Cutting Edge Ecology

Everytime I think about how long I have been a PhD student, and I realize it has only been 3 (official) weeks, it feels unreal. It feels like I have been working here for, well 4 weeks, at least! And I mean that in a very good way.
So what has happened this last week? It takes some effort to remember because I have been celebrating Carnaval this weekend. It is hard not to act as a biologist during Carnaval. Observing all the interesting social interactions happening around me, you realize that concepts like epp and epc are not specific for non-human animals. And one of the best moments of Carnaval was arriving at home in the middle of the night and seeing a barn owl fly past just a few meters away from me. Right in front of my home! So you see, biology is there at all times, you just have to look around you, especially at night!
Btw I also did something useful this weekend, working at the bird shelter. Although my work this weekend was mostly about hedgehogs. Cleaning their cages, weighing and feeding them (they love meal worms!). Especially during weighing I noticed how different they really are from one another. While one stays rolled up in a ball, the other one acts like having the equilevant of ADHD. All this happening while budgerigar and two goldfinches are having a singing contest with eachother and a chicken is moonwalking next to me (they love meal worms too!).
But I was doing a PhD.. This week I joined one of the excursions of the Ecology of Animal Life History course (really great course!) to my study field. While my promotor was talking about how to study fitness, bird song and feeding behaviour in great tit populations, my co-promotor was talking about how he had never eaten one of the birds. I guess, just like in great tits and hedgehogs, also within the species of promotors there are differences..
A girl, named Maaike, also started her PhD with great tits February 1st. She studies the influence of light on their behaviour. Last Friday she spent all day trying to contact the man from Phillips to arrange the lights for the project. Her promotor told me that was the first test of a PhD was: getting lights from Phillips. For my project you can say the same about the tags and base-stations. My promotor arranged about a year ago that everything should have arived by now. But our postboxes still look very empty.. Everytime something else seems to malfunction in the 'final' test. It is the challenge of working on the cutting edge of ecology with a new technology. But the reward of doing something different than everybody else has been doing until that moment will be great! 

Alaaf!!