Bird photo shoot

We surveyed all 8 of my Green Bay Phragmites sites today. Then, while I was waiting for Lizzie and Julia, I took some bird pictures. 

Tree Swallow

 Red-winged blackbird

One of my sites. Phragmites can be seen waaaaay in the back. The bright tan stuff. 

Whirlwind tour of the Midwest

That's what my past few days have been. Here is my pathetic attempt at a map showing you where I've been since Saturday at noon (OK, I did it in a hurry). I am in Green Bay right now. I have looked for Phragmites up, down, and ALL AROUND and I have found 13 sites for my thesis work. That's it!!!!! So many of the ones I had planned on using were sprayed last fall. If only I had done my master's last year...

I even went to Drummond Island on a ferry to look for Phragmites (I actually found it there!) Can you spot my 2012 Chevy Sonic with Kansas plates? It's on the left, you actually can't see the license plate.

I start surveys TOMORROW! I have a lot to do before then.

Oops. Guess people didn't pay attention to that sign.

???? 

Also -- I have to say that while I am not a huge fan of McDonald's, they have some advantages:are everywhere and easy to find, they have internet, and they sell 3 chocolate chip cookies for $1. Also air conditioning - perfect for 3 homeless internet junkies that need to escape the afternoon heat before they can check into a grungy hotel!

Phragmites here I come

I'm about to start on the second half of the summer. Tomorrow I'm going to the eastern UP and then to Green Bay to look for Phragmites for my project, and then bird and amphibian surveys start next week. Right now, I have a mess to attend to in my apartment in Duluth before I can leave in the morning...

It's even overflowing onto my porch :(

Last days of Chicago

I did a few touristy things in Chicago, including a trip to the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, and Millennium Park. I even ate a Chicago-style hot dog. Here are some pictures:

Lizzie at the beach

We are excited for JELLIES!!!!

JELLIES!

JELLIES!

JELLY!

Yep. More jellies.

 

Puffer fish

Clownfish

Hot dog!

Who ever heard of a begging red-winged blackbird?

Lions of Tsavo

We saw ALL the dead animals

I would totally be good at this

Buckingham fountain

The Bean!

Cubs hat sundae... to prove I am a FIB

I got chiggers!

Well, only one chigger. But I've never had them before so I thought it was some kind of rite of passage or something. Hooray! Anyway, it itches but it's not too bad. Better than bed bugs.


Last week I flew to Minnesota for a few days to attend my Gramma's funeral, came back to Chicago for a couple days, and tomorrow morning we are leaving for good! That's why I haven't posted anything. But today, we went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum so I will post some of those pictures soon.


Back to Duluth for a few days before we leave again for the rest of the summer, traveling around the Great Lakes.

Phragmites

I went to Green Bay for a couple days to check out sites for my own research.   
  
The invasive giant reed (everyone calls it Phragmites, which is its genus) is EVERYWHERE up there! It has taken over most of the road-side ditches, lots of inland wetlands, and pretty much all of the shoreline. 10 years ago, the lake level started to drop, and all of the exposed soil was colonized by Phragmites. There are boat landings that no longer reach the water and countless homes that used to be on the lake and now have reeds for their backyard.
         
 My research is going to be on how it affects bird communities. It's hard to nest in because it's so dense and tall, and it dries up pools of open water that birds like to use to look for bugs and fish. There are some species that nest in it, like red-winged blackbirds, but things like bitterns, rails, and waterfowl can't use it very well.
   
It spreads really fast and is extremely hard to get rid of. Heidi, the DNR person in charge of a big project to eradicate it, LOVES to kill invasive species. She has been doing this for years and has worked on every species you can think of. She spent a half an hour describing all the ways you can get rid of them (including the glove of death, which was my personal favorite), and she says that Phragmites is by far the worst of the worst.

Heidi was so excited to be out of the office, she was taking pictures too

This was sprayed with herbicide, then mowed

New growth coming up - year-old stalks stay standing

Along roads

And rivers

Crane babies!

