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.

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.

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. 

Things that go Bump in the Field

I have spent a lot of time at a lot of different field sites over the years. I have spent days in the blistering sun, days in the frigid cold, and days in the pouring rain, but until this spring, I had never spent any time in the field after dark.

Every year, there is one field site with several kilometres of fencing that need monitoring to ensure the fence is in good working order. This work can take many more hours than we expect and is often completed in very early spring, so the days are still quite short.

This year, after a few days of repairing broken wires, straightening crooked poles and pulling tree branches out of the way, my field assistant and I were almost finished. It was nearing dusk and with a 1.5 km walk back to the road, we knew we had to leave shortly to make it out before dark. But we were so, so close to being done.

Let’s just go for it, we thought. We fixed the final panel of fencing and we started the trek back to the road where our vehicles were parked. But when I said it was “nearing dusk”, I really meant that it was already dusk, so by the time we were on our way out the sun had fully set and it was, well, total darkness. I have particularly bad night vision, so walking over ground was full of hummocks, rocks and small shrubs was particularly challenging for me. Given the terrain, a quick pace was far from possible, so I just trudged steadily along in the dark.

It was quiet. It was so very quiet. Since it was spring, birds were starting to migrate back to their Ontario breeding grounds, so the quiet skies were slowly beginning to come to life again during the day, but night was a different experience. There was only our heavy breaths and the slight rustle of leaves in the trees above to break the silence.

The only photo I got before the sun disappeared.

Suddenly, the quiet was interrupted by a very quick, almost vibration-like sound…and whatever made it was right behind us. Before we could even turn around, we heard a forceful “peeeent” from that same direction. My field assistant and I spun around, but halfway through our rotation, we heard the same vibrating sound again and it was gone.

We took a few more steps and then heard the same quick vibration sound followed by a loud “peeeent”. After this happened consistently for another 2 minutes, I knew I needed to figure out what was making this sound. The vibrating sound was definitely the wind rushing through feathers, so we knew it was a bird, but this was still very early in my birding career (I still knew almost nothing about birds), so that was about it. Something about the sound was oddly recognizable to me, but I just couldn’t place it. So, we walked slowly a few metres away and then turned around quietly and waited. As if perfectly on cue, the vibrating sound was back and as soon as it settled, I shone the light of my phone camera in front of us. And as soon as I caught sight of the bird, I knew exactly what it was, having watched this hilarious internet sensation many times. It was a woodcock!

As soon as I got a glimpse he was off again, and we continued to walk back to the road. The whole way back the woodcock followed us, “peent-ing” the entire time. Maybe we were bothering him and he was trying to get rid of us? Maybe he was protecting something? Or maybe he was just genuinely curious about what we were doing in his home territory so late in the day? Either way, when he escorted us to the car, it gave me a feeling of safety – like something was watching out for us in the darkness.

As we reached the vehicle and packed up our tools and equipment, I heard another nighttime sound, more immediately recognizable: the familiar call of the whip-poor-will was bouncing around in the distance. Having never spent any time in the field at night, that night was a very memorable experience for me. And it was certainly an excellent reminder that when you’re doing fieldwork or spending time in nature, no matter what time it is, you are never truly alone.

Praia, Paradise, & Petrel Poop

We are excited to welcome Alyssa J. Sargent to the blog today. Alyssa is a PhD student at the University of Washington studying tropical hummingbird ecology. For more about Alyssa, see the end of this post.

When seabirds colonize a tiny island, they truly reign. Humans no longer have the last word on dominance—at best, we are tolerated from a safe distance; at worst, we are considered threats most sensibly handled by mobbing.

As tiny islands go, Praia Islet fits the bill: a mere 0.039 square miles, it is a snippet of the Azores, a Portuguese island chain in the middle of the Atlantic. What’s more, it is a hub of ornithological research, positively inundated by birds.

Praia Islet! Teeny-tiny.

