Creepers gonna creep

WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST DRAW

So I fail at keeping you guys informed. I am now into my first field season for my thesis project. tl;dr, I am investigating the use of restored wetlands and fish farm ponds by migrating shorebirds, which are largely in decline, and the interior subspecies of the Least Tern, which is endangered. The Mississippi River delta area in eastern Arkansas used to be mostly wetland, but it's now mostly rice and soy fields instead. But lately there's been an expansion of aquaculture in the region, and the federal government has also started a farm bill which provides monetary incentives for farmers to retire marginal farmland and restore it to its original wetland condition - or something resembling that, anyway. So both of these things may help shorebirds and terns which use the Mississippi River flyway each spring and fall, and it's my job to figure out how many and which species and what kinds of habitat conditions are associated with bird use in these areas. It's pretty cool, and I get to work with a lot of small businesses and local landowners that actually want to help birds by making their farming operations more bird-friendly.

For you, the internet, this means I am gone most days of the week, and come May, once classes are over, I will be gone even more, until early June sometime. So if something of major internet importance happens, inform me! As I will probably miss it. Also, spam me with lulzy nonsense. I always love that.

Now, for those few people on my flist who don't already know, RvB Season 10 starts on May 28th this year. At PAX, RT showed a very early version of a scene from the Freelancer part of the story, with yet another battle between the Freelancers and an Insurrectionist cell. Watch it. Now. :)

(Mini not-really-spoiler: Sigma is apparently voiced by Elijah Wood. Yes, really. Now they just need to do a live-action film version with Sean Bean as the Director... Either that, or John Reed needs to make some iconable faces for me.)

This morning, while walking to the lab from my apartment, clearly demonstrated how crazy the weather is here during the winter. I left my apartment and it was sunny and warm (67 degrees, my computer says). About five minutes later, a huge looming black cloud swept over the sky, making everything pitch black and super windy. Now, another half hour later, it is bright and sunny outside again, and approaching 70 degrees. It's supposed to get down to 20-something tonight. This, apparently, is just how winter in the landlocked south is. Kind of cool, actually, though I miss having a real winter (by which I apparently mean 45 degrees and constant rain, since that's just so much fun).

I forgot to mention this at the time, but last week I went out with Melissa, who is still trying to trap hawks for her research. Most of her project is focused on observing foraging hawks, and determining prey densities in fields, but trapping and banding a few birds for identification purposes is handy. We managed to get a kestrel, and almost had a shrike (lol oops) but the winds picked up around 10:00, making the birds less interested in coming to the trap. Still, kestrels are fun, so here's the little juvie female we caught.

( I took better photos... they're just on someone else's camera. )

Tomorrow, as many of you know, is SOPA (and PIPA!) blackout day. Although SOPA is more or less dead for now, PIPA is still around, and demonstrating the dangers of any kind of legislation that promotes censorship of the internet is extremely important to the future of the internet itself. The list of sites that will black out for tomorrow is growing, but includes Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, imgur, Mojang/Minecraft, Wordpress, and many others. As I don't have a website myself, exactly, I intend to join the protest in spirit by staying offline tomorrow. Maybe I'll actually get something accomplished.

You guys have something against big noses, don't you? Woe. Say farewell to the Steller's Sea Eagle and the Crested Caracara. They are now emo and insecure about their big noses. Way to go.

( One last look at the losers, before we vote once more! )

It is currently 7 AM on Tuesday, lol. We got in last night after a freaking two-hour delay in Honolulu because some sort of engine temperature indicator light had gone wrong, and it took that long for them to fix it and fill out all the requisite paperwork and test it. As a result we had to run to our gate in Guam, but luckily they let all of us with connecting flights skip immigration so we didn't delay anyone too badly. We caught our little island-hopper turboprop to Saipan just fine, and managed not to pass out on the ride to the house despite both of us having been awake for 24 hours at that point, aside from a couple of crappy airplane naps.

BUT. Now I am here and I have slept and it's humid and 80 degrees and lovely. Currently we share the house with Caroline and Nathan, the previous MAPS banding crew who fly out on the 9th, and Emily, a plant crew intern from University of Washington. The plant people apparently go in and out a lot and I'm not sure how many there ever are, but the banding crew is just me and Daniel, much like last year when it was generally just me and Aaron.

So we get today off because we needed a chance to recuperate a little before heading right into banding, but this afternoon we get to go tour around a little and go get our local driver's licenses apparently. So that'll be a cool souvenir.

