For the past few days I’ve been watching my feeders. There have been House Finches there everytime I’ve watched. Today, I didn’t even see a house finch anywhere near my feeders.
Today was the first day of trapping with the large funnel traps. I got up early and set the traps before 5:30 while it was still dark. Waited and waited and waited. Finally, movement! There was a bird about to go inside! Hmmm… looking at it through the binoculars, I didn’t know what it was. I knew it wasn’t a HOFI, but wasn’t totally sure what I had caught. It has a longer tail than a finch, and was all gray. It was still too dark to make out facial features to look it up in the book, so I just waited. Soon, there was another one in the trap. Hmmm… wonder what these things are. Luckily, Adam came by around 6:30. They’re titmice. Tufted titmice, to be exact. Well, at least I know that the trap works. Eventually they found their own way out. Throughout the morning titmice were getting caught and finding their way out. Not sure if it’s the same pair, or if they were different birds. There were a bunch in the area.
Once it got really light out, the squirrels found the trap. I was interested to see what they would do. Luckily I got aligator clips to close the top of the trap, so everything was secure. I was 90% sure that the doorways were too small for them to fit into. Luckily, I think I was right. They jumped onto the trap, swung around a bit, and then jumped off. Had to scare them off twice though because they wouldn’t stop, and the birds wouldn’t enter the trap if the squirrels were around.
We took the trap down at noon. To make things worse, as we were walking back to Biology, what did we see? Three males and either a female or a juvenile splashing around in a puddle in the parking lot. Dammit! I think I need to walk around with seed in my pockets! I miss the Zeebies!
Happy to say that so far, I don’t think I had any bites today – went and bought Deep Woods Off for my clothes and citronella lotion for my hands on the weekend. Together with my mosquito shirt, they’ve kept the bugs away (I think, will have to see whether anything starts to itch this afternoon). Total: 29 and holding.
Have to eat, and then head off to Neurosciences for my first day of HPLC training. Tomorrow we’ll try the other location.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
HPLC to measure carotenoids?
June 6th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Norepinephrine, its metabolites, and maybe dopamine. Not sure yet. Not for my project. It’s side-project of Keith’s but if I get the HPLC analysis done while he’s in the field, I’ll be a co-author on a paper that he’ll write in the fall!
June 8th, 2006 at 6:14 am
Congratulations Kat. You managed to trap the 2 dumbest titmice in NC (over and over and over again).