Snowy Plovers
Coming soon!
White-Breasted Nuthatch
Coming soon!
Oregon Vesper Sparrow
Coming soon!
Final Field Days With the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow
As it becomes late in the season, the sparrow activity quiets down a lot. The birds aren’t singing late in the day, there aren’t as many nests to find, and the sparrows are just more difficult to find in general-- except for the juveniles. We have started to see flocks of juveniles flying around and [...]
Field Finds: Invertebrates
From the sparrow's point of view, the more invertebrates, the merrier. Cape Sable Seaside Sparrows rely on invertebrates of all kinds--anything from spiders to crickets to dragonflies--for food for themselves and their young. You can see changes in invertebrate abundance reflected in the sparrows' clutch sizes: when the pickings aren't as good (usually early season), sparrows tend to lay 2-3 [...]
A Three-nest Day
Cape Sable Seaside Sparrows are sneaky birds. Starting the season as a first-time sparrow nest-searcher, finding a small grass nest in a vast grass prairie was a daunting task. What made it worse was that these birds are not only extremely well-camouflaged, but also have an annoying habit of running around on the ground where you can’t [...]
Sparrow Banding
Even after studying Cape Sable Seaside Sparrows for over three months now, there's no way for me to tell the difference between males and females--let alone different individuals--just by looking at them. For that reason, almost all the sparrows on our study plots have unique color bands that help us keep track of who's who. [...]
Field Finds: Reptiles
The birders among you may already know that the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow shares its marl prairie habitat with Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Yellowthroats, grackles, and the occasional raptor or migrating bird. But what else—besides birds—inhabits this vast expanse of grass? For this post, I’ll share a few of my reptile finds from my walks through [...]
Eureka! A nest at Site D
We began our morning of transect surveys with some trepidation. When we’d gone out for our first set of transects at Site D earlier this week, we’d been beaten to exhaustion by the unseasonably hot weather. On top of that, the Water Management District had notified us of flooding at the site yesterday. And with a considerable [...]
Sparrow Team in Flight
Not only does today mark exactly one month since my arrival in south Florida, it’s also the day of my first helicopter ride ever! We had originally planned to fly to Population A on Friday. We were buckled up and fully decked out in our Nomex flight suits, gloves, leather boots, and helmets when the [...]