During the day, the common tern is king. When I worked on Praia, there were certain sections of the island that our field crew dared not disturb, for fear of either reprisal or treading on a nest. If we waded through the waist-high grasses close to the tern colony, the birds rose into the air in a great white wave, circling overhead; their shrill, burry calls rang and rattled in our ears, and every few seconds a particularly brave or irritable tern would dive toward us, swooping inches from our heads. Their nests, which resembled flattened divots in the golden-green stems, were tightly-spaced—a crammed neighborhood for new families, with no vacancies. If we were lucky, we could catch a glimpse of a fluffy nestling or two, miniscule punks with spiky feathered heads. If we were unlucky, we got parting gifts—delivered directly onto our heads. And after speedily escorting us off the premises, several terns would trail us for a time, like a multi-bodied kite suspicious of our intentions.

From a respectful distance, we could observe the terns wheeling over the sapphire Atlantic, plunging into the water. They often emerged victorious, beak clamped down on a silvery fish; equally often, a rival would attempt to snatch the victor’s hard-earned spoils in midair. We would see these fish strewn across the well-worn trail, vestiges of past battles and unsuccessful thieveries.

When the sun began to drop, drenching the ocean creases in pink and lilac, a changing of the guard soon followed. The terns settled quietly into the grasses for the night, and a steady stream of newcomers arrived: burly shearwaters—Cory’s and little—and their much daintier relatives, Monteiro’s storm-petrels. Fresh from foraging expeditions, these birds trumpeted their arrival, until the darkening sky was awash with darting shadows and a cacophony of calls.

A little shearwater nestling! Pure fluff.

Sunset in the Azores.

Any one of these small storm-petrels could have traveled over 300 miles in one foraging trip. You’d expect them to collapse in exhaustion, but these birds meant business. They returned to land for all things breeding: to find a mate, choose a nest burrow, incubate their eggs, or feed their nestlings. Deep into the night, while the Milky Way glittered overhead and the moon bathed the island and surrounding waters in silver, their silhouettes darted erratically through the air like bats. Above the distant sound of the waves, we could hear them squeakily calling to one another.

The Monteiro’s storm-petrel is endemic to the Azores. This fact, combined with their mostly-uncharted foraging patterns, nocturnal habits, and affinity for nesting in burrows, makes them a tricky study subject. But what’s science without a challenge?

It was with the goal of cracking such mysteries that I joined a research team studying these petrels—which we affectionately dubbed “stormies”—in the Azores. We camped out on Praia, a scrap of land off the shore of Graciosa, one of the smaller islands in the chain. We were the sole inhabitants; the islet had a single, cramped building with no electricity or running water—and quite a few cracks in the roof, which the rain was fond of worrying its way through. Our bunkmates were omnipresent Madeiran wall lizards, which dispersed in a scrabbling frenzy when we passed them, and flies that hung sleepily in the air with no apparent destination. Occasionally a bemused shearwater would wander its way inside. Once a pair of enterprising terns, in the market for real estate, snuggled their nest among the shingles of our battered roof.

Pure fluff, miniaturized: a Monteiro’s storm-petrel nestling.

It was, as we put it, “rustic”. But this suited our purposes well. We had the run of the islet—that is, the sections not ruled by terns—and there were plenty of opportunities to study the stormies. Monteiro’s are handsome little seabirds, the dark gray of thunderclouds and smelling strangely of wax. In order to disentangle their enigmas, we used many instruments familiar to field ornithologists: mist nets to catch birds on the wing, bands to individuate each bird, camera traps nestled into burrows to see the petrels’ hidden activity, GPS tags to track their odysseys out to sea, and other tools like acoustic playback and diet analysis.

Measuring a little shearwater nestling to gauge how much it’s grown!

Of course, diet analysis is a euphemism for what, in the field, amounts to collecting bird poop. And oh, was there bird poop. That might not be the first thing that comes to mind when imagining these fluffy little birds, but it’s no small detail—it stippled the rocks in a layered mosaic and graffitied our clothes. Every time we handled a bird, we—and our trousers—were at risk.

