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August 6 |
Caroline left today to
return to her studies at Cornell University. She was a
phenomenal asset to the project and was primarily working
with the woodpeckers but she also completed a
photo-documentation study of morphological changes in
granaries over the past 17 years, documentation of
vegetation changes at Hastings over the past century, and
she assisted Tom with some aspects of the herbivory study.
Even though she has left Hastings, she will be continuing
with a project on vagrancy in cooperative breeders for us
back in Ithaca. The hardest part of our job is
saying goodbye to outstanding assistants when they finish
their tenure at Hastings. We hope we can get her back in the
future - she is certainly one of the top undergraduates, let
alone a sophomore, that we have ever had on the project. We
miss you already Caroline! |
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July 21 |
Tom Kraft arrives to
take over where he left off last year. He will be completing
a study of herbivory on valley oak leaves and will be
helping Caroline with woodpecker censusing. Welcome back
Tom! |
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July 17 |
Kathryn left today to
begin her new studies in veterinary school at Kansas State.
She did a great job of collecting herbivory data on the
valley oaks and initiating a new vegetation study examining
tree richness in grazed and ungrazed areas of Hastings. Good
luck Kathryn. |
|
July 17 |
Kyle left today for
graduate school in Jean
Knop's lab at the University of Nebraska. He will be
returning in September to complete his study of phenology
and flowering on acorn production in valley oaks. He has
also initiated several other studies examining
non-structural carbohydrates in both blue and valley oaks
and pollination mechanisms in tan oaks. Much of this
research will form the basis of his dissertation work. He's
come a long way from his days as a woodpecker field
assistant. Congratulations Kyle! We'll see you again soon. |
|
July 16 |
Anna departed today on
a road trip back to Michigan. She is taking a small respite
before taking over the reins as our sole winter field
assistant in September. Anna is so good that she will be
doing the work of two field assistants. We are excited to
have her back for a second winter field season. As our ACWO
crew leader this spring, she did a fantastic job of
collecting mateguarding data and helping supervise the
assistants in their quest to find over half of the nests
this year, an astounding feat in itself. We're looking
forward to your return Anna. |
|
July 16 |
Adam departs to begin
graduate school at Kansas State University in the With
Lab. Adam brought much comic relief to the crew this
spring. He was famous for coming up with novel approaches to
some of our academic pursuits. Most famously, he was a
strong proponent of trading in our off road vehicles for
real mules. He was also the king of excel spreadsheet color
coding. We thank you too Adam for all of the hard work. Good
luck with graduate school! |
|
July 15 |
Max departs to head off
to a new position as an instructor at the Shoals Marine Lab
(Cornell University) in Maine. Max's encounter with the
sheriff's deputies this season will go down as one of the
most-talked about stories in Hastings folk lore for years to
come. Max culminated the season by retrofitting all 46
artificial cavities we have spread out over Hastings' 2,500
acres. Thanks for all of the hard work Max - we are going to
miss you! |
|
July 13 |
Walt left today for
Ithaca but will return in September for the annual acorn
survey. Overall we had a pretty good year. Most of the
groups nested. Because of the cool wet spring, it looked
like overall productivity (fledglings per nest) was lower
this year - but still much better than last year. We've
banded 195 birds to date this year, ranking #9 among 36
years. But, assuming we can band at least another 4 birds
over the next 5 months, this year should be about the 6th or
7th best year. |
|
June 14 |
Walt & Eric banded
acorn woodpecker #5000 today at 1800. Bird #4000 was banded
04 June 2004, #3000 on 29 May 1998, #2000 on 18 June 1991,
#1000 on 15 May 1985, and bird #1 on 19 October 1971. The
first recognizable woodpecker was observed back in 1968, a
leucistic bird (almost all white) named Miss Bianca. |
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June 04 |
Kathryn Francis arrive
today to begin work on the oaks. Kathryn is a senior at
Cornell and is another of our REUs. Welcome Kathryn! |
|
June 02 |
Caroline Rusk arrived
today to begin work on the woodpeckers. Caroline is a
sophomore at Cornell and is taking part in the National
Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates
program. Welcome Caroline! |
|
May 23 |
Max was apprehended at
gunpoint today when 3 sheriff's deputies responded to a call
from a cyclist claiming that a sniper was lurking about in a
blind along Carmel Valley road. Max was conducting a census
at Wolfpack when he was ordered from the blind and
interrogated with 3 loaded guns pointed at his head. Never a
dull moment when conducting woodpecker research! |
|
May 22 |
The film crew from NHK
Japan have arrived to finish off the filming they started
last fall. Welcome back Natsumi, Shima, & Masa. |
|
May 17 |
Erin returned for a
quick visit to say hello to the woodpeckers. We had a
potluck party in her honor, complete with cake. She hopes to
be back next year to resume her studies of mateguarding in
the woodpeckers. See you soon, Erin! |
|
May 09 |
Anna, Max, & Adam
continue to set records. Today they found a new nest at
Finch, marking their combined 16th nest of the year,
eclipsing the total for Walt & Eric combined. At
this pace, we're going to have to buy several cases of It's-Its
- the reward for finding a nest. To put this in perspective,
in most years the assistants find 1 or 2 nests. We are
astounded at their success! |
|
April 15 |
The
official 2010 Spring FA
photo was released today. |
|
April 09 |
Max has finished
building our new cavity camera. In his honor, we're naming
it the "Max Cam". We used it to check 11 cavities
in about 30 mins - something that would have taken several
hours if we had to climb to each of the holes. |
|
April 07 |
The first nests of the
year were found today - Lambert and West Gate both have full
clutches. We enter the 2010 field season with the most
groups ever recorded at Hastings - we're monitoring over 70
groups this year. |
|
April 02 |
Joey Haydock (Gonzaga
University) made his annual pilgrimage down to Hastings
today. Joey will be here for the next 4 days and hopefully
will help us find the first nest of 2010. |
|
March 15 |
Adam Cirone (Muskingum
College) and Max Mehlman (University of New Hampshire) have
arrived. They will be working with Anna on our Acorn
Woodpecker mate guarding and reproductive skew study over
the next 4 months. Welcome Adam & Max. |
|
March 12 |
Today was Caitlyn's
last day. She is off to Jeff
Hoover's lab (Illinois Natural History Survey) to work
with forest birds of the midwest. Thanks for all of your
hard work Caitlyn! |
|
February 24 |
Sadly, one of three
killer whales that Eric trained from 1987 to 1989 was involved
in another human death. Tilikum, the largest captive killer whale in
the world, is currently housed in Orlando at the Sea World
facility where he apparently drowned a whale trainer today.
The 3 whales that Eric worked with were also involved in the death of a trainer in
1991. Haida died in 2001 at Sea World Texas, Nootka died in
1994 at Sea World Florida. |
|
February 16 |
Anna saw acorn
woodpecker 2056 today. He is now 17 years, 260 days old and
is the oldest known woodpecker in the world. Interestingly,
he was having difficulty holding on to the tree today while
storing acorns. |
|
February 13 |
Anna has returned. She
will be leading a study of mate guarding as part of our
newly funding NSF grant examining reproductive skew in acorn
woodpeckers. Kyle has switched over to studying oak trees as
part of our LTREB grant examining spatial synchrony in
valley oaks. |
|
February 08 |
Eric presents at the
AOU/COS/SCO meetings in San Diego on our recent work on the
effect of gypsy moth outbreaks on populations of North
American woodpeckers. |
|
January 27 |
Our Red-cockaded
Woodpecker - Red-bellied Woodpecker competition paper was
accepted to Conservation Biology. |
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