Birdz

I love birds.

Look at that hooded warbler. Isn't it beautiful? Yes. For my senior research, I looked at the relationship between migratory birds and the potential spread of the invasive honeysuckle plant. You can find a picture of me presenting here, I took it to the Wilson Ornithological Society's meeting and presented there, it was kind of a big deal. During the research phase, I captured birds in mist nets and placed them in brown lunch bags (pictured below) until they ...pooped (because their poop would hopefully have the seeds of the honeysuckle fruit...).

Sounds/looks cruel doesn't it? My research advisor assured me that while it would put a little stress on the birds, ultimately it wouldn't really matter [he also had to assure that to the little girl who passed our mist nets full of squawking robins one day and stood there screaming and crying that she HAD to free the birdys or they were JUSSTT going to die]. Well, I think they were a little more than stressed. In fact, ever since then, I'm convinced birds are conspiring against me. For example, this is a picture of my car towards the end of all of my research:

Second example: the mockingbird outside of my window. I hit on this before in my cop-out post, but the situation has gotten worse. Consistently, every morning, between 330-530, it's out there. Screaming away. Then it takes a break, waits until I return home from work, and starts again (okay, this makes sense because of when birds are most active), but RIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW? YOU ARE SO ANNOYING! I loathe this bird. I (unsuccessfully) throw rocks at it daily. Hopefully it will let up so I can get the 8 hours of straight sleep that my marathon-training body needs. But for now, I'm off to camp for its opening weekend. Happy holidays/have a great weekend.