will be harder than you think

At the end of the field day, Megan Quinn had to lie down to recover. (Photo by NCC)

I’ve had workouts at the gym that were easier than the hike to Alfred Bog. We did all the preparation we could, but I don’t think anyone could blame us if we were in a bad mood by the end of the day. There’s nothing more frustrating than following a moose trail, realizing it led to a dead end in the wrong direction and having to back-track through difficult terrain. Or having to stop and get your boots unstuck from the bottom of a drainage ditch.

A good sense of humour is important for any field day, but especially the ones that require a lot of patience. I’m lucky to work with an incredible team in eastern Ontario, who kept smiling the whole day. Even so, at the end of the day, we all needed to lay down.

Growing up in the industrial landscape of northern England, Megan Quinn didn’t fully realize her passion for nature until she moved to Canada in 2004. After graduating from the Ecosystem Management Technician and Technology programs at Sir Sandford Fleming College, she worked a variety of jobs in the environmental field with a focus on the non-profit sector. Since 2018, Megan has led the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s Eastern Ontario stewardship team as the coordinator, conservation biology – Eastern Ontario. She also sits on the Canadian Committee for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Young Professionals Committee. Megan routinely volunteers in Europe to share environmental knowledge with international ecologists. In her spare time, she is a competitive horse rider, and enjoys creative expression through novel writing, and knitting.

A Tribute to Our Wetlands

Today is World Wetlands Day and to we are thrilled to welcome Danielle Fequet to the blog. Danielle works with Ducks Unlimited Canada and will tell us a bit about the history and importance of World Wetlands Day followed by a story about her time exploring wetlands in the city of St. John’s! For more about Danielle, see the end of this post.

Winter at Bidgood Park in St. John’s, NL

As winter settles into eastern Canada, the days of mucking around in wetlands seem far away, existing only in memories and plans yet to be made for the warmer months ahead. As we celebrate World Wetlands Day, it’s the sensory experience of traversing local wetlands, of soaking in their earthy smells and the sounds of bird and insect life, and appreciating their dynamic role at the interface of land and water, that comes to mind. 

Although World Wetlands Day falls in the heart of winter in our part of the world, this annual event marks the signing of the first official agreement between nations to conserve natural resources in modern times. The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was ratified in Ramsar, Iran on February 2^nd, 1971, and World Wetlands Day has served as a wayfinder for wetland conservation ever since. This year’s theme, Wetlands Action for People and Nature, reminds us of our responsibility to wisely manage resources not only for the sake of the environment but for our own well-being and resilience. 

In my work as a Conservation Programs Specialist with Ducks Unlimited Canada, promoting the value of wetlands is the main event – and spending time in them is a highlight of my job. Many wetlands are hidden gems, lying just beyond our highways, neighborhoods, and industrial areas. Others are well known and visited often; however, hidden or not, they all provide society with valuable services we aren’t always aware of. These services include filtering contaminants from water, reducing flooding by holding water, recharging ground water, storing carbon, providing habitat for a variety of species, and serving as places for people to reconnect with nature. 

During the 2021 field season, I was lucky enough to explore 25 wetlands throughout the City of St. John’s to assess them using a tool called the Wetland Ecological Services Protocol adapted for Atlantic Canada, which has been specifically calibrated for use here in NL. We call it WESP-AC for short and it involves a field evaluation plus an in-office assessment using aerial imagery. 

WESP-AC was developed based on the best available wetland science by Dr. Paul Adamus, a preeminent wetland scientist and ecologist. It’s a rapid assessment method which evaluates indicators of wetland function rather than directly quantifying the functions themselves, which would require a considerable investment of time and resources. Although using WESP-AC does require training and a background in the sciences, it doesn’t involve any field equipment beyond a trowel, a pH meter, a GPS unit, and data sheets. 

