Publication reflections and plans

Publication reflections and plans 

Masters thesis @ SELU: 1993-1997, work on birds in tropical forest fragments 

• Couple papers, probably nothing left to squeeze out
• Failed book on Neotropical birds  

Ph.D. Dissertation @ Auburn: 1999-2005, 1 year of tropical work, five years (really?) on urbanization and birds in Georgia

• One paper in Urban Ecosystems on migration system and urbanization 
• Room for one more probably if still relevent: major habitat group (e.g., grassland birds) and urbanization

Post Doc @ Auburn 2005-2007: Bluebirds and urbanization 

• No publications 
• Should be a pubs on 
• Feather color (collab) 
• growth rates (but the statistics!) 
• Box use and fitness (did not band) 

Wilkes Years 2007 - now 

• Bird exclusion and plant growth - didn't go anywhere 
• Clay caterpillars - submitted and rejected, could be published - maybe 
• Blood parasites and urbanziation - submitted and rejected 
• Wood thrush nest success - maybe something there 
• Grasslands and birds - published in Ecosphere - but could be more fine tuned and published other place 
• Food web at Lehigh Gap - published in Restoration Ecology 
• Deer browse project - one more season and move to publish
• Isotopes 
• new Lehigh Gap data is ready to be worked up
• chnages in plant community at Lehigh Gap (and insects)
• there is another site (Nescopeck Field B) with a bunch of samples that is close to being complete 
• Avondale Mine Reclamation - like Lehigh Gap but without all the heavy metals - should be ready to go after this latest data set comes in (any hour)
• Burned and unburned sites - unclear what samples we have 
• Fire and birds
• Large data set - just sitting on it - why???  statistics mostly

So I figure I'm sitting on six papers ready to go and another three will have enough data by the end of summer. 

How does one focus on an old paper while working on getting data for current projects (more fire and bird stuff)? 

Near end-of-semester check in

 It's almost the end of the semester and a month of opportunity (and recovery) is just around the corner.  I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the good and bad and maybe plan something for the weeks ahead.

Teaching 

Teaching one and a half new courses this semester. Plant Taxonomy is an upper level course with a 2 hour lab and 3 hour lab (for a total of three credits). I did a survey of plant families in the lecture with these last few lectures going over molecular techniques and plant conservation. The lab is nearly all field trips and students had two collect twenty five plants. I should have spent more time on the front end covering the terms used in identification (e.g., actinomorphic flowers, sympetalous calyx). I'll probably put this forward through the curriculum committee. 

The other course was Tree and Shrub Identification for one hour. It really needs to be longer - one hour isn't long enough to get around campus. Still, I think the students have enjoyed it. We'll see when the surveys come in. 

Taught 1/3 of the Pop Evo course for sophomores. I haven't changed much. Teaching labs as well - these still need to be tweaked. Students do not like simulations compared to hands-on labs (what does that say for remote teaching of labs???). 

Chairing

Behind on a bunch of tasks - including putting in proposals that totally change our major. No kidding. 

Research 

Collecting at Lehigh Gap is wrapped up. We are going to use tissue samples to build a food web and compare it to one we published almost a decade ago (published here).  We're still sorting insects and that is  going really really slow. Plant samples are nearly done and ready to go out. 

Coffee book is done and waiting for it to be published. I have very mixed feelings about it. 

I'm really slacking on getting older material out and working on grants. It's been hard to focus on anything other than developing the plant course. Oi! 

I did move the invertebrate database to Ecdysis (https://ecdysis.org/). Most entries need to be tweaked and I need to go through thousands (just over 8000) of images and link them to the catalog entry.  Yea. And I also moved the herbarium records to the Mid-Atlantic Herbaria Consortium (https://midatlanticherbaria.org/portal/).  The Morris Arboretum is scanning all the specimens (just over 4000) and I will need to link the images to the catalog entry. Yea. 

