Work continues! Past week we've had mostly good weather, but things are definitely turning south with thunderstorms, which has turned the end of our mammal trapping and the beginning of our bird training into something less than auspicious. Still, the change in pace is nice, and most of this week has been going for birding walks, practicing visual and audio identification, and entering data.
With over a hundred birds to learn by sight and sound, the training for birding is a little intimidating, and if we included migrants the number of species would rise over two hundred. Just from my own amateur birding I'm pretty decent at identifying birds by sight, but learning all the variations of their calls and songs is proving challenging.
Meanwhile, the other group has come back from El Sauz, we've had some occasional guests from the university, and a new birder has come on board the S.S. Eventful.
-Owl surveys
-Caught a Mexican ground squirrel (tornado in a bag)
-Blooming cacti
Flathead snake (Tantilla gracilis)
Prickly pear soon-to-be blooms
Old cactus wren nest in Christmas cactus
Roadrunner nest
New species:
Mexican ground squirrel (Spermophilus mexicanus)
Scaled quail (Callipepla squamata)
Flathead snake (Tantilla gracilis)
Blue grosbeak (Passerina caerulea)
Yellow-headed blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus)
Cassin's sparrow (Peucaea cassinii)
Black-throated sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata)
Olive sparrow (Arremonops rufivirgatus)
Clay-colored sparrow (Spizella pallida)
Grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum)
Curve-billed thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre)