In the field assessing wetland functions, St. John’s, NL

One of the most notable sites we visited during the summer was a 60+ acre wetland complex that lies along the shore of the elusive Third Pond in the Goulds neighbourhood of St. John’s – which just happens to be where I live. Third Pond is one of a series of ponds that eventually make their way to the ocean. You can catch a glimpse of the pond from my street, especially after the leaves have fallen each October. I’ve been considering how to access Third Pond and the wetland on its western shoreline pretty much the entire 5 years I’ve lived here – first wistfully, as our growing family left limited time for mucking about, then more purposefully, as getting away for an afternoon of wetland exploration became less impossible. While there are areas that provide obvious access to the pond, my quest was to find access to the lacustrine wetland that didn’t (at least not obviously!) skirt over someone’s land.  

The large marsh complex backs on to the community’s recreation facilities (I suspect the wetland may have been encroached upon to build them) and provides flood mitigation services for free. At first glance the recreation facilities seem to be a good access point, and I ventured out one of the hottest days of summer. Already more than 30°C, it was even warmer and steamier inside a pair of waders that fit like clown shoes (econo waders never seem to come in an adequate range of sizes). The water was shallow in late August, so a meandering route through Dirty Bridge River, which converges with Cochrane Pond Brook, was the obvious path. 

But I quickly discovered that the height of late summer marsh vegetation serves to highlight your own insignificance. On foot, the stream channel included labyrinthine branches and no real vantage points. Being so close to town, the bustle of the day was audible, but it was also clear that if a person were to get caught up in the marsh, it could be a while until anyone found them. With that in mind, I was liberal in my application of fluorescent flagging tape and sent screen shots of my location in Google Maps to my check-in buddy back at our sweltering office.  

After slogging for nearly an hour, and surviving my first encounter with stinging nettle, I finally made it to where the wetland blends into the edge of the pond. I couldn’t tell you why it took so long to venture not much more than half a kilometer, other than to point out that many a traveler has been led astray by Faeries in Newfoundland in the areas between the cultivated and the wild. 

As I arrived at the pond, a slight breeze lent some relief from the heat and was made visible by horsetails swaying in the wind. The view was more akin to the majestic Codroy Valley in southwest Newfoundland than what one might expect to see in the province’s largest city. With this view as the backdrop, the real work began!  

Marsh at the edge of Third Pond in the Goulds (St. John’s, NL)

Assessing wetland function can help start conversations about the importance of these places and ultimately support conservation planning. The City of St. John’s has shown leadership and initiative on wetland conservation issues, contracting out a study of wetlands within the city boundaries that will continue in 2022. Our field work last year complemented this study by focusing on municipal wetlands not included as study areas, with the aim of providing the city with information to support action on wetland conservation and the well-being of the people of St. John’s and the planet!

Danielle lives in the Goulds, NL with her family and dog and loves to spend time exploring the bogs and barrens of the high land near the ocean. She has worked with Ducks Unlimited for over a decade and her official credentials include an M.Sc. in Environmental Science from Memorial University and a Certificate of Environmental Practice from Royal Roads University. You can follow Danielle on Twitter @DanielleFequet

I’m over the moon at getting back to the field

This month, Dispatches from the Field is happy to welcome David M. Finch, a PhD candidate in the Department of Archaeology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador to share a story from his fieldwork adventures! Read more about David at the end of the post.

Somewhere out there is a video of me in a crater lake in Labrador doing doughnuts in a Zodiac. In reverse. It wasn’t me doing the driving, but it’s still not my preferred way to make a first impression.

I’m an archaeologist, and no, I don’t usually spend much time in craters. But in the fall of 2021, the Innu Nation asked me to go to Kamestastin Lake in northern Labrador to monitor the potential impacts of a geological base camp. About 36 million years ago, an asteroid or comet slammed into northern Labrador. Flashing forward to the present, the crater is now a lake. Geologists were studying its rim, and I and two Innu guardians (community monitors) went along – as did two astronauts! The crater is an analogue for places on the moon, so this was a way to work on their rock-busting chops before flying real missions. Most of my field camping doesn’t involve astronauts so this was a definite plus. 

View from Kamestastin Hill where the geologists were sampling melt rock.

Archaeology usually concerns itself with the human past, but Kamestastin sits in several worlds: it’s simultaneously an ancient crater and a home to the modern Innu people. Their ancestors left traces in the region as early as 7,000 years ago and their descendants still camp on the lakeshore and hunt caribou at the river narrows. All these times are mashed together in this place and stories flow from them.

