One cool thing about coordinating a Breeding Bird Atlas (BBA) block, like several other citizen science initiatives, is you develop a sense of “place.” I’ve visited Superior, WI and Duluth, MN (and beyond) as part of the same trip several times before I moved up here, so I inevitably associate the Twin Ports in my […]

Today we went with the Wilson Ornithological Society to STA 5/6. My boyfriend and I went there last year, but for a very brief “run-through” tagging along during the CBC. We made the unwise decision to not participate in the full day, and learned when we arrived that it’s a place worth spending the whole day. I […]

Today, I’m heading south and thus gearing up for birding Ft. Myers in concert with my visit for the Wilson Ornithological Society conference! My #1 target will be mangrove cuckoo, and after that shiny cowbird. Those are the only resident species that are in range. Otherwise it would be pelagic species migrating off the coast. black-capped petrel […]

All of the owl records in the block are on Wisconsin Point, unsurprisingly. It’s easy to see the spatio-temporal bias in the data here: most bird reports in general for the block are on the point, during jaegerfest! Looking at the data at this particular spatial resolution really highlights an issue like this, and is […]

In other nocturnal observations, a long-lost love, astronomy! (Forgive the bad feature photo, it was a time exposure with my iPhone.) I watched Jupiter rise over the lake tonight, and the lake was so calm that you could actually see its reflection. It was one of those beautiful, albeit faint, long light beams down the […]

willow ptarmigan gray-crowned rosy-finch

So, let’s say you’re out banding migratory birds with unique color bands so you can tell individuals apart. You continue your study over several years to see how often the same birds come back, and for how long, to determine how long they live. Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) models are designed to do help with that estimation: […]

To aid in planning to survey my block, particularly for nocturnal visits, aerial photos are a big help. Great horned owls are quite generalist when it comes to habitat. I’ve seen them in urban areas, perched on buildings in spaces that had nearby big trees, and on light posts on the edge of a parking lot. […]

It’s officially time to start making nocturnal visits to my block to look for great horned owls, so I made my 2nd visit tonight. Once I found my way to my block last night, I knew my way around a little better and started to come up with some route ideas.

I had a great horned owl calling outside my apartment in the early morning hours (12:39 AM), which prompted me to make my 1st visit to my atlas block tonight. It was mostly getting familiar with my block, and making the labeled points on the featured photo. Right now, my main target is indeed great […]