June 3-7, 2024 Research Recap and Plan

 June 3-7 Research recap

Started out the week visiting out American Chestnut plantings. We first visited our deer-free urban site and 9/9 were still good and growing. Then we visited our deer+urban site and, well, 0/9 chestnuts survived after one week. Only two oaks were recovered. Now here's the interesting thing - the two that were found showed no evidence of herbivory. They were just snipped off at the base. One looked chewed. I have a few chestnuts left over and I think I'll put some out and put a game camera on them to see what's happening to them. There are squirrels at both sites so I suspect it might be some other critter. 

We ended the week at the food web site. Captured a few mice, which is very important to our research. Not only are they omnivores (so flexible diets will tell us what's out there) but we also captured them in our original study. We also captured a Field Sparrow and Indigo Bunting (below). Many many other birds are on the site so more work to do! One of the more interesting things I found was a morning dove nest on the ground! 

This coming week, we're checking on our chestnut plantings, setting out some Audiomoths and game cameras. Should do some shrub and plant inventories as well. The point of all this is to figure out what drives plant diversity in urban woodlots. We need to look at what birds are there (to bring in seeds) and what mammals are there (to consume seeds.. and bring seeds in too). 

June 2024 Research Update - the month of Meh

 I've been in the research season for two weeks now. 

We randomly planted nine American Chestnut seedlings at three sites along a 25-m transect. Two of these sites have deer and one does not and we're going to visit every other week to note the state of the seedlings. We tagged each tree with small aluminum tags. 

We went to one site that should not have deer. It is completely surrounded by dense urban development. If you're curious, check out the end of Court Street in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Yet, there was literally a deer waiting for us when we pulled up. Unreal. I'll need to talk to a local about the deer because I have no idea how a deer would get there. The forest there was utterly devoid of native vegetation in the understory. 

We also tagged a number of oak seedling and saplings. We'll follow these plants for years - I hope. 

This week we'll water the plants, tag some more oaks, and set out a few more audiomoths and game cameras. 

 Summer 2024 Research Agenda

A student asked what research I was doing this summer and I thought I would pen to paper and see how ambitious my plan was. Here's what I would like to work on this summer:

Urban Ecology

As human settlement spreads across the planet, interesting ecological questions arise. For example, with increasing urbanization, any remnant woodlots become increasingly isolated - both in terms of distance from other woodlots and intensity of separation. It is one thing for a woodlot to be isolated by a pasture and another to be separated by a city. Or does it?  

I think of isolated woodlots as islands and the diversity within islands as driven by colonization (by birds and mammals mostly) and extinction (by deer and other herbivores). This follows Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson's Island Biogeographic Theory - a theory that has been central to my thinking since graduating from Rutgers in 1991. I plan on making this a research theme for at least two years or longer if other avenues are less productive. 

We examined the diversity of trees in a number of woodlots across Wilkes-Barre that varied by their connectedness to other woodlots. Other factors we examined were the presence of deer, which are though to drive the establishment of seedlings. Eventually I would love to sample birds and see what seeds they are moving. That's later. 

This summer I plan to

• Survey tree diversity in a few more sites
• 10 m radius circles, all woody plants > 2 cm dbh 
• 2 samples per 10 ha
• Plant a few oak seedlings and chestnut seedlings in a woodlot with deer and one without
• I have 10 oak and 40 chestnut seedlings 
• Put down a 50 m transect and plant seedlings at random points. 
• Visit every two weeks until September 
• May need to put down a mesh to protect the nut from squirrels
• Measure shrub and understory plant diversity 
• More camera trapping

I think I can pull this off with about 1/3 of the summer available. I'd like to work on this project Mondays and Fridays. 

Lehigh Gap Nature Center (LGNC) Food Web: Updated

Ned Fetcher and I and a few other authors published a food web from the LGNC based on sampling about 15 years ago. Since then (1) the site has become shrubbier and the soils (I assume) have become more developed and (2) I have learned a ton about food webs and what to measure. Ned and I plan on returning and sampling and seeing how the food web has changed. 

To that end, we plan on

• Doing sweep samples (which collects dozens of arthropods per sample x a dozen samples)
• Running pitfalls (collects a dozen or so arthropods/sample x dozens of pitfalls) 
• Running a few Berlese funnel samples (new for the project and samples arthropods less mobile than pitfall samples
• Sampling birds and getting blood samples 
• Small mammal trapping to get mouse hair samples 
• Hair snares to get other hair samples (either barbed wire or hair brushes) 

Because this project involves travel and planning - I will likely do this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. 