This was all new territory for me, plus I had been out of the archaeology racket for years. You know the story: bad romance, move to Yellowknife, become a consultant. It’s the northern tango. The problem was that fieldwork was my way to express myself and I had cut myself off from it. After a few years I decided that I wanted it back in my life, but in a more social way. Archaeology often involves being stuck in the laboratory (especially the forensics that I did), and historically it did its own thing without much input from non-archaeologists.

So, I put my people skills to work and got back on the land. What I study now is called community-based archaeology. A lot of it focuses on the contemporary past: near-recent events to which there may be living witnesses. These events are important to all Canadians as we try to reconcile a mess of conflicting and difficult histories. I just look at them through an archaeological lens.

It turned out that the Innu Nation was looking for partners to look at those very things. My academic supervisor at Memorial had been working with the Innu for a decade and this partnership seemed like a good fit for my interests. So this past summer, I headed to Labrador for four and a half months, to run interviews and dig square holes. It was glorious but nerve-wracking.

Archaeologists put fieldwork on a pedestal. It’s an adventure. You go to new places, do new things, prove your worth. Community-based research is like that on steroids. You throw yourself into situations and try not to worry about looking stupid. That’s how you learn. For me, the key thing is not pretending I’m the expert. The communities that I work with are full of experts, with lifetimes of experience. My job is to lend my eyes or voice when I am asked. Navigating this is how I approach reconciliation.

View of Kamestastin Lake from the Zodiac (on one of the days when it was working).

So, back to Kamestastin Lake: there I was, keeping an eye on the base camp and ensuring that latrines weren’t dug into archaeological sites. At the same time, Innu families from Natuashish were making their way to Kamestastin, where they have many camps and sacred sites. I was struck by how differently geologists, archaeologists, and Innu guardians travel through the landscape. Archaeologists dawdle from point to point and stare at their feet, guided by where they think people might have camped or worked. These geologists hiked long distances from outcrop to outcrop, carrying bags of rocks back to camp each night. The Innu guardians in camp expressed how much more at home they felt in the country, and for them the lake was partly a social setting. It’s the same land but seen from different perspectives.

I took the opportunity to re-visit sites previously documented by the Innu and by archaeologists. Thankfully I met no bears, though there were frequent signs of their passing. The area is lichen tundra with occasional thickets of spruce and alder, and in fall the ground becomes a riot of reds, yellows, greens, and browns. The Innu gathering is timed to coincide with the arrival of caribou and the peak of berry picking. 

The footprint of a 19th century rectangular tent at the Ataka Village Site, looking west.

Fireweed in fall colour.

One morning the geology crew and I got into a finicky Zodiac to head to the lake’s south shore. For almost two weeks we had been alone on the lake, but the Innu had just returned to their camp. Naturally the motor chose to act up while we had an audience. There we were, metres from shore, the motor racing… but only in reverse. That’s when the locals came out with cell phones and took video of us doing reverse doughnuts. A hundred and thirty kilometres to the nearest town and there’s still internet access. All the PhDs in the world can’t stop a Facebook post. 

A day later I was on the same beach enjoying some downtime. I brought a fishing rod with me that day, and (finally!) caught an Arctic char. I reeled it in and gutted it on a plank on the shore. That’s when I realized that the cell phones were out again. The ladies on shore were delighted that I’d landed a fish, and I was told that in traditional Innu belief, the fish had allowed itself to be caught. A few days later a colleague said that she knew from Facebook that I caught that fish before I had even mentioned it.

So, everything goes in circles. Stories, boats, careers. Eventually things come around, even if backwards. The greatest thing that fieldwork ever taught me was patience. I’m glad that we found each other again.

Dawn at Kamestastin on our last field day, September 15, 2021.

