In-between fieldwork: Parrots

If you know me, you are probably aware that I'm a huge parrot geek. As you can imagine I'm pretty excited to be in Australia where wild parrots roam free!

There are several species occurring locally here that I can see every single day, pretty much whenever I'm outside. It puts a smile on my face :]

It also means that I can not only have a look at them, but I can actually observe their behaviour and learn something about them. Some things I'm seeing are quite different from what I've seen in captivity before. It's great to be able to see them interact with each other, as well as with other species.

Those are the parrots I see most of the time:

Galah (Eolophus roseicapilla)

Crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans)

Gang gang cockatoo (Callocephalon fimbriatum)

Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita)

Australian king parrot (Alisterus scapularis)

Ever so slightly less often, lets say about every other day or so, I see those guys too:

Eastern rosella (Platycercus eximius)

Fieldwork: Superb fairy-wrens

This is a tiny bit of my fieldsite. Not too shabby, right?

In case you were wondering this is how the superb fairy-wrens (Malurus cyaneus) look like.

The females are brown, with orange beaks and loral stripes.

 

 

 

Say hello to young MOno

Males in breeding plumage are striking blue and black. The males in eclipse plumage look pretty much like females, but have blue tails, black beaks and black loral stripes. Their faces remind me of a Zorro mask :]

In-between fieldwork

You only live once and it's fundamental you make the most of it.

Or so I tell myself.

I'm therefore trying to squeeze a little bit of exploring while I'm in Australia. Posts titled "In-between fieldwork" will contain photos and information about what I managed to get up to. Not particularly scientific or academic, but here is proof that even when you are exhausted and crazy-busy you can fit "life" into your schedule.

Feel free to skip the posts, otherwise - enjoy as I did!



And on with the story...

While I'm in Oz I have access to a bike, but not a car, so trips further out would prove rather difficult. I'm interested in birds, parrots particularly, but I wasn't quite sure where I should go besides my field site - where can I see the most in a relatively short period of time and which of those places are accessible by bike?

Here enters COG: Canberra Ornithologists Group. I have emailed them asking for advice on places known to be good for birding in the area. They have completely exceeded my expectations: several people have offered not only advice, but offered to actually take me birding, share their expertise and even drive out of the city to many of the nature reserves that surround Canberra. This is kindness I won't be able to repay and I feel very grateful for all their time and effort.

I hope you enjoy future posts and photos of Australian fauna and flora!

Fieldwork: First week done!

Ooooooph. This was a long week.

I have had a few issues after arrival. My luggage got lost and it took a couple of days to get it. I have congratulated my past-self on packing a bunch of clothes in the hand luggage. What my past-self didn't take into account though is that all those clothes are brightly coloured, which is not ideal when you are trying to sneak up on birds!

There have been a few issues with the house I'm staying at, nothing major, and everything is slowly getting sorted, but even little things (like lack of heating when it's below zero at night and the house is not insulated) can get to me when I'm tired. It also turned out that paperwork wasn't quite there yet and so it took a little while to get this sorted and get me onto the University system. People at ANU have been absolutely lovely and very helpful though, so at least I didn't feel completely alone in a new place - thank you everybody!*

The beginnings of fieldwork have been tough-going. Learning to ID the superb fairy-wrens by their calls is difficult. While I can pick out the main song, the background chatter still eludes me. Thornbills and scrubwrens seem set on confusing me too. On the bright side, my peripheral vision has been improving quickly and I can now pick out fairy-wren shaped objects quickly. Things are harder when it's windy, as not only I can't hear the wrens, but every moving leaf looks like a bird. All in all, I'm happy with the progress and cautiously optimistic that things will keep improving.

So far the biggest challenge is finding the birds; once I got them I can figure out the colour bands most of the time (or at least get close enough). Certain colours are similar, especially in bright sunlight, e.g. azure and white look very similar to each other and can also be confused with a band that has very thin white and blue stripes. It doesn't help that some colours have faded over the years, for example a red band might look like red, but also like orange, mauve or even white. Each bird has three colour bands and so each ID is like a little puzzle!


Oh, and have I mentioned that it's spring here?

Hard not to smile when you can see this outside your window!

*they are unlikely to ever read this, but hopefully they know how much I appreciate their kindness

Fieldwork: Season one

I'm off to Australia again, but this time I'm going to spend six weeks there (you might recall I went to visit for two weeks in January/February). I should be landing tomorrow night and starting fieldwork asap.

The rough plan is to carry out behavioural observations of male courtship displays and assess their variability with respect to certain female characteristics. I want to obtain data on particular superb fairy-wren individuals and so a very detail plan cannot be made at the moment as I need to see what individuals are available once I get there - all birds need to pair up and settle for the breeding season first. Last time I checked things were still in flux.

I'm planning to spend the first couple of weeks mainly on getting to know the field site and the birds. I need to be able to not only find the birds and follow them, but also to identify birds by their colour rings (nearly all birds on the field site are banded, each with a unique colour combination - so we know which bird is which!). This means practice, practice, practice!

I expect it's going to be quite tough to start with. Hopefully as my brain builds up a superb fairy-wren search image, both when it comes to spotting the birds and recognising their calls, I will be able to find the fairy-wrens easier and also have that split second longer to look at them. This is one of those rather frustrating situations, where you need to stick it out till it finally clicks. One day you just can't do it! and the next it works (seemingly by magic). I don't know whether there is any way to speed up the process, other than spending as much time as possible on trying to get things right. Fingers crossed my brain gets there quickly!

Confirmation: Feedback report

I have received an official report summarising my viva. It's nice to have it all on paper!
 
It sounds like I should have given more background during my talk and made sure that I'm putting my analyses in context ("presentation lacked a bit of context"). I need to explain better where there are holes in our knowledge and where the field is lacking data. I should point out how the questions I'm asking and the analyses I'm carrying out fill in those gaps. Fair enough!

The report ends with a note that "the meeting was very successful and the committee has no hesitation" about me progressing :]  Yay :]

August = month off!

In the name of work-life balance, batteries-recharging, mental health and fun my partner and I are taking the entire month of August off and going on a little adventure :]

As I haven't really had the time to plan the entire holiday in detail, I tried to sort out some nice stop over places for the first few days to break up the drive  and we can go from there.

So the general plan is to drive down through France, stopping at Foret d'Orient to enjoy the wildlife, then driving on to Domaine de la Dombes where we can have a look around multiple lakes and visit Parc des Oiseaux. From then we can drive onto Italy, probably stopping somewhere on the way. We will spend some time in Liguria, doing a bit of walking, rock climbing and visiting the coast. I'm quite excited about Italian food too! Once we had a bit of a rest we shall move on and drive further into Italy, ending up in Dolomites where we can do more climbing.

We leave today! See you later :]