Yesterday I worked at home because most of the day was taken up by getting the car, going to the Department of Motor Vehicles and changing the title of the car, and going to the mechanics’ to get an estimate of how much it would be to do the “maintenance” stuff to the car. Adam, the lab’s tech, called in the afternoon and said that squirrels had chewed off the plastic bottom of one of the feeders (same location as the missing bottom). Time to retrofit all of the feeders with metal tops and bottoms. Live and learn. Damn squirrels!
Today was my first early “field” day. I woke up at 4:00 am, said goodbye to Greg, who left for Vancouver to move us in to our new place and to attend a meeting, and got to school by 5:00 am. It was still dark. Perfect lighting for watching what sorts of critters come to my feeders at sunrise. I got all of my gear, put on my Lee Valley bug shirt, and got to the place where my feeders were placed by 5:15. It was still dark enough that I had to use my trusty headlamp to find the trees that my feeders were hanging from.
Found the tree, no feeders. After about 15-30 minutes of crashing around in the dark, I located two of my feeders. The wires they were hanging from had snapped, and they were lying on the ground. Adam, the tech, had hung the third feeder, and while I thought I knew where it was, I wasn’t able to find it. I looked on the ground around where I thought it was in case its wires had also snapped, but found nothing. Screw it – it’s dead to me. So I propped up the two feeders I had on the ground and sat and watched to see whether anything would attempt to feed from them on the ground. By 6:45 there were only robins (who I don’t even think eat seed) and one male cardinal. Lesson #2 for the day, use rope instead of wire to hang the feeders.
By 7:00 I gave up. I packed up all of my stuff, including the 2 feeders and returned to the lab where I would fix those feeders as well as the 2 bottomless ones. Upon returning to the lab, I noticed that I was kind of itchy. Not poison ivy (thank goodness) but 12 bug bites (3 on legs, 1 on neck, 2 on fingers, 5 on arms, and 1 just above my left eyebrow). The ones on my legs, neck, fingers, and face were not covered by the $35 bug shirt I got from Lee Valley, but the 5 arms ones were!!! Lesson #3: try wearing long-sleeved shirt AND bug shirt and see what happens. Lesson #4: Bug shirts – too good to be true. OR I’m just
super attractive to biting insects. Either way, I’m itchy!!!!
Put rope onto two of the feeders and went back out with Adam around 8:30. Turns out I was looking in the wrong spot for the 3rd feeder. It was still up. Will see how long the wire lasts. Will bring more rope out tomorrow and fix it then. With my luck HOFI’s were probably swarming that feeder, and I didn’t even know it. Put the other two up. This is when I may have gotten the leg bites as I had changed to capris, and the bites are on the part of my legs that were exposed. My own fault.
So tomorrow I will try again to see hat is coming to my feeders. Hopefully we can start trying to trap next week. This weekend will be spent eating/drinking things out of cans so that I can collect enough to make tops and bottoms for all 5 feeders.
Otherwise, life is just dandy.