David Finch is a northern researcher based in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Originally from Winnipeg, he has lived and worked across northern Canada. His doctoral research is on how Labrador archaeology can better reflect Innu cultural landscapes. He spends his spare time hiking, rabidly dissecting sci-fi films, and searching for the perfect bakery. Email him at dmfinch@mun.ca. https://www.mun.ca/archaeology/people/graduate-students/david-m-finch/

Painting a picture through time

This summer, I completed several baseline inventories of new nature reserve properties. A baseline inventory is an initial report about the features of a property. The process includes making a list of all the species found, with a particular focus on invasive species and species at risk, and visiting every vegetation community to understand the stewardship needs of the property. I also record any anthropogenic or built features, including buildings, fences, signage, etc. Finally, I interview the previous landowner, any recreational users, and/or neighbours to learn a bit about the history of the land.
Many of the former landowners I interview don’t know a lot about the history of their property because they simply haven’t owned it that long. However, by examining both natural and anthropogenic features, I can begin to paint a picture of what a property looked like in the past. Understanding the past helps me understand why the property looks the way it does in the present and plan out important stewardship work for the future.

Fences are one of the most common features that tell us something about the history of a property. Today, people may install a fence around their yard for purely aesthetic reasons, but in the past, that wouldn’t have made sense, because installing a fence uses a lot of resources. The fences from the past (mainly cedar rail) had a purpose, and most often it was to keep something inside. Grazing cattle are the most common reason to put a fence in place, but horses and sheep are also possibilities. Sometimes, instead of fence panels, all I find is old barbed wire mostly buried under layers of leaf litter. This barbed wire is another good indication that someone was trying to keep something from getting away. Stone walls are another clue that land was used to pasture animals, but they suggest the land was likely abandoned before the mid-1860s when other types of fencing became more common.

Rock piles are a clear sign of former agricultural use. When trying to plant a garden or dig a hole, there is nothing worse than hitting a rock. This was no different for farmers trying to grow crops to support their families and livestock in the past. Rocks had to be removed to ensure the plants had the room they needed to expand their roots and thrive. These rocks would be moved into a pile, usually towards the edge of the ploughed area, and left there. Many of the properties I encounter have these rock piles and I can only imagine the hours of grueling work that went into creating them. Troughs in the soil can also be the result of past agriculture. If you’ve ever seen a freshly tilled/ploughed field, you will know what this looks like (see the photo below)– uneven ground that is a recipe for a broken ankle. Some abandoned fields were left this way after their last use, and you can still see the plough troughs today, even though the land is now fully vegetated.

Plough troughs in a freshly ploughed field. Now imagine this vegetated.

Trees can also be excellent tools for painting a picture of the past. Fallen trees and the resulting stumps can certainly be the result of windfall (trees that fell due to wind) but can also indicate fire or logging. Wind fallen trees usually have a fallen tree trunk beside them and look like they “broke off” at the stump. Flat stumps generally indicate logging; however, many signs of the earliest logging in Ontario have disappeared as the stumps have rotted and disappeared. But multiple-trunked trees can also provide a hint of former logging, as they may have grown back that way in response to being cut. The presence of old growth trees (older than 150 years) but a lot of gaps in age otherwise (that is, missing middle-aged and younger trees) is a good sign of fire: while the oldest trees probably survived the fire, the younger ones did not.

This list is only a few of the ways you can paint a picture of the past by looking at the landscape. From fallen trees, to rock piles and fences, you can learn so much about an area just by exploring. I love doing these baseline inventories because they give me a glimpse into simpler and yet often more challenging times and remind me of those who used the land before. And even more importantly, painting a picture of a land’s past informs my plans for its future and helps me to steward, restore, and care for it appropriately.

Note: I learned a lot of great information about this topic from those who trained me but also from a book called Forest Forensics by Tom Wessels.

Be a lady (in field biology) they said

In honour of the 6^th International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11^th, 2021), we wanted to take the opportunity to explore what it means to be a woman in field biology.

While many aspects of fieldwork don’t discriminate by sex or gender (for example, getting bitten by insects, getting dirty, losing your phone/your field notes/your mind), fieldwork can present some unique trials for women – especially when it involves long days, weeks, or even months. Below, we’ve listed some of our favourite posts reflecting on the challenges and rewards of being a woman in the field.  

In 2017, in response to claims that then-President Donald Trump liked female to staffers to “dress like women”, women all over the world came together to describe exactly what it means to #DressLikeaWoman. As editors of Dispatches from the Field, we shared our own experiences from the cutting edge of women’s (field) fashion. Spoiler alert – don’t become a field biologist unless you’re willing to pair cut-off jean shorts with rubber boots or hats with…more hats. We’re still waiting on our job offers from the White House.