Things weren’t glamorous, but Praia was its own sort of paradise. Yes, we were crammed into a building with three times as many people as rooms. Yes, we got mobbed by terns, and yes, we got pooped on. Habitually. As is always the case in the field, we hit snags. But there was unmistakable beauty in the windswept grasses tangled with wildflowers and the iridescent, crumpled ocean surface; there was the thrill of witnessing a mother and father stormy reunite at their burrow through the feed of a miniscule camera, and of cupping one of these small birds between our fingers—his powerful wings folded crisply against skin, his tiny heart playing a tangible staccato, and his dark eyes shining with intelligence. Finding magic in these moments is at the heart of fieldwork. That, and being okay with a little bird poop.

I’m a field ornithologist by trade. During my PhD, I intend to study tropical hummingbird ecology, and leverage advanced technology to answer previously inaccessible questions about these tiny gems. With this information, I hope to contribute to conservation efforts by increasing knowledge and fostering local engagement. I believe that sharing science with others is incredibly important, and that writing is a particularly effective medium to do so!  

Of catbirds, chats, and challenges

We are excited to welcome Kristen Mancuso to the blog today! Kristen is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia Okanagan studying songbird migration ecology and physiology. For more about Kristen, see the end of this post. 

As I wrap up my PhD at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, I think back fondly on 4 summers of field work across North America. In collaboration with other organizations, I did fieldwork in northern California, western Montana, and Mexico…but most of my time was spent in the south Okanagan Valley.

One of my study sites in the South Okanagan Wildlife Management Area. The wild rose sure smells nice but walking through it is very scratchy.

The Okanagan Valley is a hot tourist destination in the summers, known for its lakes, beaches, wineries, and fruit. For biologists, it’s also known for its unique biodiversity – the semi-arid desert habitat is home to species occurring nowhere else in Canada.

My PhD research aims to learn more about the full annual cycle of 2 species of songbird: the yellow-breasted chat and the gray catbird. The population of yellow-breasted chats in the south Okanagan Valley is listed as Endangered federally, with only a few hundred breeding pairs in the province. In contrast, the gray catbird is abundant and not of conservation concern. Studying the two species together allows for a comparison between a common and an at-risk riparian songbird species. Environment and Climate Change Canada has been monitoring both species in the region for many years, and this PhD project piggybacks on their efforts.

Both yellow-breasted chats and gray catbirds are migratory, spending most of the year south of the Canadian border. In North America, most research on migratory songbirds occurs on the breeding grounds, but a better understanding of their migration and overwintering life stages is crucial to identify and address potential threats. This is especially important for endangered species, such as the yellow-breasted chat, to aid recovery efforts.

However, it wasn’t until very recently that tracking technology became small enough to use on songbirds. Now, we have lightweight GPS tracking devices, weighing only 1 gram, that birds can carry with them on migration. This is the technology I used to track chats and catbirds across their full annual cycle. But in order to follow the path of a migrating bird, we needed to capture birds and attach the GPS tags, then recapture them a year later to remove the tags and download the data. Therefore, most of my time in the field was spent capturing, resighting, and recapturing birds.

Bird capture

To capture birds, we used mist-nets. Mist nets are a common tool to capture songbirds and are made of a very fine, soft mesh that is nearly impossible to see. The net is stretched between two poles and contains multiple pockets. When a bird flies into the net, it falls into a pocket and gets tangled but is not harmed. We gave each bird we caught a combination of 3 unique colour bands and a standard numbered band.  The colour bands allowed us to identify the individual from afar. A subset of birds were also given a harness with a GPS tag attached, which they carried like a backpack.

Chats are territorial and will respond to playback of other chats’ songs, so we targeted specific territorial males with strategically placed nets, using a stuffed dead chat as a decoy. Catbirds don’t appear to be as aggressively territorial as chats and unfortunately, don’t consistently respond to playback, so our best bet was to passively capture them first thing in the morning. This meant getting up at ungodly hours. I had my schedule down to the minute: wake up at 2:30 AM, leave by 3:00 AM, arrive at site by 3:20 AM, and then set up ~ 8 mist-nets by headlamp as fast as possible so they were ready to catch birds before first light, around 4 AM.

