Greg and Kat's blog

It’s true! This morning I once again got to school around 5:00 am, and headed out to watch my feeders. From around 5:15 to about 5:45 it was still pretty dark. I could see the nearest feeder, and could make out the second nearest one with the flash light. No chance of seeing it or a bird on it without the light until after 5:45. Could hear birds, but nobody wanted any breakfast. Then, at 6:15, there was movement at the nearest feeder. Red! YEA!!!! Adult male house finch. Score! He ate a bit of seed, hopped onto a nearby branch, sang a bit, and then flew off. I was hoping his singing would lure in others, but no such luck. Then at around 6:45, when it was starting to get bright and I could make out the feeder that was further away, there was movement there too! Red again! I’m 90% sure it was a male house finch. Not sure if it was the same one as earlier. The other 10% goes to a female Cardinal. However, the bird looked pretty small. The light wasn’t so good, so can’t say for sure. I’m going back out at around 11 to see what I can see. Hopefully we’ll start trapping on either Monday or Tuesday.

Bite count so far today: 3 on fingers (total 25).

Blogged too soon: 7 bites today (4 on fingers, 3 on legs) [total 29]. So itchy…

So I guess long sleeve shirt with mosquito shirt works best. Had the hood up and zipped and my pants tucked into my socks. Looked like a dork, and today a police car drove by twice, and two guys walked by on their way to work. All in the name of SCIENCE!

I’ve decided to start a bug bite tally. I did this a couple years ago when I went to the Phillipines for 4 weeks . I think on that trip I got up to 50-something bites. Or maybe it was 80-something. Don’t remember. Anyways, that was in the “city.”

I’m definitely going to top that this summer.

Day 1 in “field”: 4 bites (2 feet, 2 wrist)

Day 2: 4 bites (1 hand, 3 arms) [total: 8 bites]

Day 3: 2 bites (2 arms) [total: 10]

Day 4: 12 bites (see previous post if interested in where) [total: 22]

And so it begins…

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.

I’m beginning to hate squirrels. There are now 4 feeders up to attact HOFIs. There would have been 5, but the bottom of the only one that was up during the weekend “fell out” sometime between noon yesterday (when the tech saw it) and 9 am today.I’m not really sure how it came out as it was wedged in pretty good. Tried to find it in the pile of dead leaves and new growth (and possibly poison ivy, but only kicked around with my shoe) at the base of the tree. The bottom is gone. Probably carried away by one of the squirrels as a “take-out box” full of yummy seeds. Interestingly, there were no seeds on the ground (although the feeder was getting a little low anyways). So I now have to drink a liter of water in order to cut the bottom off of a water bottle to use as a base. All of the other bottoms are now zip-tied on. Damn squirrels.
Upon checking my potter traps today I came across a squirrel happily munching on seeds. Dammit! Those weren’t for you! Anyways, I’ve since taken the seed out of those traps (no need to waste seed feeding a fat squirrel). May put the seed back once I get more birds into the aviary that may attract more birds in. Not really sure yet.
Am now reading the most boring book ever – “Practical Liquid Chromatography”. I think I actually dozed off for a few seconds. Luckily I didn’t drool! I sure hope the technique is alot more exciting than reading about it is.

p.s. We have a lead on another car. It’s currently at the mechanic’s getting inspected. Trying not to get hopes up though – just in case. Greg said any mention of the car had to be in “p.s.” form so as to not jinx it.

After the last two days of car shopping hell we’ve decided to enter into a whole new kind of hell. For some strange reason Greg suggested that we go to the Walmart Supercenter today. Greg! The guy who whenever I say “we have to go to Walmart” in Vancouver tries to run away and hide and then is a grump the entire time we’re in there.

I think he wants to get the true Walmart Supercenter experience. It is, after all, the Sunday of Memorial Day long weekend. I personally think he’s biting off a bit more than he can chew, but we’ll see. $5 says that by the middle of the store he’s curled into the fetal position.

Then I think we’re going to see X-men. Good day for me. We’ll see how Greg does…

I’m NOT the owner of a 1996 Corolla. I am the owner of nothing. The car didn’t pass the state inspection (I guess Greg’s dad was right). Although, I’m a little fuzzy on how it got a good inspection for the mechanic we took it to. We saw the list that the state inspection goes through and it didn’t seem all that complicated, and I thought it covered all of those. Anyways, in the end, we went to Raleigh again and didn’t come back with a car of our own.
Bah! Have $$! Why won’t somebody let us buy their decent yet somewhat cheap car?!?!?!

We ended up going to the local Toyota dealership to look at their used cars, but they were all over $10,000, which is too much for a “car I only want for when I’m in NC.” The sales guy also mentioned that for only $3000-4000 more we could get a new Corolla. But I don’t want a new car!!! I’m planning on transporting birds in this car. Not good for new upholstry. I think Greg’s sold on trying to get a newer used car for around $8000-10000, but I’m not totally convinced yet. We’ll see.
We did go to the state farmer’s market. It’s a permanent fixture with dedicated buildings open every day but Sunday. Took some pictures.

Tired now. I give up. This place is too difficult!

I have finally become an adult. I own my own car! I know Greg and I have a car back in Vancouver, but I’ve always thought of that car as Greg’s. Mostly because he bought it and he drives it. But this time, “we” bought the car for me! When I say “we” I mean Greg because I haven’t actually received a pay check yet (I get paid at the end of the month).

Car shopping was an experience. We drove to Raleigh where Greg had already checked out some used car dealers. We went to the one that had 3 Corollas on the lot. 1 was a stick-shift, which Greg didn’t notice the first time, the second one the sales guy said had been in a recent accident, and the third we test drove and took to an independent mechanic for a used car inspection. It’s a 1996 Corolla that is the same color as the Corolla in Vancouver. The inspection came back fairly good, so we went in search of somewhere with an internet connection to get a “carfax” report on the car. Finally found a Radioshack where Greg talked the salesguy into letting him use the computers there to get our carfax report.

The next thing we know, the report says: WARNING! or ALERT! or something equally as ominous. The car has been “rebuilt”. Crap! So we have no clue what this really means. So, we drive back to the mechanic and talk to the woman who said that the engine and all of that stuff was okay and looked like the original. So, they thought it may have just been the body work. Hmmm… what exactly does this mean!!!

So we did the only thing we could think of. We called Greg’s dad. He said he would touch it. But, we thought… the mechanics were amazed that it had been rebuilt and seemed quite sure that the car was fine with only a small amount of maintenance work. Crap!

Then we did the next thing we could think of. We called Oli. I think knowing that Oli changed his own brake pads made me feel a bit better if he said it was probably okay. Plus, we pretty much knew we wanted to just bite the bullet and get the car, so we were looking for someone to confirm what we felt. Since this car only has to last at most 3 years, we figured it would be fine.

Back the the dealer. We talked them down the price of the maintenance repairs. We probably could have gotten $100-200 more, but meh. At this point both of us were exhausted.

We have to go back to Raleigh and pick up the car today because by the time we bought it and the dealer changed the tires (it needed new tires), the state inspection places were closed. Dealers in this state can’t sell a car without it passing the state inspection, so it’s being brought to the inspection place this morning, and then we pick it up.

Next obstacle – me driving it back to Chapel Hill from Raleigh. Call everyone you know in the Chapel Hill-Raleigh area and tell them not to be on the street this afternoon! Too stressful!

Update (Greg, 05/27): Not! More to come.