This week it was back to mist netting. Which meant getting up at 2:45 am. Ouch. Today kicked my butt. I did not get enough sleep and was dragging all day. My roommates do not need to rent zombie movies, all they need to do is live with me! I caved when we got home and took a long, much needed nap. I got up for two hours and now it is time for bed again!
Mist netting was not as challenging as I remember, though my arms were sore from sledge hammering. Time to start working a little on my upper body strength because as it gets hotter and drier the ground is only going to get harder and harder to pound those poles into, which I'm dreading.
The only new bird that we caught was a Northern rough-winged swallow. I tried to take a picture but it was still too dark as we got it on the first net run. It had such long primary feathers on its wing and such a long tail.
We got more starlings than my advisor has ever seen before-- maybe sixty or more. He kept saying, "This is the bomb!" but actually it was more than we could comfortably process so we had to close a bunch of our nets on only our second net run, meaning the second time we went back to check them after putting them up.
The best part of the day was that there are lots of mulberry trees in the area and they are all full of very ripe, sweet berries. There are so many berries that even the prolific starlings can't eat them all and the ground underneath the trees is stained purple from all the fallen, smushed berries. I did my best to help out by eating as many as I could. Tomorrow I am going to try to make a mulberry smoothie and collect some in tupperware. My advisor says they are only going to be fruiting for about a week. Mmm mulberries... it fits everything I like-- fresh fruit, free, using something that would otherwise go to waste.
Tomorrow we leave the house at 4 am. You know you are in trouble when that sounds heavenly. It means I don't have to wake up until past 3 am. Woo hoo.
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