Week 3:
Audobon Center at Francis Beidler Forest

June 4, 2014

Week 3 of my internship started off slow but picked up to a steady pace.  My average day started around 7 am.  I have to be out there when the birds wake up because that’s when they sing the most.  The more they sing, the more accurate of a density estimate we can get.  I would conduct a density survey at either the canoe trail or the boardwalk; protocol says we need to do it at least 3 times at each site.  After that was done, I headed to the visitor center at the beginning of the boardwalk to plug in my computer to check my email.  It was still early by then, around 9 or 10 am, so I went out on the boardwalk to monitor Prothonotary Warblers.  Monitoring was fruitful this week.  I discovered 5 new unbanded males and a few females.  The real goal though is to find their nests!  This is a challenge because you need to catch a bird either carrying food or nesting material back to a cavity in a cypress knee, nestbox, or tree.  These birds are rambunctious, loud, and proud, but sometimes following them is tough in the swamp.  It is easy to lose them in your binoculars.

After I had walked the boardwalk up and down looking for Prothonotaries, I logged my sightings in to a working spreadsheet, ate lunch, and there wasn’t really anything for me to do.  I could have monitored more, but after 2-3 hours of that it gets a little tiring.  I decided to ask Matt and Mike for more projects to work on and they delivered.  I compiled survey data from a different survey plot that Mike and Norm have been working on, and I started calling businesses like Home Depot and Ace Hardware to ask for material donations.  Mainly 5 gallon buckets are needed.  These will serve as predator guards for the 10-20 nest boxes we are going to build and install along the canoe trail.  Prothonotary Warblers are in decline and they take well to nest boxes, so installing them will theoretically increase the chances of their nesting successes and help out their population.  The only downside for me is that I won’t get to see first-hand any birds using our nest boxes next summer.  Unless I come back for some reason… who knows.

This donation project is very fun for me because I love collaborating with other groups/companies and talking to people.  I’ve been extremely pleasantly surprised at the donations people are giving.  There’s no way of telling if they’ll ever read this but I would like to give a shout out to the Home Depot of West Ashley, SC and Hutto’s Ace Hardware in St. George, SC because they have both committed to donating a significant amount of material for our nest box project.

Mark and I walked the boardwalk on Friday to nail down metal markers for visitors and myself to use while monitoring for Prothonotary Warblers. We have to know where we are on the boardwalk if our sightings are to do any good!

I have been contentedly busy this week and it’s making me realize that as an Audubon employee, you get to wear a lot of hats.  Ricky and Mark both have told me this already but I am now experiencing it myself.  I wonder if all or most conservation groups are this way as well.  There are so many projects to work on and Norman, the executive director here, usually says “go for it, that is a marvelous idea” when his staff wants to pursue something new to better Audubon SC.  Another thing I overheard him say earlier this week is “you gotta take the good time with ya,” and I think that will stick with me for a long while.