Out of focus

What do I not see? What do I miss? And is it important? These questions often wonder around in my head. This is, I think, why I like listening to TED talks, reading books and watching movies. They make me aware of the things that I have been missing or they give me a new way to look at the things I thought I knew.

This is probably also why I like biology so much. Listening to a birdsong biologist will make me hear the songbirds sing. A wildlife ecologist will let me see the little forest paths that badgers and foxes make. And a botanist will make me smell the flowers. These songs, paths and smells are almost always around me, but invisible when I focus on other things, usually the irrelevant thoughts in my head. On the other hand, when I zoom out it makes me aware of the life that is continuously around me. Above me and below me. Especially when I feel worried or alone. And that makes all the difference.

Focus is good, but sometimes out of focus is even better. It makes me see.  

PhD project movie

 

And here it is. The movie showing what I am doing with my life these past 3 years :-)

 

 

Aviary observations

This weekend I had to work. But can I really call it work? The “work” I had to do, was observing six groups of six great tits, two times half an hour/day in the aviaries. Why? I need to know the dominance rank of each bird for a behavioural experiment and the best way to do this is to observe them, intensively. Who is displacing who?  What comes down to: I will land on top of you if you don’t move (never mind that there are plenty of other spots to land on). Who fights who? I will transform into a little airplane (body horizontal, wings spread) to intimidate you, hiss, peck, and chase and sometimes attack. With two balls of feather tumbling in the air as a result. And finally there is: who waits for who? Sure, I will wait with getting my food until you are finally done with selecting that one special mealworm you want (unless I can quickly steel one, of course).

I was looking forward to these days, sitting down and observing animal behaviour for hours. This is the reason why I decided at age 12 that I wanted to become a biologist in the first place. By just watching, observing, I always learn new things. For example, all the bird groups I observe are visually separated from the other groups, but they are continuously connected, vocally. When one great tit in a distant aviary gives an alarm call everybody flies off and freezes for about half a minute. This happens several times a day. Almost every time the cause for the alarm stays unknown. And yet, they still respond every time (which can be a little bit annoying when you are doing behavioural experiments). Also, I learned that magpies walking past the aviary are no problem at all, but contact calls from jackdaws are really scary. And finally, it is possible to become the most dominant bird in aviary and still be shy of creepy novel objects (like a plate with mealworms, apparently). But no worries, you just try to steel mealworms from everyone else (you are a dominant after all), until you build up enough courage to fetch them yourself.  

I could write many paragraphs about my observations of these two days (I will stick to three for now). How amazing it is that these juvenile birds know by themselves how to look underneath leaves, like how they would do in nature in search for caterpillars. How quickly they can catch a fly, accidentally flying into the aviary. And most of all, about the differences between the individual birds. There is that strange bird (spending most of his time messing around with pieces of dead leaves), that bully, that home improver, that gymnast and my all-time favourite: that bold bird. The kind of birds that seem to be studying us more than that we are studying them. And you know what else? You can also see all this by just looking outside into your garden.

What do I want to do with my life?

Being in my third year as a PhD I’ve had some time to experience the academic science system and frankly it has disappointed me a bit. In summary, I find it too time-consuming, inefficient and surprisingly dependent on either chance or “politics”. All this wouldn’t matter, because let’s be honest which job isn’t?, if the end result (a publication) will be worth it. But will it? Will it make the world a little bit better?

Thus, it comes down to “why am I doing research?”. Of course, partly because I like it. I love wondering about the workings of nature, studying them and hopefully answering my questions. But I am done with that process when I have written the first version of my paper. Yet, in many cases there is still a long road to go from then onwards.  And all that time I am thinking “I could be saving injured birds and hedgehogs now and my time would be so much better spend.”  

However, another big part of why I am doing research is because I like to share with people how marvellous the natural world closely around them is. To open their eyes, make them wonder, admire and hopefully respect, not only the big but also, the small parts in nature. Why is that blackbird singing so early this morning? Where did it sleep last night, who did he have to fight to get this singing post? Where did that snail on my back door come from? Did it travel far? Does it know where it is going or is it just going about at random? How long has that tree close to my back door been standing there? How many different people has it seen living in my house? How many other creatures, birds, ants, mice is it supporting?

All these creatures close around us are doing the same thing we are: living. And more often than not life is hard. Cold nights, hungry days, losing offspring, losing mates, losing homes and sometimes even losing limbs. But as soon as you come aware of the ducks bathing in the pond during a heavy rain storm, the sparrows taking a dust bath on a hot day and the see-lions soaking up the sun while lying on top of sharp rocks, you realize that life can be beautiful too.

