In the field
Ja has been working in a administrative position at CEES (the centre for ecological, and evolutionary synthesis). He's organized some big grants for the center (millions of dollars) and just the day before I arrived he was finally granted a paid position. He has also been helping another field researcher with his work and was just offered a chance to get his name on some of his papers. What is he studying?
Ja went to Norway to study great tits.
And the vocalization of blue tits, charcoal headed tits, and the occasional starling - though mentioning these isn't as funny.
Tora, the scientist he's been working with, has been monitoring the tit population in a stretch of forest just outside a local graveyard for nearly 40 years and if you were to give him a colored legband code, he could tell you which bird that was, where it is nesting today, where it nested last year and the year before, and who mated with in those years.
Tora has several masters students to help him with his research but they're unreliable and not good in the field so he's been leaning heavily on ja and another phd student, Hanza to help him keep track of the research site.
This time of year (late spring) the birds are building nests, laying eggs, and, in a few cases their eggs have already hatched. Tora needed to keep track of which nest boxes were occupied, the number of eggs in each nest, and the weight of any chicks found in the nests. Both his master's students were absent the day we drove out so it was up to Ja, Hanza, and Marie (one of Celine's masters students) to do the field work.
We took the car to a train station near the edge of the city and waited for the others to arrive.
Tora arrived late and handed out a series of maps covered with a confusing criss cross of forest trails and hundreds of nest boxes. Using some special knowledge known only to him, he had circled or crossed out several hundred boxes to be checked that day. Many boxes were marked as ones to avoid because the birds nesting there were sensitive to disturbance. He handed out a pair of hand held scales and gave instructions on how to divide up the work.
The nest boxes were affixed to trees just low enough for a masters student to unhook the lid and peer inside. For the most part, they were installed in positions visible from the trail and each had a number drawn with a sharpie on the side. With the numbers and the map, it was possible to guess where the next box could be found but the map wasn't completely accurate and ja said it wasn't fully up to date and a few times we had to split up and bushwack through the underbrush looking for a box that should be right there. In a few cases a single box took 15-20 minutes to locate - which is frustrating when you're recording data on hundreds.
The forest was pleasant even though it rained on us a few times and I fell into a bog. Ja made notes on which boxes were occupied, and weighed the largest and smallest squirming pink chicks from the few occupied nests. We spent the entire morning checking boxes and I helped check some of the more remote nests. In the last section of forest, we split up to find the last few boxes. I spent ten minutes trying to find a starling nest box tacked to a tree overlooking a dandelion meadow. There were five dead chicks in the nest, pink and cold. I removed them from the box and dropped them into the long grass at the base of the tree.
We spent the morning hiking through the forest and had a quick lunch before returning to the graveyard. Ja brought a handful of raw carrots, a few hard boiled eggs, some cheese, and a few slices of homemade pan bread. He mentioned how he often supplemented his diet with dandelion blossoms which were abundant in the fields around the forest trails. Once after a long field season, a masters student working with him finally screwed up the courage to ask him why his mouth was always yellow.
Marie wasn't waiting at the car when we returned and Ja went to find her while I wandered through the graveyard. There were many Odd men buried there.
Ja is working on the warning calls of tits when their nests are disturbed and he's been helping Tora because he can use some of the data he's gathering. I don't have a recording of a great tits distress call but I'm sure ja could provide some very high quality examples. I need to make him post something...
I had hoped to see a bunch of exotic and unfamiliar species in Norway but there weren't many besides magpies, wagtails, and roe deer.