My field technicians carrying banding gear from a chat territory.  The white styrofoam box contains the decoy.

My main catbird site along a trail. A mist net is barely visible on the left.

A catbird given some fresh colour bands. Two black bands on its left leg, plus a green and standard band on its right leg.

GPS tags attached to the back of yellow-breasted chat.

GPS tags attached to the back of colour-banded gray catbird.

Resighting colour banded birds

The purpose of resighting colour-banded birds was to identify individuals that needed to be recaptured to remove GPS tags and also to monitor the return rates and survival of birds. Survival estimates are valuable for conservation and monitoring efforts to better understand if birds are making it through the winter and migration and returning to breed.

To resight birds, we used binoculars and high-zoom cameras, which sounds easier than it is. Yellow-breasted chats and catbirds live in places no sane person would normally venture into: dense bushes of wild roses and thickets of poison ivy. In order to protect ourselves, we wore thick rain gear. Did I mention that the south Okanagan is also known for its intense sun and heat? Temperatures in excess of 30°C are not uncommon, and the rain gear quickly turned into a sweat trap. To add to the challenge, the clouds of mosquitoes (and to a lesser extent, ticks) meant we also often wore bug nets to cover our faces.

Both chats and catbirds are relatively sneaky and hard to see, but males periodically pop up out of the dense vegetation to sing and defend their territory. This often meant a long, hot wait for the bird to appear – and when it finally did, we typically only had a few seconds to get a photo. All too often, our attempts ended in failure. Sometimes we heard the bird but couldn’t see it; other times, we saw the bird with our eyes but couldn’t find it with the camera. Often we were too slow, and the bird went back into thicket before we could snap the picture. And in the most frustrating cases, we got the photo – only to find that it wasn’t usable for identification purposes for a multitude of reasons: the camera focused something other than the bird, the photo was over- or underexposed, the bird’s legs (and therefore colour bands) were hidden…

The chat is front and centre and yet my camera focuses on the tree in the background.

Catbird silhouette. Not helpful for ID.

Nice shots of chat but can’t see legs.

Nice shots of catbird but can’t see legs.

Even when we did get a clear photo, interpreting the colour of the bands wasn’t always easy. Standard aluminum bands can appear white or light blue. Red bands can fade and look like orange.

But the challenge was in part what made it so appealing! When we finally nailed a bird’s colour band combination, there was a definite sense of accomplishment. Looking up who the bird was, when and where it was banded, and whether it was seen the previous year – in short, its whole history – was exciting. The oldest catbird in our study was at least 6 years old, and the oldest chat at least 11!

Despite the sleep deprivation, poison ivy rashes, and rose scratches, spending the summers studying these birds was something I looked forward to every year. Being outside watching the birds at dawn in their natural habitats, foraging, singing, and building nests, was beautiful and peaceful. Using new technology to learn more about their migration was fascinating. Having great field technicians was an added bonus, and being able to go swimming or go for ice cream after a long day in the field made the summers unforgettable.

Kristen Mancuso is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia Okanagan studying songbird migration ecology and physiology. Her PhD project is in partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada. She has a love for fieldwork and exploring the great outdoors. After her PhD, Kristen hopes to continue her career in wildlife conservation. This fall she will be working as a bird bander for Mackenzie Nature Observatory. Follow her research on Instagram @yellowbreastedchatresearch

Good things in the world and on the horizon

I am a planner. I find comfort in knowing exactly when everything is happening. I plan out every month of the year, every week and every day. While I have become more flexible over the years, I still struggle when one of those things changes, especially at the last minute.

With a global pandemic being announced as a result of the coronavirus, I knew things would change in my schedule. Between Friday March 13^th and Monday March 16^th my schedule went from full, colour-coded, organized chaos to empty. All appointments, meetings, events, etc. cancelled or postponed. Watching the news was overwhelming: more cases of COVID-19 worldwide, more deaths, the first local cases. This of course causes us all to worry. My brother works at an airport – what does this mean for him? How will my Grandma weather this – will she have what she needs? So many questions, so many worries, so much change.

