Week two

Whew! What a week to be out working in the Pine Bush! It's been quite a week. Long, hectic, and lots of new things going on.

Much of my time is spent in areas that look like this:

The "classic" Pine Bush is comprised of a mixure of pitch pine and scrub oak. It makes for a beautiful landscape, though the scrub oaks can be very difficult to move around in. The Pine Bush is a fire-dependent ecosystem, and if it isn't burned regularly, the scrub oak will take over entirely and almost nothing else can grow. Unfortunately, only about 25% of the preserve looks like this. The other 75% is deciduous forest. Which in some cases can be a good thing, but in this case it's not. Within five years, the preserve hopes to reverse those numbers. However, the variety of habitats means that many birds breed in the Pine Bush. This is a Field Sparrow nest with eight eggs, the most I've ever seen in a sparrow nest (look sideways).

Some of the other common birds around here are blue jays, crows, chickadees, towhees, prairie warblers, common yellowthroats, chipping and field sparrows, indigo buntings, and bluebirds.

I find the mixture of pine bush and woodlands to be pretty interesting, though a little disorienting at times. One of the sites I had to visit this week started with a trail through a very nice patch of woods, covered in pretty flowers like this one.

Suddenly, a second later I emerged into a clearing that was completely Pine Bush, lupines and all. Most of these sites were woodland originally, but were restored to Pine Bush through clearcutting, mowing, and herbiciding the landscape, then replanting lupines and other native Pine Bush plant species.

The Pine Bush is unique because it sits atop a series of sand dunes. The sand is left over from when this area was covered by glacial Lake Albany. The wind then scuplted the sand into many small dunes, which makes this region a litte hilly.

This means the plants that grow here are pretty unique. They are able to grow on sand, which is very difficult to do. Sand doesn't hold nutrients very well.

Sometimes you can even see leftover bits of shells from the ancient lake.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of plant species that grow here, including some really beautiful ones like this wild columbine.

This week we began doing some of the real work. Monday was spent counting lupines at a few of the smaller sites. It's EXTREMELY difficult and time-consuming.

Tuesday through tomorrow we've been alternating between surveying for Karner blue butterflies and frosted elphin butterflies. Wednesday was exciting because it was the first day any of us saw a Karner. We each have different sites that we survey, and one of my sites happens to be where the preserve released Karners last year. They're really excited that the butterflies are still there.

Wednesday was also the day we became acquainted with the Prairie Warbler work that's going on. Apparently this species is more indicative of prime Pine Bush habitat than any other bird species that occurs here. So the preserve has been catching, banding, and following the warblers for the last couple years. Over fifty individual birds are banded now. This year, it will be our job to try to relocate some of those individuals (which can be told apart by the color bands on their legs). By seeing how many warblers are still around this year, the preserve can attempt to estimate the survivorship of this population. Pretty cool stuff.

Lupine Festival

Today the Pine Bush held its annual Lupine Festival, so I stopped by for awhile to check things out. It seemed like a great event for children and families. Mostly there were kids' activites, but they also had a "wildlife show." My favorites were the birds, of course.

A peregrine falcon, fastest animal on earth.

A Cooper's hawk, which is actually threatened in New York State. I didn't know that, and now feel even worse about the one that died hitting my window a few weeks ago.

A female red-tailed hawk, one of my favorites.

And a very grumpy-seeming great horned owl. Although I suppose they always look a little grumpy. Something about the wide, staring yellow eyes and "ear" tufts.

These birds had all been injured (by cars mostly, I believe) and are no longer able to survive in the wild. So instead they are used for educational purposes, to help convince the public how wonderful and fascinating these creatures really are.

First week

Well, I've made it through my first week at the Albany Pine Bush!

