Live birds!

Sorry for the lack of postage, Friends. I was on spring break all last week, and feeling pretty lazy about everything and I really didn't do anything exciting enough to report. Apparently, neither did George.

During the break I did some skinning in the Museum...my main project was to skin a vulture. The museum didn't have one in the collection, but it did have one in the freezer so I took on the job of stuffing it. It certainly was a challenge. The hardest part was breaking its wing and leg bones, which were more than 1/4 inch thick. I had to use pliers and brute strength to do it, and my hands were sore afterward. It was also very very smelly. Not because it was rotting or anything, but probably just because vultures eat rotting flesh, and thus probably smell like rotting flesh all the time. It was pretty extreme though. But here's how it turned out:









Pretty good right?

And today, I got to handle live birds for the very first time! Don and I went out to catch some birds and band them. We went to a natural area owned by the university, and set up some mist nets, which have very fine mesh (the holes are about and inch big, but the strings are very fine). The netting is set up fairly loosly so there are pockets, and when a bird flies into the net it falls in the pocket and gets caught. So how do you get the bird to fly in the net? Well the net is very hard to see because of the fine strings, so the birds can't really see it. To attract them, we can use a portable speaker connected to an ipod playing a particular bird's songs. Most male songbirds are very territorial this time of year, so if they hear an intruder on the territory, it makes them really angry and they have to come check it out. So we played the Song Sparrow song, and three song sparrows came over to check it out and we caught two of them:












By the time we had banded them and let them go, there were three Chickadees in the net to take care of! Getting birds out of the net is the most difficult part because their little feet get really caught, and the mesh can get around their wings and head, and they are often very very tangled in it. Also the birds have a tendency to bite a lot, and it actually really hurts! So those five birds were all we managed to get for the day. We almost got a robin, but it was a bit too big for the mesh, didn't get tangled and managed to get out right before I could get to it. Bummer. But we're doing this again for ornithology class Thursday morning, so we'll see what else we can get then!