Everything is going full gear for field season coming up and starting next week. It's intimidating (I'd lie if I said I haven't had a panic attack about it yet) but also so exhilarating! It's amazing with a Masters how you can do so much work and yet it feels like you've done nothing at all when you look at your to-do list!
April 10th I left for 11 days to do some Bird Banding Training at the Long Point Bird Observatory. The beginning of April had been pretty low bird wise, I imagine because it was so damn cold! The first two days were pretty slow and cold. I spent most of the time learning how to scribe data and how to set up and use all the different ground traps. The sunrise on my first morning was absolutely jaw-dropping. It was pretty cold, foggy, and the sun was a brilliant yellow. I'd have to say this is probably one of my favourite photos from the entire trip.
One of the first birds we did manage to catch was a Morning Dove. I'd never realized how beautiful they really were until this moment, seeing them up close changes everything. Males have beautiful colours. What I've always seen was a simple pinkish-tanned colour, when really there are amazing hints of purple and blues. Below you can kind-of see that in the photo.