Catch up: Bug sorting and DNA barcoding

We have thoooooouuuuuusands of invertebrate samples that still need to be processed (sorted into species, photographed, entered into a database. Oi! 

• I'd like to barcode wasps (so much diversity!!!)
• Send off the omnivores to get isotoped
  
  

Rainy day unless a student just wants to tackle this! 

Catch up: papers 

No particular order ;) 

1. Caterpillar paper (oldish, needs reanalysis per reviewers)
2. West GA diversity stuff (really old)
3. West GA bluebirds (really old) 
4. Fire and food webs (new) 

Diary of Thomas Stratford, coal miner, great grandfather

Diary of Thomas Morgan Stratford

Born 13 January 1884 in Bridgend, Glamorganshire, Wales, Somerset, England

Died 6 September 1948 in Avoca, Luzerne, Pennsylvania, USA

Wife was Elizabeth Wilce, who was born August 6, 1888 in Simpson, Pennsylvania and died January 22, 1980 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. 

Thomas Morgan and Elizabeth are buried in Maplewood Cemetery, Carbondale, Pennsylvania. The headstones are located around the southern 1/3 mark. I was there when my great grandmother was buried though all I remember it that it was a cold and cloudy day.  

I was given this diary by my uncle Tom Stratford, who passed away a few ago. Rather that having the diary sit somewhere in  drawer I thought I was share it as I read through it. I will also add pictures as they are discovered. Dates are a bit of an issue as there are many entries that only have the month and day and some with no date. 

I read through the diary and it is not a daily record. Rather, my great grandfather used to the diary over several years to record different events. I will use this space to put events in chronological order so this is a working document and I will annotate accordingly. 

January 1, [1924]

Entries in chronological order

June 14, 1924 

"Rec'd check for 30.00 interest on Gen. Mot." 

August 21, 1924 

"Born to Mr. and Mrs. Kirt Birch (sp?) a baby girl at Emergency Hospital Carbondale" 

September 28, 1924 

"Mrs Brain had baby christened at Carbondale. Lizzie and I stood for her. 

December 15, 1924 

"Rec'd check for $31.25 interest on Gen Mot

September 1, 1925 

"Started coal strike"

October 1, 1924 

"Loaned H.H. Kudleck twenty dollars $20.00 on this date.  

Feb. Rec'd check for $20.00 from H.H. Kudleck

(Updated 3 April 2023)

 

Wilkes University Arthropod Collection 2022 Summary

 When I arrived at Wilkes University in 2007, we had a collection of about 250 insects, arranged in orders in drawers. Unfortunately, none of the specimens had labels so many were tossed. Around 2011, we inherited hundreds of insects from Mike, a friend of the university that took care of the university and also a school teacher. These insects were also without any collection information and many were thrown out. Heart breaking but what is the value of a specimen without any data? 

In the meantime, we were collecting arthropods as part of study of grassland restoration (see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rec.12202), then as a study of the effects of grassland management on diversity in fifteen grasslands (accepted in Ecosphere). Those samples were sorted to order. Many were photographed and data were entered into Biota. I'm still trying to find the images - my worry is that the file was created by someone that graduated and no longer accessible. Lesson learned. 

More recently, I became interested in the effects of prescribed burning on pollinators and food webs more largely. In the last two years, I must have collected, I'm estimating, about 10,000 insects and we have sorted about 4200 insects so far. There are another 20,000 insects that are still in jars, envelopes, etc. so be sorted. Yep, I have quite the work load ahead of me. I'm sending many samples off to be analyzed for the food web study and we are focusing on omnivores - because their trophic position can tell us about the productivity of a site. 

I wanted to run some summary statistics to both create a benchmark for tracking progress of the collection and quality control. Simply by producing tables, I can catch spelling mistakes and other typos. 