( My backyard, let me show you it. )

As of today I am officially hired for summer, woohoo! Enough of this crappy "job" at Dick's that hasn't given me hours in six weeks (I've been working at my dad's place in the meantime again). Come mid- to late-April sometime, exact date TBA, I'll be leaving for San Francisco for a quick MAPS training session, which will largely be review as I worked for them last summer as many of you will recall, and then April 28th-ish I'll be off to Saipan! I'll admit to my ignorance here; before applying for this job, I didn't know the US held the Northern Marianas Islands as a commonwealth. I knew we had the Marshall Islands, and Guam, of course, but directly north of Guam is a volcanic island chain that apparently belongs to us as well, which we claimed from Japan in WWII or something. So I'll be over there all summer long, banding birds, enjoying a culture totally different from good ol' Cascadia, and lounging about on the beach eating coconuts and papayas. When I return depends on if I get in to Boise State or not - if I do, I'll be back in September sometime, otherwise I'm going to stay as long as I can, which probably will just mean mid-October.

There is no cell phone coverage on the island, which means that while I'll have a landline phone number, anyone who calls that number from a cell phone will be charged as if you were dialing an international number. But have no fear, you should all be able to contact me easily enough via the internet, as the house we'll be staying in has wireless. Handy! And this means I don't have to take the usual extended RP hiatus I was fearing. It also means I won't have to wait until returning to the mainland to watch the new season of RvB! These are both very good things.

I'll do my usual temporary address post when I get it, in case anyone wants to send me anything. Which I encourage you to do, just for fun, if you feel like it. It'll take about 5 days for anything to get to Saipan, but hey, you don't have to pay international postage! So that's convenient.

I will, of course, have to release Penny before I go. Sad, but I'd planned on that happening anyway, as if I wasn't going to Saipan, I'd be going somewhere else. Hopefully she'll find a mate and have lots of adorable squeaky fluff-headed babies. ;D I'll just have to catch another when I get back.

Well, my speakers are officially dead. Ugh. They started failing about two weeks ago - often, one would work but the other one wouldn't, unless I laid one on its side. No, I don't understand, either. But suddenly today, it seems neither will work reliably, and often whichever one does "work" is quiet and buzzy. I just don't get it. They're Logitech, come on. My dad's computer has Logitech speakers that have worked just fine for like ten years now. These died after a year. Lame.

Anyway, last night was awesome. Parents and I went to go see the Vaux's swifts at the Chapman School here in Portland. I may have talked about doing this a year ago, I can't remember. But basically the school has a huge old chimney, and all the swifts in the area roost there during the month of September, so at dusk you get these huge swirling clouds of swifts that spiral around the chimney opening like a tornado of birds, and then at some unknown signal they all funnel down into it. Cool on its own, for sure, but I know half the crowd (myself and my dad included) are there to cheer not just for the swifts but also for the opposing team. And when I say cheer, I mean it literally. Last night we had a Cooper's hawk swoop through the flock, to the audience's great joy. He missed his first strike and landed on top of the chimney, and sat there for at least ten minutes with his little head swiveling around as he watched the swifts just above him and waited for one to get within grabbing reach. After a couple false starts, he did finally manage to grab one and take off into the trees.

Just afterward, a peregrine who I'd seen waiting on earlier in the evening, made his attempt now that the Coops was out of the way. He stooped the flock but missed, and the entire flock of swifts chased after him in huge circles around the sky until he broke off and left. The swifts went back to tornado-ing, and started to go down. I hear this cry of "C'MON, PERRY!" from some guy just in front of us, and here comes the peregrine right over our heads, heading straight for the chimney again. He misses once more, loops around, then goes up under the flock and flips onto his back, grabbing one while upside-down. Freaking awesome. He flies off with his dinner, and the last few clusters of swifts make their way down to the chimney - but not before the Cooper's shoots out of the trees and gets seconds! He must've eaten the first one fast, haha. By then it was just starting to get dark, and it was evident that there was no room left in the chimney as the stragglers attempted several times to funnel in, only to spill back out the top.

Today, I sent in a new capture permit request. Much as losing a bird sucks, being without one for an extended period of time is worse. I don't know how I lived up until this point, man. I just don't know.

Went out to fly Amelia about an hour ago. The cold air and the mist in the trees mean one thing only - fall is here. I know it's supposed to get warm and sunny this afternoon and stay that way for a couple of days more, but I suspect that will be the end of it.

