Field Season 2020 Week I

Kicked off the field season with bird surveys 

Tuesday (5/26/2020)

• SGL40 - site near Francis Walter Dam, Turned 51
• Burn sites and reference sites
• Least flycatchers were back - must have social breeding. Breeding site in the burned area - I suspect they don't care as long as the mid-story and canopy are intact. Lots of Veery in the unburned site. 

Wednesday (5/27/2020) 

• SGL292 - site near Laurel Run, PA
• found sites that were burned last year I didn't get to. Lots of hiking. There is a creek on a north facing slope that has huge hemlocks and very awe inspiring. 

Thursday (5/28/2020)

• Took the day off for personal reasons 

Friday (5/29/2020)

• SGL207 part 1 - site near Mountain Top, PA
• I assumed this site was smaller but after looking at maps this site is huge but today I just surveyed sites I did last year including sites that were burned in 2018 and reference sites. Heard one wood thrush pair although there were at least 5 pairs last year 

Saturday (5/30/2020)

• SGL207 -  surveyed six points - 3 points that were burned 
• Walking to new sites heard a few Wood Thrush I didn't hear the day before. 
• Probably the second hardest day in the field in three years. The new sites were at least a km from the car and then several hundred meters apart. The slopes were steep and undulating. I wonder if there was copper mining at this in the past (at least 100 years ago). Huge granite boulders and slabs created lots of smaller cliff faces and caves. Shocked I didn't see bears or a rattlesnake. Did find a small patch of pink lady's slipper. The big problem of the day were the gnats. 

Sunday (5/31/2020) 

• SGL13 - surveys 4 points that will be burned this year (at least scheduled to). Super dense blueberry bushes and swamp. Also, a branch swung up my nose and I gushed blood for a few minutes. Did see a huge (maybe 400 pounds) bear cross the road and head to where I surveying. Awesome. 

When I wake up Tuesday

We're getting close to the safe dates for surveying birds. A safe date in this context implies that a bird you detect (hear/see) is a resident. This morning I will see hearing Scarlet Tanagers and Tennessee Warblers in my suburban neighborhood so these species are not within safe dates. I'm going to assume that nearly all species will be "safe" to survey by May 26. I have a bunch of project I can work on this summer that do not require students. All have advantages and disadvantages. I guess the larger goal is to do science that gets published. 

Here are the possibilities I'm considering:

Project	Advantages	Disadvantages
Wood Thrush nest success	Interesting, can add data to sparse data set. Can be done any time	Finding nests is super time consuming. Lots of squeeze for so little juice. Unlikely publishable
Urban bird diversity	Easy, interesting, possibly publishable. Done by 11 AM	Need lots of data and an interesting spin to make it publishable.  Up early.
Fire and bird diversity	Potentially publishable. Interesting. Done by 11 AM. Data used for other projects	Need to get permits, sites may or may not be burned (no experiment), up really early. Need to figure out how to assess vegetation structure quickly.
Nothing	I can write, get papers out, work on lectures	Boring

For my mental state, I finished the semester much better year than I have the past two years. This is good. Still, a rapid transition from classroom (recently my sofa) to the field leaves no room for downtime. However, things have to happen. 

I'm leaning towards Fire and Bird Diversity. I have a state grant to study birds and prescribed burning but that research is put off a year due to COVID. Having the diversity part settled will allow me to focus on food webs next year when I can have students in the field with me. The big downer of this research is that State Game Lands are not in my backyard and I need to get at some sites at sunrise that are over and hour away. Oh well, there's always coffee. On the upside, I'm done by 11 (that's the protocol) so I can still work on papers (although when you're in bed by 7 I'm not super productive). I can also listen for Wood Thrush and look for their nests when wrapped up. 

The more I think about it. The more I should the fire project. So be it. 

Tropical Ecology Course Online

Course Description: This course explores ecology and conservation with a focus on tropical forests. 

The textbook: John Kricher's Tropical Ecology

This page: Going to paste links to my lectures, a reading list, and random stuff. Assignments and readings will be through the portal. I'm making this public so anyone can see what is taught in the course. 

Topics 

• The stage
• Biomes of the world and their drivers
• Major habitats within the tropics 
• Global diversity and history of tropical forests 
• The players: Tour of tropical diversity 
• Plants and Forests 
• Fungi 
• Invertebrates 
• Vertebrates 
• Fish 
• Amphibians and Reptiles 
• Mammals 
• Archosaurs
• The ecological play 
• Ecosystem services
• Nutrient cycling 
• Disturbances 
• Predation and coevolution in the tropics
• Threats to tropical forests 
• Conservation in the tropics 
• 
  

Reading list for the tropical ecologist (or enthusiast)

• Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle - Could be called "Tales of a twenty-year old naturalist" 
• The Shaman's Apprentice - if you dig ethnobotany, this is a must
• 
  

Coffee Course 2020 - Trip to Costa Rica: Foods

I have started co-teaching a course on coffee. This is an interdisciplinary course and the other professor teaches some history of Costa Rica and Latin America as well as the economics of coffee. I teach the biology of coffee but narrowly (e.g., the parts of the coffee cherry = bean + surrounding fruit) and broadly (e.g., tropical climates, soil, photosynthesis). As part of the course, we go to the Tarrazu region of Costa Rica, which is southwest of San Jose. I wanted to make a post about the foods there - all of which were fresh from markets (at least the food we ate). We stopped at a market in Cartago and it was glorious! 

You like beans? We got beans. All kinds! Sold by the kilo. 

Edge of the Cartago market. Every inch of these markets are used. 

             

Chayote root. Apparently delicious and expensive. This was at a roadside vendor near a chayore farm. I assume chayote is perennial so the vine (not shown) would regrow from the root. Given the fruit (below) are valuable the roots must be even more valuable. So I wonder if the plants has lower production after a number of years and that's when the root can be sacrificed. Question for the next trip. 

Cayote fruits. We ate them in a salad (not shown) but apparently they're very flexible and can be eaten like tomatoes (raw, steamed, fried, pickled, etc) 

   

An edible palm fruit, the pejibaye. This we had buttered and steamed and I loved it. Starchy like yucca. 

Lots of chayote to be found

Fish, chayote, salad, rice, and black beans - standard fare of Costa Rica. No hot sauce is typically used.

I can't remember the name but I think this was in the genus Inga. I believe this to be a large bean pod of a plant in the Fabaceae (bean family). The white part is the edible part and is very sweet. 

This looks like passionfruit but I believe it's just related to it. Grows on a vine (below) and it eaten green (unlike passionfuit, which is yellow) 

Sausage, chicken, nachos = goodness

Cas, very popular in juices. Very tart. 

This and below. No idea. Sweet and delicious. 

Gallos en hoja de platano. This was made special for us by our caterer but this is considered field food. It is a meal by itself: potatoes, beans, sausage, and two corn tortillas that are fitted like a pita. 

Boiled down sugar cane juice and poured them into molds to make a candy. This guy had several acres of coffee and sugar cane that he purchased after working at a diner in New Jersey for four years. I kid you not.

Cashew. Yep. That curly thing at the bottom contains the nut.