Since I am now working from home in the short term, I had to run into my office the other day to grab a few supplies and on the way home I stopped by one of the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s field sites. I parked by the roadside and walked up to the gate and just stared. Keep in mind, this is an alvar and it is March, so there it doesn’t look particularly exciting at first glance. But in the end, there was a lot to see, I just had to be patient.

I could see a small Prairie Smoke plant just beside the gate that survived the winter. It was covered in ice crystals. If you stared long enough, you could see the ice crystals begin to change shape and disappear as the bright morning sun melted them away into nothing. A bit of rustling caught my eye to the right where a large stand of Eastern Red-cedar trees stood tall and a Red Squirrel poked its head out and scanned the open area. A large Hawthorn in the distance had two birds perched in its leafless branches. I grabbed my binoculars from the car to take a closer look. Two American Robins sat still in the tree. Their beautiful red breasts were lit up like fire, catching the morning light in just the right places. A large crow flew overhead letting out a couple of loud “caws” from above. This spooked the robins and off they went into the tree line to the south.

I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on my face. For a moment I escaped the present. And I thought of the things to come. Soon, the alvar will be alive. Pink and yellow blooms will line the ground. Meadowlarks will return and sing their sweet songs from the tops of trees. The butterflies will flutter around like delicate paper caught in the wind.

For a solid ten minutes, I didn’t think about my schedule changing. I didn’t worry about my family. I didn’t even think about coronavirus. These moments reminded me that there is hope and there are good things on the horizon. The world is still filled with beauty, despite what we feel and what we see on the news. Nature can be refreshing and may give us the energy we need to weather this storm.

Wishing the best to all our readers in this uncertain time. You are all in our thoughts.

Technology in Fieldwork: Friend or Foe?

When I started doing fieldwork about 12 years ago, I didn’t use technology in the field. In fact, the only technology I had access to was an old flip phone that took photos so blurry I could barely tell if they were of plants or animals when I got back to the lab. I didn’t even pre-print my Excel data sheets and fill them in as I collected data. I just drew freehand columns in a Rite-in-the-Rain notebook and then spent hours afterwards trying to decipher my messy handwriting.

But over the last decade, technology has really boomed and it has changed the lives of field biologists everywhere. Take GPS, for instance. While hand-held GPS devices were certainly around 10 years ago, they tended to be clunky and slow, with limited functions – nowhere near as streamlined as current technology. In fact, they were often more trouble than they were worth. When I used to monitor roadside populations of wildflowers throughout the summer, I would simply remember where locations were based on landmarks, nearby street addresses, etc.

But now, I do my fieldwork using Collector, an mobile data collection app which allows me to take points instantly from my smartphone. If I were monitoring roadside wildflower populations now, I could just drop a point for a population, take a photo and attach it to the point and then navigate directly back to the point on follow up visits.
While GPS advances are very cool, the advent of iNaturalist is likely responsible for the greatest change to my life as a field biologist. According to their website, iNaturalist “is a lot of different things, but at its core, [it’s] an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. It’s also a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool. You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose, or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users” iNaturalist.

That explanation is much more eloquent than my description of iNaturalist, which can be summed up as, “a crazy-cool identification app that must be magic!”
When I was learning how to identify plants during my Undergraduate degree, I didn’t have access to anything like iNaturalist. To figure out what something was, I would excitedly bust out my plant bible, Newcomb’s Guide to Wildflowers, and open the book to the first page. Then I would carefully examine the features of the plant I was trying to ID. I would check if the leaves were alternate or opposite, determine whether the leaf edges were serrated, and then classify the radial symmetry of the flower. This information would lead me to a page number; with great anticipation I would flip to that page and quickly scan the images and descriptions. Inevitably, one of two reactions would follow: heart-beating excitement when my eyes stopped at a sketch that looked just like the flower in front of me…or sheer disappointment when nothing matched. In the second case, the next step was to flip back to the first page and take another look at the plant in front of me to try to figure out where I went wrong. Perhaps I miscounted the petals, or maybe the leaves were whorled, rather than opposite? It sometimes took a whole lot of trial and error, but eventually I almost always arrived at the right answer. And it was those mistakes that really made me remember the identity of the plant long after.

