Today is the beginning of my field season. For this project, I'm sampling whatever species I can catch, so my fieldwork is awesome - run some mistnets, catch some birds, try to identify them. It's so much more fun than targeting a particular species. But it's also fairly low-key, and I only catch in the mornings, and I can't really justify just doing fieldwork for the next few weeks. And I don't want to - I'm very excited about the momentum of my writing. So I have decided to start my field days at 8 am, rather than at sunrise, and keep 6 am for my writing time. It worked for today, although this afternoon is kind of a loss because I'm more tired than I expected. I imagine I'll get used to this in a few days and be able to some work in the afternoons, though I don't expect to do a whole lot. As long as I'm able to keep up writing for 30 minutes in the morning I will feel very good about it.
A bonus feature of my fieldwork: I'm not great at identifying birds, so I take a picture of every bird so that I can check it against field guides and my expert friends. This means that occasionally I can share photos of pissed-off birds with you! Today's angry bird: the yellow-breasted chat.
6 comments:
"I'm sampling whatever species I can catch" made me think for a minute, "Yum! All those interesting species." Then I remembered that 1) you're not talking about dinner, and 2) I'm a vegetarian.
I like the angry bird photo. Will "Angry Birds I Have Known" become a regular blog feature?
Good luck with you work!
What a pretty (angry) birdie!
Angry Bird says, "Grawk! Awk! Not the menacing hand again!!!!"
Lovely pissed off bird!
I'm wondering why, with pissed off birds with beaks like that, all fingers are shielded!
Sometimes I wish I had gone into a field involving the study of birds. Not only do you get to see tons of new birds, but you get to hold them too!
Post a Comment