Katy's Itasca Summer Session
Recently, I spent five weeks up at the U of M's Itasca Biological Research Station at Itasca state park, just south of Bemidji, taking classes to work towards my ecology degree. Every Monday, Thursday, and sometimes Wednesday mornings, before the sun even had a chance to rise, my alarm clock would ring at 4:30am (much to the dismay of my roommates). I'd be dressed and off to class, wading boots and binoculars at hand. The birds would be singing, and the mosquitoes would be buzzing.
Ornithology was a tiring but rewarding experience from day one- the day we learned how to orienteer across the bird census grid that was laid across the boggy, soggy woods. Compasses led us from point to point, and our wading boots kept our feet dry- until they sunk down into the muck of the bog. Each class day, we were in the field at 5:00am, walking through the woods and listening to the birds that were singing around us, identifying each species by their song and marking down where it was heard on a map of the grid. Red-eyed vireos, ovenbirds, and American redstarts predominated, but there were others including the winter wren, brown creeper, Nashville warbler, mourning warbler, barred owl, and more. Over the 5 weeks of class, we were able to figure out the territories of birds by combining each morning's data on where the birds had been singing.
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Class got to be much more hands on after the census. We learned a technique called mist netting, where a net held up by two tall poles is set up somewhere outside. The mesh of this net is made from very fine, dark threads that are hard for birds (and people) to see from far away, with holes just large enough to tangle up small birds that fly into the net. The birds don't hurt themselves, and we would check the nets often so they wouldn't be exposed to the elements for too long. Once we'd untangle the birds from the net, we could hold them in the hand using a special technique that doesn't hurt them, and examine them up close. On a couple of occasions, we mist netted a colony of barn swallows that lived under a bridge and banded them after taking measurements of weight, wing length, tail length, etc. (Don’t try mist netting at home- special permits are required that are usually reserved for nature centers, colleges, and scientists).
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| We didn't spend all of our time at the park. Some days, we'd pile into a van and take a field trip. One such occasion was a trip to a nesting colony of double-crested cormorants. We met up with a representative from the DNR who took us onto one of the islands the birds were nesting on. If possible, cormorants nest low in trees, but these birds were so packed in that many were nesting on the ground alongside terns and gulls. |
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| On another field trip, we visited a great-blue heron rookery. Herons nest together, in stick nests high up in the treetops. A heron rookery is an eerie place. Herons are an example of a bird that, as nestlings, practice siblicide- the killing of one's sibling or siblings. Oftentimes this is done when food is scarce and parents can't feed enough fish to each of the nestlings. The parents sit by and let this happen, as it helps ensure that at least one of the young will survive, and that their parental efforts weren’t entirely in vain. As a result of this behavior, the forest floor beneath the nests was littered with the remains of the unlucky nestlings. |
| When I didn't have class, I was often up at the crack of dawn to go out into the field with a grad student who was doing work on purple finches and chipping sparrows. We did a lot of netting, banding, and nest searching/finding out a Christmas tree farm, where chipping sparrows and purple finches often nest. We found over 14 chipping sparrow nests, marking eggs and nestlings with permanent markers to track their progress. I also did my own little experiment on chipping sparrows for my animal behavior class. I tested how male and female chipping sparrows react to threats to their territory- a predator by the nest, and a competitor breeding male in the territory. To test the latter, we actually caught a male chipping sparrow and put in a bird cage with an mp3 player and speaker playing a chipping sparrow song, then watched the nesting pair's reactions! |
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So, all in all, Itasca was amazing and I'll probably be babbling on with more stories about it at the store for some time to come.
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