It is with some hesitation that I admit this, but I mostly use iNaturalist to identify things now. I just snap a photo of something in nature – be it a plant, an animal or a fungus – and iNaturalist gives me its best guess at the identity. It only takes a couple of seconds and it’s incredibly accurate. (Hence, magic app!) iNaturalist is such an exciting concept. In fact, I recently was part of a class visit at a Nature Reserve which involved a scavenger hunt as part of the tour. One of the species the students needed to find was Sensitive Fern, but this species is only really found in one small area, so it was easily missed by the students. To help them out, I pulled out my phone. I pointed to a specimen on the ground beside me and took a photo. Below is what iNaturalist came up with:

We proceeded to try the app on about a dozen more species of plants (even just the bark of trees!) and it was bang on every time. The entire grade 7 class was hooked on the app after that.

I love iNaturalist and all that it stands for. It intrigues people, it helps them learn about nature, and it fosters a curiosity about the natural world around us. It even helps collect important data about rare species and Species-at-Risk that monitoring biologists may miss. However, even though iNaturalist is useful in so many ways, it left me feeling very conflicted.

I can’t deny that iNaturalist has also made me a less engaged (or maybe a lazier) field biologist. To be clear, I don’t mean I am worse at my job now, by any means. In fact, I am probably more efficient. That being said, I don’t notice the things I used to notice about plants. I snap a photo and the answer is right in front of my eyes. I don’t spend 5 minutes flipping through the pages of field guides attempting to identify an unknown specimen. Moreover, when I do use iNaturalist, I often quickly forget the identity of the species – because I haven’t spent those long minutes working for my answer.
So, as I wind down this field season and think forward, I vow to reach for the book and not the phone next spring when I spot a new species or can’t recall what something is.

That being said, I think there is certainly a place for both technology and more traditional approaches as well. For those getting started, or in time sensitive situations, perhaps iNaturalist is the way to go. But maybe for those looking to thoroughly and deeply understand nature, the old school approach may be more suitable. Either way, I will continue to promote iNaturalist like the “crazy-cool magical app” it is, in hopes that more folks learn about, and begin to care about the natural world around us.

Do you use technology to do your fieldwork? Has the role of technology changed over the past few years? I would love to hear about your experiences! Leave a comment below and tell me – is technology a friend or a foe in your fieldwork?

Fast Forward Five Years

Five years ago over beers at the Grad Club, the three of us decided to start a blog. The purpose of the blog was to share stories about fieldwork: why we love it, why we keep doing it, and why everyone should get the chance to experience it. At that point in time, two of us were knee deep (or maybe neck deep??) in PhD fieldwork and the third was managing a lab, which included lots of fieldwork as well.

Fast forward five years, and we are all still out in the field, where we love to be…but things have changed (more than a little). Catherine and Amanda both defended their PhDs and have since started working for Bird Studies Canada and the Nature Conservancy of Canada, respectively. Sarah wrapped up her work as a lab manager and has since started a PhD in ecotoxicology at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (Université de Québec). But the adventures of new jobs, new studies, and re-locating, combined with busy field seasons and all the other quirks life brings, meant that we all ended up pushing the blog to the back burner.

However, as we started to wrap up the 2019 field season, we reflected on all the great things that have happened in the field this summer…and realized we wanted to share those stories (and more!) on Dispatches.  So with renewed excitement, we are happy to announce that we will be back to our bi-weekly posting schedule effective October 2019! You can also look forward to some updated features on the blog and even a new layout.

And if you can’t wait until October to get your fieldwork stories fix, check our Twitter feed, where we will be travelling back in time to feature some of our favourite posts from 2014, the year it all started.

