weather

One of the things I love about field work is that it makes you very, very, very aware of the world outside your walls. Any given day is filled with a handful of decisions that all swing on what the weather is doing now, what it just finished doing a while ago, and what it will be doing in the near future. Case in point. One of the methods we use to catch birds involves a devise called a mist-net. These are very fine nets that, if properly placed, are difficult to see for both a person and a bird. Depending on what kind of bird you are trying to catch there are numerous sizes to choose from, as well as ways to place them in order to maximize your chances of getting birds. When a bird is caught in the net it hangs in a little pouch like a hammock until we get there to pull it out (we check very frequently and are well trained at this task). Sometimes the birds seem a little dazed and will sit in your hand a for a minute or two before it flies away. The picture is a female Ruby-throated hummingbird doing just that. These nets are very effective and can catch large numbers of birds quickly, if, and that's a big if, they are run when the weather is right. Sun is bad, it makes the nets more visible, and wind is worse because not only is something moving in the breeze easy to see but the wind can also blow the net into the nearby foliage, not good for the net or the netters. However, here in the mountains of Virginia, our biggest issue is moisture. Damp is fine, cloudy is excellent, we can even handle fog. But if it is truly misting then the nets get covered in moisture and become very visible. It is very often very wet up here. So we are constantly deciding whether it is worth the considerable effort to open nets. We compulsively scan the sky and, when the internet connection is working, check the radar to see what's coming our way. All in an effort to maximize the amount of time we have the nets open, without having the heavy clouds dump on us while we're running them. We are all amateur meteorologists. We spend a lot of time looking at the haze around the moon, evaluating the wind and always keep an eye to the sky.

And so it begins....

The season has begun, and with a vengeance. We devote the first month of the season to trying to capture and band every junco on the study site. Sounds simple, but it amounts to a month of 14+ hour days. However, it's worth it. Nothing sucks more than than finding a nest with an unbanded female and having it fail before you can band her. Sucks. Trust me on that one. Anyway, we started on tax day and in the last 3 days we've caught about 70 birds. That's a lot, especially for the first few days. I am exhausted.

REU preparations

I'm currently in high gear preparing for exodus to the field. This involves finalizing plans for what exactly I'll be trying to accomplish this summer, coordinating with all of the other researchers I work with so we don't step on each others toes (figuratively and literally), ordering supplies, and developing projects for the undergraduates that will be working with us this summer. This last one is an interesting challenge. I'm a mentor for an NSF program called Research Experience for Undergraduates (commonly called REU). Undergraduates from all over the country apply to be a part of this program and get matched up with researchers that are equally scattered all over the country. As a mentor I get to walk a line that balances letting these students develop and execute their own projects, but also supervise enough so that the project is feasible, with appropriate methods etc., and successful. Our lab has a strong record of these projects leading to publications, which is great for everyone. The mentor gets additional data collected that they wouldn't have time to work on otherwise. The student gets experience developing an actual research project from the ground up, and if things go well they wind up with a publication/presentation that helps to make them more competitive when it comes time to apply to grad school themselves. Sounds great right? Well it is, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

Third year slam

So, I'm in my third year now and I have no classes, no teaching, and no major grant deadlines rapidly approaching. Given all of that, why oh why am I not getting more done. The most surprising thing about the life of a grad student is how little time we actually get to devote to our research. An astounding amount of time is consumed by meetings for various committees or groups we're involved in, writing permit amendments, putting together talks about our research, ordering supplies for our research, reading papers by others that is associated with our research etc etc etc.
That may be why the field is so alluring. For months on end I do nothing but research. Who knows when I'll actually get to analyze it, but at least I'd be collecting it.
But for the next few months I am focused on the flurry of activity that precludes field work. Namely, determining what I learned last year.

Conference recovery

I've just returned from a major national conference and am in the process of recovering, converting the matter between my ears from mush back into grey stuff. All in all it was good, though exhausting. It's a little nerve wracking to get up in front of a bunch of people who have forgotten more than you currently know about the subject you are presenting on. However, I got some excellent feedback and met, or re-met, the major players in my field. Hopefully that will help down the road when I start applying for post-doc positions. Who knew that biological research was so like politics, but then, it is a human endeavor so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

Another one bites the dust

I am baffled by people that find the time to post every day, or heck, every week. I struggle to get something up ever month. Not because I have nothing to say, but because I am drowning in work.
Enough complaining. The title of the post refers to milestones. Last week another one of mine kicked the bucket. I wrote, presented and defended my dissertation proposal. All told, without figures or literature cited, it was over 30 pages single spaced. Ridiculous you say? Well maybe, but my work is very integrative and combines evolutionary theory on the evolution of sex differences with behavior and endocrinology (study of hormones). So, I had a lot to tie together.
But...That being said, I am pretty dern happy about the project and now have a road map for the next few years of what to do. So now i just need to get to work and get some papers out. But first I have to catch up on everything that's been put off. Sigh.

Proposal writing

So, somehow or another I'm now in my third year of grad school, my how time flies. That means it's time to write up my dissertation proposal, which is basically my plan for the rest of grad school. Like many, I have a bunch of projects started, many of them related, but i have to pick an overarching theme that unites my interest, drop the stuff that doesn't fit and ratchet down my focus. Being more than a little ADHD this is a tad challenging. Add this to the fact that this is somehow my busiest semester ever and you can probably get a mental image of a grad student running around like a chicken with its head cut off, as my mother would say.

The comic is from PhD comics, very funny, sometimes a little too close to truth