Yellow-headed blackbird

Red light count

I probably gave the impression from my last couple posts that I am frolicking in the woods counting birds all the time. Actually, the majority of this job is spent driving. Lizzie's sites are in the suburbs of Chicago, but that doesn't really mean less traffic, it just means I don't have to parallel park anywhere (this is a major relief, because I cannot parallel park). 
So, I counted the number of red lights I stopped at driving between my surveys today: 90. 90 red lights!! Not total stoplights, just the red ones. That does not include stopping for 2 trains, 2 construction zones, and too many stop signs to count. 


I got up at 3:45, left at 4, and drove until 12, stopping at 10 sites for about 15-20 minutes each. Yesterday, I didn't get back until 2, so the red light count was probably way over 100.


We have to get gas in our (3) rental cars every other day or so. I could do some calculations on how many pounds of CO2 our cars are emitting, etc., but I don't think I will, because it sounds depressing.


I hope the data Lizzie gets are valuable!

Warblers

Just to give you a sense of the birds we are hearing, here's a list of all the warblers we've heard so far:


Tennessee
Magnolia
Canada
American Redstart
Blue-winged
Golden-winged
Bay-breasted
Nashville
Yellow
Northern Parula
Cape May
Yellow-rumped
Black-throated Green
Palm
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Common Yellowthroat


Some are kind of drab, like this Tennessee warbler:





And some are really bright, like this Magnolia warbler:





I didn't take these pictures. If those warblers would sit still for more than 0.003 seconds, maybe I could get a picture, but they don't usually.


Here are a few more pictures:

Jessica (binoculars) and Lizzie

Purple trilium

Jack-in-the-pulpit!

Wild geranium

Rain, rain, rain

We got rained out yesterday. We got at least an inch and a half of rain, so now most of our sites are swamped. Here is a picture of one:

I don't have rubber boots, but I might need to get some. My shoes are pretty smelly from being soaked all the time. Can you tell this site is in the Chicago area? Doesn't look too urban, until you see things like this (near one of the best birding spots we've found so far):

The technique we use to survey birds is called a point count. We stand at one location for 10 minutes and record every bird we see or hear, and estimate how far away it is, and in which direction it is singing or calling. Sometimes, in the early morning, it's CRAZY loud and difficult to tell so many songs apart. A busy point count could have 30-40 birds. Other times, usually later in the morning, they stop singing, and we could have as few as 5-10 birds.

Because the birds are migrating right now, there are LOTS of different species just passing through and also some that are here to stay for the summer. Right now, we are getting to the end of the yellow-rumped warblers, which are the earliest warblers to come through on their way to northern Canada. 

Lizzie randomly selected about 30 forest patches in the suburbs of Chicago for her study. She used GIS to select patches classified by satellites as forested. Then she classified each one into "urban" or "suburban" based on the amount of impervious surfaces and population density around each patch. Based on the data we gather, she is going to look the effects of the level of urbanness, the size of the forest patch, and the proximity to Lake Michigan on migrating birds. The western shore of Lake Michigan is a hotspot for migrants because many birds follow the shore as they fly north. Do these forested patches actually make good habitat for migrating birds? That's what we will find out.

I speed, I have an I-pass, and I drive a convertible... I'm a FIB.

Let me explain. First, "FIB" is a not-so-polite nickname for Illinoisans that come up to northern Wisconsin in the summer and zoom around with their Jetskis on our lakes. They're not all bad, but we like to stereotype them. So why did I suddenly turn into one of those annoying, gas-guzzling, horn-honking tourists? Well, I'm trying to get a Master's degree.


I'm in school in Duluth, and have just finished my first year of school. This summer is my field season. My advisor has two other students, and one of them, Lizzie, designed an urban ecology study looking at the effects of urbanization on migrating birds in Chicago. So I'm here helping her for the month of May, before I start my own research in June. We are staying with her parents in Glenview, Illinois.


I'll tell you more about her project in a future post. For now, I'll leave you with a couple pictures I've taken so far. My Uncle Tom, from Switzerland, happened to be in Chicago and I saw him yesterday. We went to Cantigny Park in Wheaton and saw some signs of spring! Can't find that in Duluth...

And also, for those of you who are worried -- I don't actually go more than 5 miles over the speed limit (even though the unposted rule around here is that you can drive whatever speed you want) and this is not actually my car, it's my Uncle Tom's car (long story) that I am posing for a picture in. Lizzie did get us I-passes, though. She's trying to make a city girl out of me. HA!!

Hannah