One lesson that I have learned through this research experience is to always be adaptable; resilience is key. I don't know how many times my research plans have changed so far and it is a little frustrating, to be completely honest. However, the important thing has been to not get overwhelmed by this.
My first week here, when I was coming up with a research idea, I sort of shot myself in the foot by changing my idea from a forest birds study to a grassland birds study; grasslands are not an abundant habitat type in Ohio. While it would have been easy to scrap my grassland plans I instead put in all the legwork necessary to get a grassland bird study going. Needless to say, this plan has had its setbacks. First, Lisa Petit (the director for Natural Resources at Cuyahoga Valley National Park) sort of tossed my nesting success idea out of the window and told me that I wouldn't get enough data and it would be a lot of work for nothing. I later found out that Lisa did her Ph.D. research on grassland nesting birds so she's knows better than any how difficult an endeavor it is.
I'm back on track now, I think, and am ready to go with a study of grassland bird communities and artificial nest success (artificial nests baited with quail eggs) as they are related to landscape factors such as patch size, perimeter:area ratio, and surrounding landscape type.
I don't think I would be on track though without the following advice:
1. Be prepared for unexpected opportunities. Life is just as much about preparing for the unknown as it is the known, that is why it is so important to always be in a frame of mind that allows you to see an opportunity and pursue it.
2. Don't complain, work harder. As long as you are willing to put in the work to be successful, no matter how difficult the task, you will accomplish something. While you may not accomplish all that you wanted to, and I certainly know that I frequently don't, it is a good step to at least get something done toward your ultimate goal.
This week I'll be visiting grassland sites and doing a preliminary assessment of what types of birds are there, nothing terribly exciting. Posting frequency may decline because of this, but will probably pick back up once my research gets in full swing and I have more to talk about.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
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:
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.
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.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Thursday was a pretty low key day, it rained most of the day so I didn't do anything in the field. I went to the gym for the first time in a while and then came back to the dorm and read/researched for the rest of the day with Tara and Mollika (study party). Went to the grocery store and got poured on. All in all, pretty lame.
Friday:
Bayoan and I went out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park to meet with some organic farmers whose farms he was going to be doing his research on and I tagged along to chat with Lisa Petit. We spent about 4 hours there and it turns out that neither of our projects were really all that feasible. Lisa did a lot of research on ground nesting grassland birds for her Ph.D. and after talking with her it became abundantly clear that it will be too much work for too little data in the time frame that I have available. So I have to come up with some other idea that won't be useless come 8 weeks from now. Greg and I talked and I have some options, so not all is lost, but it was just a really frustrating turn of events.
No pictures or anything to share. Though on completely unrelated note: I've been practicing guitar pretty much daily and I think I'm starting to see some progress, so hopefully I can keep that up!
Friday:
Bayoan and I went out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park to meet with some organic farmers whose farms he was going to be doing his research on and I tagged along to chat with Lisa Petit. We spent about 4 hours there and it turns out that neither of our projects were really all that feasible. Lisa did a lot of research on ground nesting grassland birds for her Ph.D. and after talking with her it became abundantly clear that it will be too much work for too little data in the time frame that I have available. So I have to come up with some other idea that won't be useless come 8 weeks from now. Greg and I talked and I have some options, so not all is lost, but it was just a really frustrating turn of events.
No pictures or anything to share. Though on completely unrelated note: I've been practicing guitar pretty much daily and I think I'm starting to see some progress, so hopefully I can keep that up!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Friday-Today
Friday:
We woke up early to visit a restored wetland area that used to be a huge vegetable farm. The place, Panzner wetlands, was absolutely incredible. They have restored the wetlands to a Federally classified Class 3 wetlands (this is the highest grade a wetlands can receive) in only a decade or so after struggling for years to get permission to undergo the mitigation process from the government. They actually probably could have made a ton more money if they had simply sold the soil on the land, literally dug it up and sold the dirt, but they decided to do some good in the world (rather than puff up their wallet) and are now going to donate the land to the University of Akron for research and educational purposes. Its good to see that there are still some people in the world who care just as much about doing some good as they do about making some cash (which they have made quite a sum of cash from the land selling mitigation credits).
The rest of the day was pretty low key. Then we went out to the field station for dinner and to discuss the first chapter of our required reading, Topic: How to come up with a research question, and discuss our own ideas about how we came up with our questions and what our questions are.
Saturday:
Woke up at 4:30 am and left at 5:30am to go to Ottawa National Wildlife Reserve and Magee Marsh for a bird watching trip. Slept during most of the drive there. This was another pretty uneventful trip so here are some photos to tell the story (I'm getting pretty lazy with these posts, but I'm tired so I don't care).
Sunday:
The power was off in the dorm all day (7am-7:30pm) today so I didn't bother waking up until noon. Mollika and I went out to a cookout the RAs for the dorm did for us around 2pm and hung out and ate food until like 4. We met this guy who is a student here, and is in his 30s at least, and some lady that was with him; he was kinda weird but gave us the heads up on the computer lab and free printing in the dorm that we didn't know about before.
Monday:
Happy Memorial Day! Had the day off so just did some research/reading and hung out with Bayoan and Mollika.