Just like us, each living creature has a story and those are the stories I want to tell as a researcher.

The next question is: how?

Remember?

Two weeks ago I talked to a PhD assessor (part of a course, don’t ask) and he told me that I can better accept my faults than to constantly fight them. Well, maybe that is not exactly what he said, but that is how I interpreted it. Today I actually found out that one of my faults, my lack of any sense of direction, ended up to be quite useful. I was asked if I, by any chance, remembered to which one out of 200 nest boxes some juvenile blue tits were moved 5 months ago. Well yes I did.

Of course I study great tits, but blue tits also like our nest boxes and if they don’t get thrown out (or killed) by great tits they are very happy to nest in them. Most of our nest boxes are easy to find (after getting lost only 2 or 3 times). But some boxes are just impossible. They are not near a path, fence or large tree, they are just somewhere in the middle of the forest. Thus you have to make a bearing from a certain spot and keep walking in the right direction. Impossible.

One box was especially notorious for me: 718. It always took me more than 15 minutes to find it and at a certain point even more than half an hour. Constantly walking in circles, smaller and bigger ones and every time I would end up at 719. This was extra frustrating because 719 was very likely a blue tit nest and not a great tit nest (when there are decorative feathers in the nest it is usually a blue tit) and so it was not even a bit useful for me to end up there. And yes, when I opened the lit there were a couple of very small just hatched blue tit chicks. The next day the field technician asked me if I, by any chance, knew a blue tit nest that just hatched, because he was looking for foster parents for a couple of other blue tit chicks. Well yes I did.   

The only reason I remembered the nest box specifically still until today is because I have associated it with frustrating memories of aimlessly walking around in the forest. But now I feel quite happy. My wandering about without a sense of direction ended up to be useful on even two occasions. Ok, no lives were saved, fires prevented or anything significant in any other sense, but still this little event did make me think that possibly I really should start with just accepting my faults.

Actually, I did not remember the right box exactly. I said 718 instead of 719. But still.. 

Stay curious

Last week someone shared a saying with me: Always remember why you are doing something. Naturally, my first thought was “Well, yes, of course, how could you forget?” But throughout that week I realized I had forgotten.

I am lucky enough that I have a job that is the best job I could imagine for myself. Already as a kid I could lose myself in just observing a couple of jackdaws sitting on the fence outside, tadpoles organising themselves around a piece of bread or a spider restructuring her web after morning rain. Now I get to study nature. I get to wonder, marvel and story-tell about nature. But as with almost any job, it comes for a price.

If you want to continue in science than you have to be good in science. Or better said: people have to be convinced that you are good in science. But there is basically only one measure people have for this. Publications. And the best and almost only way to get good publications is to have a strong story combined with cool (significant) results. Unfortunately, getting cool results relies for a large part on luck and, with field biology at least, for an even larger part on the absence of bad luck.

You can try very hard, but still there can be many pitfalls on the way. Bad weather might strongly affect your study species, your technology might fail, your sample size might decrease because of unexpected predation and if you finally do manage to uncover something cool, someone else might have just beaten you to it. All very frustrating! Then you start to look around. How are other people doing? How are you doing compared to others? And that is exactly when it goes wrong. You start doing things to be better than others. Joy gets replaced with competitiveness and often followed by a feeling of failure. You forget the why. And I forgot the why.

Luckily there was the NIOO-open day to remind me again. Last weekend our institute was open for the general public and my colleagues and I got to tell about our work. During these short talks I became to feel enthusiastic again and the reason was because I did not talk about all the things that went wrong, but I talked about all the things that make my study  so interesting.

So now I will try to lose myself again. But in a good way. And I will try not to write publications to be better than others, but to write publications to tell stories.  To write out of curiosity.

The Novel Environment Test

I walked in the room and the first thing I noticed were the empty seats of the people still missing. “A good, I am not as late as I thought” (a thought that regularly crosses my mind). The people already sitting there did not look very at ease. Staring at the papers they had in front of them, quietly sipping their coffee’s, waiting for what is to happen. Again I was unexpectedly comforted, as I clearly was not the only person who had never been in this room, with these people, having to do those tests I never did before. So there we were, about 12 people, all PhD students in the exact same situation. But still we behaved different.