We are all thrilled to be back and just itching to share the many adventures of our recent #fieldwork with you! And we’d love to hear about your adventures as well…so if you have a story you want to share, shoot us an e-mail!

Spring fieldwork feeds the soul

Those of you who have been following the content on Dispatches for the last four years know that when the spring finally rolls around, I am a very happy camper. Spring fieldwork feeds my soul. There really is nothing better than spring fieldwork. And for so many reasons. The trees haven’t leafed out yet, so you can see so much more than you normally could. There are fewer bugs. And you aren’t melting from the intense summer heat. Just over four years ago, I wrote a post about my eternal love and appreciation for spring ephemerals called “Spring wildflowers make my heart beat a little harder”. Back then, I was still working on my PhD, which was entirely focused on plants. Plants, plants and more plants. Now, working as a Conservation Biologist, spring fieldwork means more than just waiting for those first few early blooms. The sights, sounds and signs of life beyond just the plants poking through the soil are incredible, almost overwhelming.

This past weekend was filled with spring fieldwork activities. On Saturday, I was part of a garbage clean up, at a site near Napanee. Of course, being a garbage cleanup we found some interesting and unnatural things.

Of course there was a significant amount of trash.

Many, many, many, teeny tiny shoes

I even unintentionally found a geocache site!

Beyond garbage and other treasures, we found some pretty incredible signs of life. I lifted up a piece of old linoleum flooring to find these two guys below, a Blue-spotted Salamander and a Red-spotted Newt. This might be embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t actually think that the newt was real. I thought it was a toy, and promptly realized it was indeed very much alive when it opened up a tired, cold eye and glared at me. Don’t fret, I quickly lied that piece of linoleum back down to keep these guys warm and safe.

A very cold Red-spotted Newt resting. You can see the Blue-spotted Salamander along the left.

On Sunday, I was part of a hike along the south shore of Prince Edward County. The south shore is an important area of coastal habitat for migratory birds that juts out into Lake Ontario. I joined the hike to connect with partners, but also to start some baseline inventory work for the protected property in that area. The air was alive with chirps and whistles as birds sang to attract mates and establish territory. This past summer I became interested in bird song, despite finding bird song an exceptionally difficult thing to learn. I will admit, I am not very good at seeing birds. I have poor eye sight and I get motion sick looking through binoculars, so song seemed like the route to take. One of the first bird songs I learned last year was that of the Eastern Towhee who sings a very clear and obvious “Drink your TEEAAAAAAAAAAA”.

As we walked down the side of an un-maintained road I heard the distinct “Drink your….”.

Wait…what? I thought to myself “what bird sings “Drink your…” and then stops?”

And then again, “Drink your….”, “Drink your…”, “Drink your…” over and over and over.

“Does everyone hear that Eastern Towhee?” the hike leader asked. Everyone nodded, enjoying the sound. Quietly I then asked “But where’s the tea?” “They don’t always include the tea!” she laughed. Wow, if learning bird song wasn’t complicated enough already.

We continued along an 8 km stretch of wonderful meadow, alvar and woodland landscape, recording all the signs of life we encountered. At one point we heard a loud honking in the distance. We all debated if the muffled sounds were a goose, maybe a turkey or two. And then, if not perfectly timed, three Sandhill Cranes glided through the sky above us towards Lake Ontario. Other highlights included two ravens courting, beautifully dancing together in the sky, and some frog eggs including some eggs with tadpoles emerging in the flooded ditches along the road.

Frog eggs

Tadpoles emerging from eggs

Of course, I still go back to my real first true love of the spring, the spring ephemerals. I saw my first ones this past weekend, and just like the good old days, my heartbeat jumped a little. But now, it’s not just the flowers that make my heart skip a beat, it’s the flowers, mixed with the bird song and all the other signs of spring  that make me feel alive and ready to tackle another busy field season.

Round-lobed Hepatica – my first wildflower sighting of 2019 ❤