Tuesday:
Met with my advisor, Greg, in the morning and discussed some preliminary work that I could do and any paperwork that Ineeded to didn't end up needing to fill out for my research. Tara and I went out to the field station and took a walk through the grassland in the nature preserve looking for evidence of nesting birds. I think there are definitely some bobolinks, song sparrows and red-wing blackbirds nesting out there so eventually we'll go out and find their nests so we can start monitoring them. Afterwards, Tara and I stopped by Glendale on the way home to look for skinks (for her research) and ended up finding nothing but a garter snake, which I caught to take a picture of but neither of us had our cameras. Then Bayoan and I made sandwiches for dinner and Mollika and Tara came by to hang out for a while.
Today:
Not much to really talk about today. Got lunch with Bayoan, Tara, Alysha, Dr. Mitchell and Debbie at Robertson on campus then went to the library to study for a little bit. Dinner with Tara and Alysha at some place in town that really wasn't that great; listening to the Flyers on radio now and doing a little more work.
And now I'm caught up! Posts will be more normal from here on out. And I will update on what exactly my research will be this summer.
We woke up early to visit a restored wetland area that used to be a huge vegetable farm. The place, Panzner wetlands, was absolutely incredible. They have restored the wetlands to a Federally classified Class 3 wetlands (this is the highest grade a wetlands can receive) in only a decade or so after struggling for years to get permission to undergo the mitigation process from the government. They actually probably could have made a ton more money if they had simply sold the soil on the land, literally dug it up and sold the dirt, but they decided to do some good in the world (rather than puff up their wallet) and are now going to donate the land to the University of Akron for research and educational purposes. Its good to see that there are still some people in the world who care just as much about doing some good as they do about making some cash (which they have made quite a sum of cash from the land selling mitigation credits).
The rest of the day was pretty low key. Then we went out to the field station for dinner and to discuss the first chapter of our required reading, Topic: How to come up with a research question, and discuss our own ideas about how we came up with our questions and what our questions are.
Saturday:
Woke up at 4:30 am and left at 5:30am to go to Ottawa National Wildlife Reserve and Magee Marsh for a bird watching trip. Slept during most of the drive there. This was another pretty uneventful trip so here are some photos to tell the story (I'm getting pretty lazy with these posts, but I'm tired so I don't care).
Pretty cool view of the wetlands
Snapping turtle on her nest!
Bayoan, Greg, Debbie and Mollika
Gross, dead snapping turtle
Bayoan and Mollika
Bayoan, Greg (Dr. Smith aka my advisor), and Mollika
Debbie, Bayoan and Alysha
Shore of Lake Erie
So many Water Lilies!
Alysha and Bayoan
This gray catbird just sat still in the tree it was in even though we were only a couple feet away from it; it apparently couldn't have cared less about us.
Sunday:
The power was off in the dorm all day (7am-7:30pm) today so I didn't bother waking up until noon. Mollika and I went out to a cookout the RAs for the dorm did for us around 2pm and hung out and ate food until like 4. We met this guy who is a student here, and is in his 30s at least, and some lady that was with him; he was kinda weird but gave us the heads up on the computer lab and free printing in the dorm that we didn't know about before.
Monday:
Happy Memorial Day! Had the day off so just did some research/reading and hung out with Bayoan and Mollika.
Tuesday:
Met with my advisor, Greg, in the morning and discussed some preliminary work that I could do and any paperwork that I
Today:
Not much to really talk about today. Got lunch with Bayoan, Tara, Alysha, Dr. Mitchell and Debbie at Robertson on campus then went to the library to study for a little bit. Dinner with Tara and Alysha at some place in town that really wasn't that great; listening to the Flyers on radio now and doing a little more work.
And now I'm caught up! Posts will be more normal from here on out. And I will update on what exactly my research will be this summer.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Thursday - Mud, Monkshood, a dam and Pride Rock
By the end of tonight or tomorrow I will be caught up on updates up to the current time, I swear.
Thursday:
As a group we went out in the morning to visit a population of an endangered plant called Northern Monkshood, in a local park.
This is the endangered Monkshood.
The hike through the park was pretty awesome. To start off it was a long downhill hike/climb where we had to go down a series of rocks to drop about 50-60 feet from where we originally were. Then it was a pretty straight forward hike up to a sort of cave area that we stopped at to learn about the Monkshood.
First stop, the REU group, Dr. Mitchell and our Metro Parks guide Rob |
We finished up by hiking up to the Monkshood site where Rob told us about the threats to Monkshood, the conservation and restoration efforts in the area and the challenges with keeping the population going. On the way there we hit some pretty nasty mud and got a little messy:
We then decided, before heading back, to hike farther into the park and go exploring a little more. It was a fun and beautiful hike with the river to our right and the tall rock face to our left the whole time. The coolest critter find was by far this salamander and her nest that we found underneath a rock:
AWESOME!
We headed back around noon to get some lunch, and washed up in the pool of water below this waterfall:
Then we got lunch at the Chowder House (absolutely incredible New England Clam Chowder there).
That afternoon we took a hike through Gorge Metro Park and visited the Gorge Metro Park Dam then hiked through the park and saw the sites (and animals!). Not much to be said for this trip so here are some pictures:
Me, Alysha, Bayoan, Greg, Debbie
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