First, there was me. After carefully scanning the room I waited for the person, who looked like she was organizing the whole thing, to finish talking to someone. Seeing the piles of papers before me and all the other contestants having similar papers before them, I made the right assumption (it turned out)  that this person was here to give some to me. Next, I went for the coffee (naturally) which I spilled half over the table (naturally) and then selected a corner in the back to sit. But after a minute or two I realized that one of my ears was not working that well and that it might not be such a good idea to sit in the back. So I moved to the front. I dove into my bag to find a pen “Did I bring a pen? I must have brought a pen. How stupid would it be not to bring a pen to a written test!?”. I found a pen.

Second, I watched another contestant walk in. He was slightly late (seemed not at all bothered by it). He said (not asked) that he first quickly needed to go to the bathroom and left the room again. He came back and asked for a pen or a pencil (he did not bring a pen!) from the person in charge. He quickly selected a seat (next to me) and then asked me for today’s date. “Yes, it is the 10^th”.

All the other people entering (also a bit late) went by in a blur. I was thinking about whether I should be annoyed or jealous with the behaviour of that guy. Me being shy and carefully observing my surroundings and that guy being bold and (apparently) carefree. And then I suddenly realized it. “I am in a novel environment test!” “So, this is how my birds must feel during their personality test.” As a proxy for the personality of the birds in my study, we measure their exploration behaviour with the novel environment test. It is a strange awareness, suddenly feeling like a subject in your own research.

Juvenile great tits in a novel environment room (Kees van Oers)

When all the contestants were in, we could (finally) start with what we came here to do: the PhD assessment. We took the first form from the pile and started filling in our personality questionnaires.

The scientific poster roller coaster

My first scientific poster is finally finished after days of hard work. Or so I thought, because after version 5 I was not so convinced anymore. ..

I started quite excited. My chance to tell my story. Little did I know that posters are not about stories. Posters are about pretty pictures. And although I am a great fan of pretty pictures, and some of them can tell great stories, the average scientific poster picture can not. “But how will people learn my stories when my posters are mostly filled with pretty pictures?” “People won’t even look at your poster if it is not filled with pretty pictures.” “Stupid people!”

Being very honest, I know I do exactly the same with everyone else’s poster, but it still was not an easy thing to accept. And starting a rally at scientific conferences putting up banners saying that we should actually really start reading the posters that everyone has worked so hard on, seemed a bit more effort than cutting down my story and putting in some pretty bird pictures.  
Working with cute little birds, it was not so hard to find some pretty cute little bird pictures. However, I also had to start with removing parts of my story a.k.a. “killing your darlings”. Luckily I have a supervisor (I will not mention names on request) who has much less trouble with this than I have, at least when it concerns my poster.  So, after having defended the genius thought that was behind every single sentence, I agreed to take them out. And of course.. the poster looks so much better now. But I am still seriously considering handing out little business cards, secretly having written my whole story on the back of them (and having a pretty bird picture on the front, obviously).

Poster done, just 2 days for the absolute deadline. Like it suits a real PhD student. This would not be a problem, if it were not so that a poster is generally most effective if it is also printed on paper (or any material alike). The two main reasons of being “casually late” were:  1. Spending time on constructing an awesome story that in the end got reduced to 3 sentences. 2. Really not wanting to have to put the word  “preliminary” on my poster. But after a weekend of going through possible methodological literature about possible software packages that could maybe be appropriate for my data analyses and knowing my computer will very likely crash trying to conduct any of these analyses, I finally admitted to myself I could not finalize months worth of research within 24 hours. 

So here I am without a complete story and without definite results. However I have a beautiful scientific poster and I think that when even a lawyer friend of mine (again, I will not mention any names on request) can correctly reformulate the scientific conclusions (preliminary as they might be) you can call a poster, at the very least, successful. 

And here is a pretty bird picture: 

 Photo: Koos Dansen

Cheers!

Office dreams

You might wonder wonder when I am going to talk about my research again, I am getting to that. But not now. For now, just a little "work observation":

Last week I wanted to tell you about two house sparrows that were fighting in front of the window of my NIOO-office (so far the work related part). Some downfeathers swirled downwards, that was what caught my attention. And a moment later, two little balls of feathers tumbling around eachother, heading towards the grass. Then one had a hold on top of the other, the next moment it was the otherway around. And when one bird flew away, the other would follow him. Minutes long it continued. When 15 minutes nothing happened, and I was thinking to myself why those little birds would be so eagerly fighting this time of year, they would show up again and do everything once more. That was the moment I decided for myself that they were not fighting. They were playing. An improbable thought, but one that fits much better in a field of wild growing flowers, between a flock of hyperactive juvenile goldfinches and next to a bold scrounging great tit.
Just because..