Much as I like summer, I've always enjoyed having a fall birthday. Something about that morning chill, the fog and the falling leaves is really beautiful. I know I don't have the same understanding of fall that those who live in the Northeast do, but here in the Northwest it's still a fun time of year despite the many conifers. There are corn mazes and pumpkins and cider, and the hawks migrate and the flock of eagles descends on Sauvie Island. And I suppose that typically, fall means time to go back to school, but I've never really associated the two, luckily enough. I'm one of those strange academics who doesn't actually like school. Sure, I'm eager to go back next fall so I can get my MS degree - speaking of which, agh, today is e-mail graduate professors day, so scary - but I'd much rather be out in the field, counting, tracking, catching, or flying hawks. Research and falconry go hand-in-hand, haha.

Anyway, I'll stop boring all of you with my rambling musings on the weather.

Oh, and apparently I'm 24 now. And I know people always say "oh I'm a year older, it doesn't feel any different" but, well. Since over about half of the past year I couldn't remember whether I was 23 or 24, and occasionally had to do the math in my head to remind myself, it really definitely feels the same to me. :D;

While listening to Gomez' How We Operate the other day, I realized that Girlshapedlovedrug is so very ridiculously Church/Tex, and that that is awesome. And what? A canon pairing that is not actually complete crap? Oh, RoosterTeeth, you spoil us so.

Except for when you don't, like doing a PSA this week instead of continuing from the asldkfalghag cliffhanger. Although fire safety is very important, I know.

Anyway. Last weekend, I went to Crater Lake! It was excellent. We hiked up to the tallest point in the park (the fire lookout tower on Mt. Scott), and there were so many butterflies up there it was insane. Not floating about and sitting on flowers, but instead whipping around in great colorful currents like a kind of living, visible wind. It was so cool. And then we hiked down to the lowest point, the lake itself, and got freezing cold in the perpetually-38-degrees water. Which was awesome. And then we hiked out into the backcountry through subalpine forests and meadows of lupines and camped at Dutton Creek, which was nice but full of mosquitoes. Still, we all agreed that it was safe to say we conquered that National Park in our measly 3 days there. It was great.

And this coming weekend (well, okay, my weekends don't always line up with the rest of the world's, so by weekend I mean Sunday through Wednesday) I will be in Portland again! Assuming it doesn't rain on us a bunch here and make us lose our days off, anyway. That would be annoying. And then, of course, I'll be back for good by August 8th. Possibly the 7th. It will depend on the weather, as usual.

In awesome bird news, we caught a cedar waxwing today! Totally awesome and so unexpected. Not as cool as the hawk, but still great. A nice little break from the epic amounts of juvenile Wilson's warblers that have been flooding the nets. Today's site usually gets about 18 birds a day and yet we got 33 because all the juveniles have fledged and are roaming about in nomadic packs. It's kind of fun, but it's a lot of work.

Alright, time to go make some dinner and watch more BSG. That is one heck of an addicting show. :)

Oh RvB. Such a tease. I swear, it's worse than, I dunno, Lost. Okay, so I never actually watched Lost. But just based on what I've heard, you have this show where every 45-minute episode ends at a crazy cliffhanger... or you have a show with 5-minute episodes that does exactly the same thing. AAGH. FLAIL. Some of you out there need to catch up so we can flail together before I start giving in and spazzing about OMG HUEG SPOILARZ GO HERE.

So anyway, yeah, I disappeared even more than usual for a couple days last week as Aaron (banding partner) and I went on an epic three-day camping trip to Malheur/Steens/high desert. Freaking awesome. I have pictures but I haven't really gone through and made them nice for posting yet. I'll do that eventually.

In falconry news, Curtis is going to fly a kestrel this season! I'll miss Phoenix (and I'm sure he will too, woe) but there just aren't enough rabbits up here for her. I think she's moving to Corvallis. So Curtis and Wayne and I will go on a super kestrel trapping adventure sometime this August~ And it will be awesome.

Tomorrow we head back to the site where we caught that hawk last week. I hope we get it again. And then after that we are ditching to Newport to go see Harry Potter. Bwahaha.

Ten days until the Boosh hit America. Sob.

Edit: I always think of things to add after I post, fff. Okay, so I was looking through my flickr posts, and while most of my photos have the expected low number of views, I think some insect fanatics have been spam-clicking some of the pics or something, haha. My shots of the termite mounds and the green scarab beetles have over 100 views each, and my most-viewed photo is the giant centipede with 272 views. wtf, random people. wtf.