First Day in the Field

Today, Wednesday September 2, 2015, our Ornithology class had its first trip into the field. We met at the loading dock at 7:00 a.m. and headed to The Ridges getting there around 7:10/7:15 a.m. We left in two groups and I returned by 12:00 pm back to OU campus. The weather was warmer weather, starting in early/mid 60's and getting up into the 70's by the end of our trip. It was quite humid and very little cloud cover, wind within 0-5 mph and no precipitation in our field time.  I helped out with nets 1-5 today. We were surrounded by woods but varying habitats where we were at. Nets 1 and 2 were put together in a more dense area that traveled up and around a smaller path with a lot of woods around it and a lot of tree cover. Net 3 was in wood/ brushy area that we had on the outskirts of a smaller open field traveling on an incline. Net 4 was along a pond, it began by some trees and strung across close to the pond with open area in front of it. Net 5 was in a higher area along the trail line of a denser wood area that was exposed to the sun. We caught a total of five birds today. i was able to watch Kelly go through the procedure of safely removing the birds from the net and putting them in the bird bags. What we did with the birds was to identify it, make sure we were correct by looking through books, etc. to how to correctly identify any that we were unsure of or compare certain species to similar ones of its kind. We had to figure out what band correctly would fit the leg of the bird, make sure we get the number and record it in our data.  We had to get all the correct banding information such as its name, identifier code, age and how we knew, sex and how we knew, wing measurements, weight. We were able to look at its fat content, learned about skulling, examining its wings and more. The birds I saw and heard were Northern Waterthrush, Northern Cardinal,Swanson Thrush, Chipping Sparrow, Carolina Chikadee, Blue Jay, American Robin, Red Bellied Woodpecker, Tufted Tittmouse, White Rusted Nuthatch, Easter Tohee, Cedar Waxing and American Goldfinch. Other classmates talked about the Carolina Wren, Morning Dove, White Eyed Vireo, Eastern Wood Peewee, and Northern Morning Dove. it was a very big learning experience and a successful first trip being exposed to a lot of different bird songs and a good opener to bird banding.

--Jenna Rovniak