"What some folks call impossible, is just stuff they haven't seen before."*




*What Dreams May Come

Heroes

Another great thing of being a scientist is that you are sometimes asked to speak on fairs. The Dutch Bird Fair to be exact. And why is this so great you may wonder? Well, it is the place to meet your long-time idols (if you are a bird-person).

We started building up our little stands, early in the morning. The day began windy and dark grey with some rare rays of sunlight. Geese were flying over and crows were calling. Luckily the fair took place in a very beautiful nature area, the kind of nature that is magnificent in any form of weather.

Our team for that day consisted of six people. Two of Vogeltrekstation (Bird Migration Station) and four of the NIOO (Netherlands Institute of Ecology): Pieter, Berber, Rinse, Peter, Nicole and me. And I think we were a great team, but how can you not be if you all are fascinated with birds? My presentation was scheduled at the end of the day, so I could help out with the stand and our game for almost the whole day.

Yes, we had a game. The ‘caterpillar catching’ game. Not so much fun as the ‘geese migration’ game, I have heard from a certain someone (we will definitely be trying to work that in for next year), but it was still a pretty cool game. Three kids can choose if they want to be a great tit chick in a warm, normal or cold spring and they are dressed accordingly:  yellow bib, black necktie and a black head with added sunglasses for the ‘warm’ chick and an added woolen hat for the ‘cold’ chick. Sometimes even the occasional parent jumped in to participate.
                The goal is to catch a caterpillar being pulled up a string by only using your ‘beaks’. The idea is (as of course you would have guessed) that the warm spring caterpillar moves to quickly, being gone before the chick is able to get it; the cold one being slow (and hanging too low), representing that the caterpillars are still absent or too small to be descent food; and the normal one, in general being perfectly timed. I say “in general” because, as with most things, sometimes there might be some human error involved… By the way, just to be clear, they were candy caterpillars.     

I can also write a whole story about the stress involved giving my presentation. Not that I was nervous, but mostly because the organizers thought it was a good idea to ask everyone for a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation (and to certainly not bring your own memory stick and computer) and then, without telling anyone in advance, have it run on an Apple. Forget about a story, I can write a book about why this was not a good idea.
                Thanks to the very nice people of the Vogeltrekstation, who did bring a (non-Apple) computer, everything turned out just perfect and I could run my presentation (with awesome video’s and sounds) without a problem. It’s the best way of letting people join in a bit on the great job I have and hopefully teach them a bit about the fascinating lives and habits of great tits.

However, I am just a Rookie in the bird world. There are other people there that know so much more, idols for many bird people (me and Peter). You know their names, you have seen them on television, heard them on radio and seen them in books and newspapers and then… you meet them. You belong to ‘the bird world’ now and suddenly you are there shaking their hand. Such a person is Nico de Haan (http://www.vogelkijkcentrum.nl/ndh.php3 ). Some sort of a legend, a mystical creature with all its mysterious ways. The grey beard, the secretive smile, the way he appears to be able to divide himself in multiple persons and be everywhere at once (seven times! Ask http://www.peterimwald.blogspot.nl/) and of course his wise and encouraging words when we were trying very hard to hold our stand together “Het waait wel, maar het waait over”; “The wind blows, but it will blow over”.

Every time when you think you are somewhere teaching others, never forget, you still got so much to learn.

Best wishes!

The conference

If you think conferences are boring you should become a biologist. Not because you would not have to go to conferences and can just chase birds and butterflies all day, because we have conferences too. However, the major difference between a biology conference and other conferences is that our conferences are fun! I shall give you several reasons for this:

First reason: no suits. Yes, it is true, biologists really walk in shorts and sandals as often as they can, so also at conferences. And then I am not even mentioning the shirts. Some people could make a rainbow jealous with the colours of their shirt, while others (and this is typical biologist behaviour) will try and promote their study-species by wearing shirts with a print of them, for example: a barnacle goose (totally random example). All of this, of course, only applies to the men, we girls always looked very normal and descent.  

Second reason: we have an easy way of remembering people. With a conference comes the problem of having to remember all those names. But with all these different animals around to study (it was a conference about animal social networks) we can easily talk about people by referring to their study species: the flamingo guy, the manikin man, the girl with the sealions and the fish people. Somehow we always called (or maybe it was just me) the people studying great tits, the Oxford people. Important to keep in mind is that this only works when you are talking about people and not to them. Good thing we also had name tags.

