Research Update: Week 3

This past weekend was far from eventful. The weather was pretty crappy (overcast, chilly and rainy) and I found out that there are no Wachovia or Wells Fargo branches in the entire state of Ohio, so I can't deposit my paycheck.  I really didn't do much else other than try to regather my thoughts and mix up my research ideas until something worthwhile finally emerged. Here is what I came up with:

I'm still going to do a grassland bird study, however I will be focusing on how landscape structure affects community structure. On top of this, I will be doing a study of nesting success using artificial nests (fake nests baited with quails eggs) to try to relate that to landscape and community structure as well. We'll see how that turns out, the idea is still a little raw but I have to start doing something.

On Monday I went out to the field station to do a "practice run" of my bird counting methods (transect banding) but it was the middle of the afternoon so bird activity wasn't exactly at its peak. (The grassland habitat at the field station is called "Grandview Alley," so know that I mean the field station grassland when I talk about grandview alley). I saw 2 red-tail hawks soaring above the grassland and calling like crazy when I got there so I took probably 10 minutes to just sit in the shade (near the forest edge) and watch them do their thing; it was nice to let my thoughts wander away from research for a little bit. Nothing really unique to report on as far as the bird counts go. I saw the usual suspects: bobolinks, eastern meadowlarks, red wing blackbirds, song sparrows and tree swallows (the swallows aren't grassland birds but there are bluebird houses that they've taken up residence in so they fly around pretty much all day). Here are some pictures I took out there:

Grandview Alley

Grassland... grasses, I guess

This red-wing blackbird was so agitated he kept flying around over my head and being generally loud and obnoxious.

Tuesday, Greg and I went out to some different Summit Metro Parks sites to see if we could find the grassland habitats that the Director for Resource Management at the parks, Mike Johnson, told us about. We only found one good grassland site but there are probably more that we didn't find because we didn't really cover every square inch of the parks. Hopefully Mike J. can point me in the right direction as to the sites he told me about. I also got a book on bird census techniques (exhilarating!) and some decent ideas about my experimental design.

Today I am just reading, looking for quail eggs to buy online, and coming up with a good experimental design.