We had 529 collection events entered. That's a pitfall, sweep, or pollinator pan. We do have a few collection entries that are single bird captures and a blood and feather sample is part of the collection. Moving forward, a collection involving birds will be all birds captured at a site during one effort (mist-netting/box check). We also have a few plants - this is different from the plants in the herbarium. These are samples to be isotoped for the food web study. Whole plants will go into the herbarium but tissue samples go into our collection. Not sure if this is best practice but this is where I'm at. 

Here's the summary of our collection 

Entries 

4241 entries

Megan O. entered 970 lines 

Tyler S. entered 948 lines

Cally E. entered 586 lines 

Becca K. entered 398 lines

There were about 10 other people that entered data - all less than 300 lines. 

I entered 238 lines - wow, I have a lot to do to catch up (consider it takes 5 - 10 minutes per insect to enter). 

Taxa

 - 23 unknown phyla (this is an error - unless I really can't identify something to phylum)

 - 2 annelids (worms)

 - 4125 arthropods (no surprise there)

 - 68 chordates (feather/blood, hair, scales)

 - 16 flowering plant samples (should be many many more)

 - 6 mollusks (all snails)

 - 1 fern (a bracken fern, a common field fern) 

 Of the arthropods 

    - 185 spiders

    - 88 collembola (springtails)

    - 14 millipedes (this number seems really low but it's odd how few go into pitfalls compared to how many you see in the forest)

    - 4 snails 

    - 3828 insects 

    - 3 Malacostraca (rolly-polly) 

Of the insects

    - 2 cockroaches (much much lower than expected)

    - 428 Coleoptera (beetles)

    - 1201 Diptera (flies)

    - 574 Hemiptera (true bugs)

    - 1239 Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants - most of these are ants and tiny wasps)

    - 88 Lepidoptera (most were hand captures but also include a number of micromoths that are a few mm) 

    - 17 Odonata (dragonflies - all are hand captures)

    - 138 Orthoptera (grasshoppers and crickets, mostly older samples from sweepnets) 

    -  50 mistakes (wrong orders listed with Insecta as the class, space added in front of the name or after)

    - identified to species 320 (not awesome) 

Moving forward

    - add many more species identities 

    - fix all the errors

    - send hundreds of samples off to be isotoped (~ 850 samples have isotope data) 

    - sort and enter thousands of insects! 

I do need a bunch of https://www.forestry-suppliers.com/p/53598/52861/cornell-university-insect-cabinet-drawer.  And time.. lots of time. 

one of the micromoths

 rove beetle

         

 

 

Flash back and slow forward to 2023

I haven't posted in over a year. Remarkable. It recently dawned on me how little time I seem to have for anything. The College of Science and Engineering was dissolved while I was away in the Galapagos so my position as dean (and associate dean) ended. Despite not having extra responsibilities (because I was teaching full-time as well) I feel like I have less time. Haven't been to the gym at all (and I feel and look it), I haven't sat down to do stamp stuff, and I haven't read a book. 

I did 

• get to the Galapagos and Ecuador in May with a number of students and that well very well. 
• have pretty good research field seasons. In 2021, we focused on pollinator pans in burned, cut, and reference forests. In 2022, we focused on collecting specimens for an isotope study
• have a paper get accepted into Ecosphere - this was originally rejected from Ecological Application
• get promoted to full professor

So not a spectacular year but a good year. I'll try and post the best photos from the Ecuador trip at some point. So time to access who I am and my increasing limits (i.e., how long can I stay awake or stomp through the forest). So here's are my goals to 2023

I will

• Finish off the three chapters for the coffee book 
• Submit an old data paper and a new data paper. Old data = my dissertation research from GA. New data is the yellow pollinator pan data. Would be great to get a third paper out but I don't want to be greedy
• Push to have a big STEM event at Wilkes in May 
• Sort, sort, sort, and sort bugs. We're sitting on thousands of insects from dozens of samples. At worst, we will have samples for a food web study. At best... well... good question. Many jars are dried up. Not sure what the best scenario is. 
• Apply for a sabbatical. Because, man, am I due. 
• Start doing those things I miss doing - like this blog! 

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. 

Planning 2021

One of the great things about a break is the down time to reflect and plan. I really haven't done either. I did one article review and my brain is not engaging fully. Still, I need to plan. 

