This blog post has been in the works for a while. By “in the works” I mean I would often think of what to write about, for a whole month from March 26 – April 26, while running over potholes and sloshing through puddles of rainwater in my research vehicles (plural, yes. Car breakdowns were…
Spying on Birds
“So, like, what do you do every day?” I get asked this often and I’m not always sure how to explain it to people without pictures at hand or infinite patience for follow-up questions. So, in this blog post, with the benefit of time to pick the right words and theoretically infinite space to write…
Why, What, Where
Trying to write the first blog post of a new endeavor is overwhelming. There is so much to say, but it needs to be organized into some sort of framework that makes sense. So, for now I will withhold the charismatic animal photos and fieldwork anecdotes, and first try to explain where I am and…
Up and at It Again
Hi there! It’s been a while. Since my last post, at the end of fieldwork in Australia, I graduated from college, published a paper about my work at Shoals Marine Lab, spent a couple of years doing field jobs (+ filming birds) and office jobs (was assistant editor on this awesome film about Philippine Eagles),…
Summer’s almost over
Three months, eleven airports, four countries, three projects – it’s been a crazy and crazy amazing summer. My month-long stint in Australia ended with a bang last weekend. On Saturday, a whole bunch of people drove or flew (their own planes) to Coomalie Farm, touching down for an evening of festivities, an event officially called…
Winding Down
Apologies for yet another hurried post – I didn’t have much advance notice this time around either. But here goes. Last week in Darwin. The IRES students left on Sunday and things have been pretty quiet around here in for the past couple of days with just Kathryn, Sam and me. A few final attempts…
Just another week in Australia
This is going to be a hurried post because we’re leaving to get internet pretty soon. The past week has been full of myriad activities – filming people working in the field, conducting a few (frustrating) test runs of my own experiment and walking around with a heavy 400mm lens and tripod looking for camera-shy…
Spiders and Skittles in the Outback
Over the past week I have been following people around, learning about their research projects and filming them. There are six IRES (International Research Experience for Students) fellows, two each from Cornell, Tulane and William & Mary studying four different aspects of Red-backed Fairy-wren natural history. The first project I shadowed was that of Greg…
First few days in Dah-win
It’s been a busy few days, to say the least. On Tuesday night at 1pm I jumped on a bus that led to an airport shuttle that led to three flights and a car-ride depositing me at Coomalie Farms in Darwin, Australia. As if the fifty-hours of travelling time and the theft of my iPod…
Goodbye Churchill, I’ll see you soon Darwin!
(Because both places are named after people. Get it?) Walking into the Ithaca airport this morning, bleary-eyed and on two hours of sleep, it felt alarmingly like I had just arrived there to go to Canada and not from. As if the two whirlwind weeks of filming, banding, watching and appreciating Whimbrels and their sub-arctic…
Of Spruce Trunks and Sedgeman
When it starts to look like your entire field season is going to involve lying on tundra mounds for hours together, trying to will uncooperative Whimbrels to return to their nests so you can trap them with a bow-net and retrieve your precious geolocators, you can get pretty desperate. In one such fit of desperation,…
Out on the Fen
The sound of the wind gusting through trees woke me up. I opened my eyes and squinted in the bright sunlight. Wait, it couldn’t be morning yet. I checked my phone: 4 32 AM. Welcome to the sub-arctic, I guess. It’s been four days since I got to Churchill. For the last three days, I’ve…
Summer Migrations 