Summer 2021 Plans

Here are my summer plans... this is like posting New Year's Resolutions 

• Submit a manuscript on weevil biogeography (done - took 750 lines of code)
• Submit an opening essay on a virtual volume on Neotropical ornithology (needs to be finished ASAP - read all the papers - a dozen or so - write a collective intro)
• Submit a revised manuscript of the clay caterpillar paper - rejected from Urban Ecosystems 
• Submit a manuscript to Ecological Applications on our grassland research (lots of authors - about 80% done) 
• Analyze the prescribed burning bird stuff (will require the fanciest of statistics - distance, random effects (site), detection probabilities)
• Submit a manuscript to Northeastern Naturalist on prescribed burning and the effects on pollinators - only yellow pans used so not a very complete paper but still - cool stuff)
• Add State Game Land 300 to the survey list (has rattlesnakes and is burned)
• Apply for all permits needed to catch birds 
• Deploy red, blue, yellow, white pollinator pans in burned and unburned game lands (ideally 30-40 total samples in each at a bunch of game lands)
• Get weevil DNA barcoding protocols finalized 
• Get the Ecology course prepped for Fall 
• Get a data analytics certificate proposal together 
• Get a trip to Ecuador organized
• Check out Fulbright\Smithsonian sabbatical support 
• Apply for Full Professor
• Keep my mind in one piece 

2021 Field Season Kick Off - week 1

 Kicked off the 2021 field season with a solo trip to State Game Land 91. This unit was cut at least one year ago. My understanding is that this is a shelterwood cut where the canopy is largely removed with just a few standing trees remaining. The unit can be found off Hwy 115 between Wilkes-Barre and Bear Creek. If you want to see Chestnut-sided Warblers or Prairie Warblers this is your spot! This area might had Golden-winged Warblers but I did not detect one (I didn't do any playback for them either). 

This site this interesting because the groundcover strikes me as the understory of a forested site, with ferns (cinnamon and interrupted shown here) and not cover such as grasses, bracken fern, and goldenrods.  

After SGL 91, I took off to the Wilkes Ecology Preserve to do point counts and get trail camera images. Highlights included a young garter snake and a tree swallow that took up the box I put up a few weeks ago. 

young Garter Snake 

Wooly adelgid on hemlock 

Cinnamon Fern

Interrupted Fern 

Dwarf ginsing

Gaywings 

Red-backed Salamander 

Tupperware containing an Audiomoth unit that was never turned on :\ 

Tree Swallow eggs 

That's it though. One day. A good day. But one day in the field for the whole week. Rain and a hospitalized family member kept me in. Had graduation Sunday and today was Memorial Day. But here's a good week ahead.