The challenges facing women in the field can range from meeting basic needs, such as figuring out where to pee and what to do when you have your period, to more serious issues like feeling isolated and unsafe. Dr. Jodie Wiggins (who has completed her PhD since writing this post for us in 2017; congrats Dr. Wiggins!) shared some of her hard-earned wisdom and tips for women in the field, including the importance of stocking tampons in the field supplies.

Fieldwork takes a toll on everyone, but it may be particularly difficult if you’re trying to be a parent at the same time. Dr. Tara Imlay shared her experiences juggling the competing demands of fieldwork and parenting, from timing her pregnancy to minimize conflicts with the field season, to dealing with tiredness, nausea, and the need to delegate tasks.

And like the video Be A Lady They Said, us woman can be a lady in field biology! Over the past six years, we’ve published posts from fierce, funny, and fantastic women field biologists around the world. These are the women who will shape the future of science – and it’s been our privilege to share some of their stories with you.

Cows, Creosotes, and Checkerboards

This week we welcome Dr. Kaiya Provost to the blog. Kaiya is a Postdoc at the Ohio State University working with Bryan Carstens on bioacoustics and phylogeography of North American birds. For more about Kaiya, see the end of this post or find her on Twitter @KaiyaProvost.

Big Bend National Park, Texas, 2016, is where my hatred of cows began. That summer, one charged me when I rounded a corner and got too close. I thought for sure I was going to get gored or trampled, but I didn’t. For some reason, I decided to continue being an ornithologist who works on southwestern ranch land. What can I say? Ranch land birds are great. 

Ranchers’ cows, which are common to the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts and are the nemeses of the author. Credit to B.T. Smith

By 2018, I was in the Big Hatchet Mountains, New Mexico. Hard to get to. Extremely dry. You can see creosote bushes for miles, dry canyons that capture what little rainwater there is, and no people.

My advisor, Brian, and I were out in the field before heading to a conference in Tucson. I’d spent my morning looking for Canyon Towhees. I’d been trying to lure them in with a recording of their song, holding a handheld bluetooth speaker over my head. I’d seen zero. 

It was a 3 km hike uphill to get into that particular canyon, and I could make out our truck only as a black pinprick among creosotes. Lunch was in that truck, and breakfast had been only half of a Clif bar. 

As both humans and birds agree that midday in the desert is unpleasant, I started hiking back to the truck. Brian was around somewhere. In the canyons I didn’t have cell service, so I couldn’t text him until I got up on a hill. 

A typical field work lunch or dinner for the author. Tortillas with canned refried beans and pickled jalapenos. Not pictured: diluted Gatorade and apples. Credit to B.T. Smith

As I rounded a corner, I froze. 10 feet in front of me was something big. Much bigger than me. It was a cow, I realized. And it stared at me with big black eyes. 

I bolted through the mesquite, thorns everywhere; I scrambled down that hill, my hands grabbing at creosote bushes to keep me from slipping. I slipped anyway, landing on my hands, shredding my palms. I heard my bluetooth speaker chime off and power down, but dismissed it, running as fast as I could until I realized the cow had not charged me. No, as I turned around, the cow was placidly munching on a bush.

Heart pounding, I glared at the cow and its dopey black eyes, hoping that it could sense my anger and not my panic. For ten minutes I cussed out the cow, field work, Canyon Towhees, and Clif bars. After that I ran out of steam and limped to the truck in the desert heat.

After another half hour, I reached for my phone to text Brian. Shoot. Where was it? I must have misplaced it.

There was a mesh pocket on the side of my bag, one I’d been keeping my phone in. The problem? The bottom of the pocket was gone and the mesh was full of mesquite thorns.

Icy dread clogged my throat. I dumped my bag on the passenger seat. Half a Clif bar. Water bottle. Pencil. Paper. Field notebook. Bluetooth speaker. Another pencil. No phone. Which meant no directions, no playback, no field work. I went through the pile again. I turned the bag inside out. 

Brian came back as I went through the pile again. 

“What’s up?” he asked. 

I looked under the seat. I went through the pile a fourth time. “I lost my phone,” I said.