Teaching

This spring I'll be teaching BIO 347 Biostatistics and Experimental Design and BIO 298 Economics of Conservation with a colleague from the Poli Sci department. As of now we're scheduled to teach in person but COVID rates are higher than they were in spring. Although vaccines have been approved I don't see widespread vaccine availability until mid-Spring. Just a guess though. One student in Biostats has requested remote teaching so I'll be recording lectures - live or otherwise.  Live recordings ("synchronous") are easy because the camera is just recording me talking and I use my notes that are all ready to go. Asynchronous recordings require much more time - usually about 5 hours of work for 50 minutes of lecture time. 

I'd also like to teach Field Zoology this summer but I'm skeptical it could happen. I haven't thought about it that much. Probably should soon. Also, I'd like to change it to Wildlife Techniques.

The fall semester is still up in the air. I will possibly teach Ecology. If not, I think Archosaurs again.  

Research

This spring I need to focus on DNA barcoding insects. It's gone horribly slow and it just comes down to following directions.  We are also sorting insects from this summer's pollinator pan experiment. 

This summer I need to survey birds in burned and unburned sites on gamelands. If I can have students we'll work at the same sites and catch bugs, birds, and mammals to work out food webs. I'll need to renew a zillion permits. My least favorite thing to work on. 

I'd like to keep with the pollinator study. I started the pollinator project last August and it went exceedingly well. This coming summer I'll add a blue and white plate to the yellow plate I was putting out. Hopefully, by next summer I'll have better wasp ID skills and the barcoding will be down pat. 

Publishing

Clay caterpillar paper is in review. This has four or five students on it (all graduated). This was rejected the first time around and now resubmitted.

I have Ph.D. data I could try to publish on urbanization and birds. I have a ton of post doc data on bluebirds across an urban gradient. Those data are 15 years old. I have the pollinator data we're working on now - that won't be ready for weeks or a few months. There's the prescribed burning data - if anything that needs serious organizing.

Then there's the Wilson Ornithological Society. I'm the chair of the conservation committee and we've been struggling to come up with some initiatives. It looks like most of us want to publish. But what do we publish? Threats to birds? I think I'll put coffee growing forward as a topic and see if this gets some support. 

Reflections on 2020

Academics

Stretching the brain a bit to go back to the spring. Here's what I remember. We took a number of students to Costa Rica in March for a class. Before the trip, I remember getting promed emails about something happening in China and thinking nothing of it. By the end of the trip people were masked at the airport and furiously wiping down their area. I didn't know if they were over-reacting or I was clueless and underreacting - or a bit of both. 

It wasn't long after we decided to close for two weeks, then to the end of the semester, then we closed until we reopened for the beginning of the fall semester. I was also teaching biostatistics and I recorded a few lectures. 

This last semester was BIO 225 Population and Evolutionary Biology - I did a third of the class and the all the labs. We had the fewest students - 29 and only two sections of lab. Normally we have three and we did have four sections one year. Table tops had clear plastic sheets separating students and we all wore masks. One student did not want to come in so I worked her into the labs as much as possible. She was recorder when we were taking measurements. Worked to some extent although I firmly believe that learning to handle equipment (e.g., micropipetter and thermocycler, etc) are all handy skills (plus you come to understand the work that goes into research on a very visceral level). The one student submitted her work through the LIVE system and it was just a matter of logging in and checking the work. 

I also had conservation biology. Although it could have been completely in person I recorded a number of lectures. I want to make this course completely online at some point (and add a lab). Something has to give (and now that I can't stay awake past 10 - more has to give) and I let the homeworks slide. Instead of 12 articles to read and answer questions I think they only had 4. That and 3 exams and journal club. I'd give myself a C+ for the course. 

Research 

This summer was about surveying burned and unburned sites in various state game lands. I covered new ground and hit a few sites I surveyed previously. This gives me more controlled data on how communities change through time (on short time scales). A few sites I wasn't able to get to but I hope to this coming summer. This makes the data messy but so it goes. I didn't employ the Wildlife Acoustics units. That was probably a mistake - they work great (but expensive). I also purchased a bunch of Audiomoth units. Much cheaper than Wildlife Acoustics but so far I'm not impressed. In fact, I have to get something recognizable off the units. I think they're really sensitive to moisture. The standard is to put them in a sandwich baggie and cross your fingers. I kid you not. 