Unfortunately it rained during almost our entire period of training. And since this is a field job, it meant a lot of time spent slogging through areas that looked like this:

But it's all good fun. So far, I think this is a really neat place. It's completely different from anything I've done before. I've always worked in places that were very remote, like on an island in Maine or in the middle of a Saskatchewan prairie. The Pine Bush, however, is an example of an urban ecosystem. Not originally, of course, but now the remainder of it is fragmented and interspersed with both housing and commercial developments. In other words, houses, businesses, and sometimes even malls can be seen from many of my study sites. It's unusual for me, but good, too. Not all habitats can be preserved in far-off places. Sometimes the most important are the ones right in people's backyards.

Most of the work I'll be doing this summer involves surveying for butterflies. Namely, the Karner blue butterfly, which is federally endangered, and the frosted elphin butterfly, which is threatened in New York State. The Karner blue, in particular, depends on lupine plants.

The Karners don't actually feed on these plants, but lay their eggs on them. No lupines = no Karners. Luckily, lupines are really beautiful, and I think most people wouldn't mind having them around.

The lupines have particular habitat requirements, needing sandy soil in which to grow. The Pine Bush is the perfect place, because it's made entirely from sand dunes! I just love these flowers. Occasionally, I'll come across a white one as well.

The Pine Bush is home to many threatened or rare species, which is what makes it so special and so important. This plant, called a birdfoot violet (for the shape of its leaves) is found nowhere else in New York State.


There are some really neat critters here, too. Yesterday, on my first day out by myself, I found this awesome little guy:


It's an eastern hognose snake, which is threatened in New York State. I've actually only seen its cousin, the western hognose, so I was really excited to find it. They're probably my favorite snakes. When they get scared, they puff up and hiss, which is what this one did when I picked it up. They've also been known to roll right onto their backs and play dead.

And that wasn't my only cool find of the day:

I stumbled right on a Song Sparrow nest! A couple years ago, I never would have found this nest. But my graduate work on prairie songbirds in Saskatchewan was entirely based on my ability to find nests on the ground. A lot of that ability comes from recognizing when a bird is flushing from a nest by observing its behavior. When I was walking along yesterday and saw a Song Sparrow fly very suddenly from close by on the ground, I knew there had to be a nest, and within a few seconds I found it!

What I found especially interesting is that these eggs look exactly like the eggs of both Savannah and Baird's sparrows, which I studied out west. I'm willing to bet these species are all closely related (clay-colored and Brewer's sparrows eggs, for example, are a solid robins-egg blue).

I might be doing some nest-searching for prairie warbler nests later in the summer. That will also be a bit different for me, because prairie warblers nest in shrubs that are off the ground, instead of right ON the ground.

Springtime in NY

Welcome back!

As I proved last summer, I'm not great at keeping up with these things. But I thought I'd try again this summer, as I'll be in a whole new place and doing some entirely new things. In a week and a half, I'll be heading to the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in NY's state capital to do some work with Karner blue butterflies and prairie warblers, to name just a couple.

But before I get to that, I thought I'd share some of the beauty of springtime in my hometown of Greece, NY.

Despite the rainy conditions we've been having over the last week, the warblers seem to have arrived in full force. Without even having to leave my yard, I've seen yellow, yellow-rumped, blackburnian, black-throated blue, black-throated green, mourning, and northern parula.

On the non-warbler sides of things, I've been having the usual chickadees, robins, cardinals, and grackles, as well as white-throated sparrows, hermit thrushes, and at least one VERY persistent eastern phoebe.

I even had a few Canada geese visit my yard yesterday.

And one VERY cute baby bunny, which I suspect is living under our wood pile.

Unfortunately, with all these birds coming through, some tragedies are bound to happen. The back of my house has many large windows, which have been the demise of more than one bird through the years. Luckily, most of them do live to fly away. But last week, a very loud BANG led me to find this poor guy:

A beautiful juvenile Cooper's hawk. He died quickly, but it still saddens me to see such a wonderful bird, and such a young one, meet its end.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences this summer in a whole new place. All the field sites I've worked at in the past have been extremely remote. As the Albany Pine Bush is right on the outskirts of a major city, it will definitely be a change for me, but a good one I hope.