“Yikes,” he said. 

I stared up at that hillside, at the mountain. It loomed over me, like it spanned forever. I wondered, I was out for six hours. Where could my phone have fallen? I could see it in my mind’s eye, the blue case knocked off, battery slowly discharging.

I thought I was a failed scientist. 

As I started putting my bag together, I saw the bluetooth speaker. Oddly, it was still on. Hadn’t I heard it turn off before, while I was scrambling through that mesquite bush?

Wait. It was a bluetooth speaker. Connected to my phone, with a range of 30 feet. And it chimed anytime it lost or gained the connection. I could use the speaker to find my phone! Like a metal detector, with a 30 foot sensor on the end! 

Determined, hopeful, I walked back up into the Big Hatchet Mountains. Uphill. At high noon.

The hike felt like it took hours. To add insult to injury, I could see the offending cow as a speck in the distance. There were more mesquites than I remembered up there. They all looked the same. Was that the one I fell through? I can’t give up, I told myself. I’m gonna find that phone or pass out from dehydration. 

I picked a bush, took out the speaker, and started moving in circles. One loop around. Two loops. Three. I’m never going to find it, I thought. I’m a bad scientist, I couldn’t even find a Towhee, this was a mistake —

The speaker chimed. 

I could have cried from sheer relief. Somewhere close to me was my phone. I wasn’t a failure. 

Of course, as I moved forward, the speaker disconnected. Turns out, a 30 foot radius is a lot of ground to cover when looking for something that small, even if it’s in a bright blue case. I walked one way, the speaker turned on. Another, it turned off. I made a checkerboard across the hillside, the day well past noon and the sun relentless, but not as relentless as me. 

Forever later, finally, I saw it under a mesquite. A rectangle with a bright blue case on it and a bird sticker on the back. My cell phone, which could have been a bar of solid gold at that moment. 

I grabbed it and dropped to the ground. The screen was newly cracked, but I could still see everything and swipe through. I even had service! A text from Brian popped up, asking if I was still alive. 

I did it! 

As I went back down the hill, that cow still stared at me. When I made it to the truck, my lunch was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Diluted Gatorade and cold refried beans; a victory feast. 

I didn’t tell Brian about the cow until after we got to Tucson. 

A view from the base of the Big Hatchet Mountains. Credit to the author

Kaiya Provost is an ornithologist, evolutionary biologist, and self-declared cow nemesis. She is a postdoc at the Ohio State University working with Bryan Carstens on bioacoustics and phylogeography of North American birds. She got her PhD with Brian Tilston Smith at the American Museum of Natural History’s Richard Gilder Graduate School working on desert bird genomics and demographics. 

Our “why”

2020 was a difficult year for everyone. It was challenging. It was tragic. At some points it didn’t even seem real. The beginning of a multi-year pandemic, locust swarms in Africa, and fires devastating Australia are just a subset of the terrible turns that 2020 took.

Implications for field biologists ranged from minor to significant. With many universities and institutions closed, some projects were put on hold or cancelled. Work was only permitted if considered “essential” – which, more often than not, didn’t include fieldwork. Even when fieldwork could be completed safely without traveling too far from home, it could only continue with additional safety precautions in place. It’s a virtual certainty that all fieldwork was affected in some way in 2020.

For us at Dispatches from the Field, 2020 was a tough year. When we started this blog six years ago, our lives looked very different. With changing geographies, changing life situations, new jobs, and new challenges, keeping up with Dispatches from the Field hasn’t been easy and the motivation hasn’t always been there. And 2020 just reinforced that. With the state of the world, we weren’t always on top of our game. We aren’t afraid to admit that. This past year was not easy.

So, the three of us (Amanda, Catherine, and Sarah) all sat down (virtually, of course) to figure some things out. Could the blog continue? Were we motivated enough to keep it going? Did we have the time? After much discussion, the answer was clear: yes. Yes, to all of the above. While the focus of the discussion was a lot of logistical stuff about dividing up the work and how we can attract more guest posters, what we really needed to consider was why we started the blog in the first place.