I just ordered an acoustic vent, which is a membrane that transmits sound but not water. I have small tuperware containers that I'll drill a hole in and place the vent over the hole. I'll post a pic when completed. 

Towards the end of the summer I realized that I could easily study pollinators with pan traps. These are amazing. Simple, cheap, easy to deploy. A dream, yes?  The problem is the wealth of data you get. 

The picture above was typical of a pan after 24 hours.  That's right - 24 hours. I'll predict we get some 250 species of bee/fly/wasp.  We're also DNA barcoding the insects to see who they are. So far that's been going meh. 

Looks like the standard pan trap deployment is a combination of white, blue, yellow. I definitely want to do this next year so I need to up my pollinator ID skills. We're photographing everything as well but the iNaturalist crew has been slow to ID.  

I did submit a paper with five students as co-authors on Wednesday. Feels good. Years in the making and I had to figure out how to do raster extract in R. Which I did. Need to work on the next thing. 

The next thing... 

Field Season 2020 Week V

6/22/2020 Monday - SGL38
Finding my way around SGL38 and Bethlehem Water Authority I noticed non-burned areas that there cut so I decided to throw these in. I may not be able to find enough to say anything but they are a forest management strategy. A shelterwood cut is a clear cut with a few scattered trees left. At this site in Long Pond, they left oaks and pitch pine. These sites are great for Field Sparrow and Eastern Bluebird. The trees still had Black-and-White Warbler and Red-eyed Vireos. As this site becomes for shrubby, it might host Golden-winged Warblers, Blue Grosbeaks, and Yellow-breasted Chats. What I have noticed about PA's management strategy on game lands is that the scales are very large - hundreds of acres get the same treatment. But many birds will use various habitat types within their territory. Wood Thrush, for example, nest in small patches of an old opening that is filled with dense vegetation and they'll forage in areas with a closed canopy and open understory.  

6/23/2020 Tuesday - Cameras on Jacob's Property/Audiomoth

Finally figured out why I wasn't getting any sound on my Audiomoth - I needed to update by firmware. Ugh.  These units are getting a lot of buzz but I haven't been able to find any publications on their use with birds. They're a fraction of the cost of other ARUs. 

6/24 - 6/28  Rain or meetings 
Some data entry. Had a "low level" manuscript rejected (as expected actually). 

Field Season 2020 Week IV

Monday 6/15/2020

SGL 57. Interesting site with points that were unburned (full of Veery, Black-throated Blue Warbler), very recently burned (with Veery!), and cut and burned (with American Robin - yes, they can live without yards). The bird highlight was two points with Cerulean Warbler in the burned sections. Mammal highlight was a porcupine. 

Tuesday 6/16/2020 - off 

Wednesday 6/17/2020 and Thursday 6/18/2020 - SGL 38 
SGL38 is located in the Poconos and, apparently has many rattlesnakes. In fact, if you go back in this blog you'll find pictures of one I came across. Also the site that had a bear I estimate was over 600 pounds. The two days I was out had no bears and no rattlesnakes. Sites were burned in 2012 - 2014 but I suspect that this placed burned many times before that. It was covered in bear oak and pitch pine with all the hallmarks of having been burned (e.g., epicormic needs coming directly out of the bark). The density of towhees, Prairie Warblers, and Chestnut-sided Warblers is through the roof. No Golden-winged Warblers. 

One dimension I need to add to the research picture is the effect of cutting on bird communities. Thinning as a large effect on understory plant density and cut + burn makes for some interesting habitat. If they were to repeatedly burn, I think some grasses would move in and then they'd get Golden-winged. Just a guess. I remember my one and only GWWA on a territory and it was on a powerline in NJ (seen during my one and only World Series of Birding in 1990). Powerlines in the NE US have scattered shrubs, grasses and forest edges. 

Allegheny Mound Ant mount and ant (below)

Epicormic needles in pitch pine

Friday - Sunday - off