I met with Volker and got lots of comments on my 3rd chapter, too many to incorporate today (and he acknowledged that). Then, a landmark, sort of: I sent my dissertation to my committee in anticipation of my defense! Unless I get any replies ahead of time, I won’t look at again until I get revisions […]

Now it’s the last push: I’ll get my dissertation to my committee no later than tomorrow.

Now it’s getting real: I have the pieces in the right places, referenced table of contents, etc.! Wow, this is finally getting close. It finally is feeling like a cohesive work. I still have yet to write Acknowledgments but I’ll do that last probably.

A former member of our lab generously made a template for dissertations, but my lack of prowess with Word and refusal to learn is catching up with me. I could launch into a whole commentary about open source and why it’s better, but I’ll refrain for now. I need outside help on this one, probably! […]

We tried, unfortunately in vain tonight, to listen for yellow rails. We got to the area around dusk, and made our way to the pump house by dark. We listened until after midnight, and visited a few promising looking spots thereabouts, but no luck!

Today we saw 3 states: Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine! We’re in town for a wedding, and today was our only full day to explore a new region of the country, so we went all out. It’s the farthest north on the Atlantic coast we’ve ever been, and Paul’s first visit to an Atlantic coast […]

Featured photo: Calliope hummingbird by Sparky Stensaas While I dread winter dragging into what I know as spring, I remember a big reason I’m very excited to move north: rarity central! It’s far enough north to give access to northern MN, and to attract some cool rare birds moving over Lake Superior. In that respect, it’s […]

I changed my camera setting to video. I’ve been waiting for the feeder cam to catch a shot of more than one chipmunk, and finally today I got what looks like a pair courting!

As prior mentioned, I “deconstructed” the histograms on Mike’s site to list species by their peak occurrence dates. This is mostly to help me, as I’m learning butterflies, to know what’s occurring here when. For this week… spicebush swallowtail pink-edged sulphur Indian skipper

Today, a couple found and photo’ed the Columbia co. record at French Creek Wildlife Area!