Dispatches was created to share stories about fieldwork, stories capturing the core of the experience and the moments that never make it into scientific papers. We wanted to teach people about important places and species by sharing engaging stories about our experiences with them. Our ultimate goal was to inspire people to care. When people care about something, it elicits action. It provokes calls to change. It results in movements to protect our beautiful planet. We need people to care more now than ever about the world, about our precious natural resources, about conservation and protection, about each other and about the incredible diversity of life on earth.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously remarked, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” In creating Dispatches from the Field, it was never our intention to change the world. But we hoped, by telling our stories, to inspire others to care. And if even a small handful of people start to care about a place, or a plant, or a rare animal because they connected with one of the stories we told, then that could be the beginning of a real push for change.

With that thought in mind, we are all really excited to keep this blog going. It won’t be easy; it never has been and it never will be. There will always be other stuff going on in our lives: new commitments, new changes, and new challenges. But at the back of our minds, we will remember why we are doing this, why we started it, and why we can’t let it go.

If you have a story you want to share please reach out to use at fieldworkblog[at]gmail.com.

Eliminating the uncertainty of “fieldwork” in 2020

With 2020 coming to an end, it’s time to reflect on all of the uncertainty that came with this year. Normally, I use my agenda every day, planning out my daily, weekly, and monthly activities. So the idea of the “unknown” is what has stressed me out the most this year. Not knowing when we will be able to work in the lab, when I can travel to see my family, or when I might be comfortable eating out at a restaurant again makes it difficult to plan ahead.

But this sense of uncertainty is not unknown to field biologists. When working with wild animals, it is often a gamble whether you’ll be able to enough of them catch them at the right time in the right place. Sure, for many species, we have a lot of data about where they can be found, for how long, and at what time of year. But if you’re trying to plan your fieldwork to coincide with a specific period in a species’ annual cycle which may only last a few weeks or even days, it can be stressful to try to guess the right time.

Since I started the third year of my PhD this past spring, I planned to have a big last field season to collect lots of wild bird eggs for many lab experiments. My plan was to collect freshly laid eggs from different seabird colonies throughout the Great Lakes region. The key word in that sentence is freshly laid eggs – in other words, I needed to collect eggs within a day or two of laying so I could artificially incubate them and monitor embryo growth from the beginning.

Normally, we pinpoint egg laying by checking eBird for reports of breeding from birders, or by calling birders in the area for their observations. However, even when we make use of the detailed knowledge of local birders, we still can’t be 100% sure what we’re going to find when we show up at the colony. It’s always a guessing game trying to figure out when the breeding pairs of birds will lay their first egg.

But just like most other field biologists, COVID interrupted my ambitious fieldwork plans for this year. Due to restrictions, I was not able to collect wild cormorant eggs during the birds’ short breeding season at the beginning of May. I was pretty discouraged when I realized I’d be missing out on a whole year of experiments. But after a discussion with my supervisors, I decided to compensate by adding a model lab species into my research and avoid delaying my PhD.

The domestic chicken is a model bird species – in other words, they have been used in many studies and there’s lots of data available on them. Turns out that chickens are actually a great species to study during a pandemic, because they breed throughout the year and hatcheries are considered an essential business (since the chickens are being raised for eggs or meat).

Working with chickens was a big change from previous years of playing the waiting and guessing game with wild bird fieldwork. My “fieldwork” this year consisted of calling a local hatchery a week before I planned to run an experiment and driving an hour to pick up as many fertilized eggs as I needed. While I still treated the eggs with care, putting them in a cushioned egg box and monitoring the ambient temperature, the challenges were very different this time around. Normally I collect wild eggs in the spring, when it’s warm outside, and I have to blast the air conditioning during transport to keep them cool. This time, I collected domestic eggs in the winter, so it was more of a challenge to keep the ambient temperature warm enough!

Waiting only 15 minutes at the hatchery to collect the chicken eggs and transport them to the lab.

While studying chickens wasn’t my first choice – and the ‘fieldwork’ wasn’t as much fun – my chicken experiments will help me to compare my results with those of previous studies and integrate my wild bird results into a broader context. So while 2020 was full of uncertainty and frustration, the resilience and persistence we all needed to make it through the year can sometimes produce unexpected benefits. I am learning quickly that these two traits are useful for succeeding in grad school – particularly during a pandemic!