Third reason: you can make great deals. Everybody is always doing fieldwork on very exotic places, except for the people working with great tits of course. So if you have something to trade... like base stations... (totally random example again), you could try and  work yourself in doing some fieldwork on the Galapagos Islands. Also it is important to get allies. If people in other places are doing almost the same study as you, then it is handy to have some accomplices around who can keep an eye open and for instance if necessary (purely hypothetical) kidnap their study species in return for acknowledgements in a paper.

Fourth reason: field trips. With all that talking and watching and listening and eating and drinking coffee, we need a break some times. So what do biologists do? We go to the Zoo! Our conference building was located next to a beautiful piece of forest.  When we walked about half an hour through forest and meadow we would end up at a free 24-hour zoo with German wild life, like wolves and bears and wolverines etc (maybe this is a good moment to mention the conference was in Germany). The zoo was very beautiful and somehow I ended up visiting it 3 times in 2 days.   

Last reason: biologists are just extremely nice, interesting and funny people! (with a bad taste of music they tend to work into their presentations)

And if you are still not convinced (probably all you non-biologists out there), here is just a fun picture:

Cheers!

A PhD-student abroad

I am back. After being on a trip to Australia and having more to do than ever, I thought this would be a good moment to pick up my blog again.

Of course you can’t call yourself a real PhD-student and go on holiday without still doing something for your project. So I decided to read a book, central for my studies, called “Exploring animal social networks”. About 170 pages, should be doable in 18 days.

Travel Diary entry day 14: “My intention to read the social networks book seems to be, after reading the Viva, Flair, Happiness, NG traveller and 360 degrees magazines and the whole Trilogy of the Hunger Games, sort of failing..”

Also, a real PhD-student, working day and night, should be used to having a total messed up biological clock. Therefore I was convinced to have no problems with any sort of jet-lag from travelling 8.5 hours forward in time and spending several days and nights in long distance coaches.

Travel Diary entry day 2: “I am almost absolutely certain that in terms to get you used to a new bio-rhythm, the airline staff does everything possible to screw it up first. Darkening everything around 11pm (which sounds reasonable), but then serving dinner at 1 am and breakfast at a local time of 5 pm.”

Travel Diary entry day 9: “Been 7 hours on the coach to Mt. Isa. While it would have been a good idea to sleep, as it is the middle of the night, I ended up sitting in front of the bus, watching kangaroos and chatting with the bus driver about many things, ranging from road kill to marriage (did I mention it was late?).”

Travel Diary entry day 15: “Time for some observations:
1. After having been convinced for years that I could sleep anywhere, >30 hours in a Greyhound have finally convinced me otherwise. I need a coffee.
2. In a half a sleep state, so I have learned, I can easily be confused with a somewhat mentally disoriented person. To elaborate: needed cashier to count money, could not find the opening (right in front of me) of a glass bread cabinet, almost took off with someone else’s cappuccino. This is why I need a coffee.
3. Very very happy to finally have received (my own) coffee!
4. My body, apparently, decided I actually do not like full milk in my cappuccino. My sister said thanks for the coffee...”  

And finally, a real PhD-student knows how to make the best of everything.

Travel Diary entry day 1 and day 18: “I can’t believe I did not know before that you can have alcoholic beverages for free on long distance flights. Gin and Tonics are awesome!”

Well, next time I will try and write about my project again. Something to do with Great Tits and networks and personality and stuff I believe.        

Best wishes for the ‘summer’!

Btw, in the end, I do not want to leave you with a cliff-hagger, I did finish the social networks book.

See you at the movies

Hello again, it’s been a while. So the field season is over now. Already? Yes. It only took 3 months. 3 months of getting up at 4:00 AM in the morning, biking rounds in the freezing cold, making days of 15 hours and getting bitten by about 35 birds flees. However, also 3 months of ringing little great tit chicks, having a red fox almost stumbling over your feet, little lambs dancing all around and the most beautiful sunlight falling through the forest canopy at 6:00 AM in the morning. At the moment we are making a movie clip of all of this. Not to try to let people experience those frustrations and magic moments of the field work, because if you never have been out there,  it is not really possible..

No, we are making a little clip to show people what we were up to all those months in the forest, putting those weird base nodes (you should know what they are by now!) and song recorders in trees (“Do the birds all get their own Ipod now?”). But also to share our findings, letting everyone see that what’s happening in “the forest” is not so different from what is happening on your pc right now.

Great tits live together in populations. They are connected physically, by encountering each other, as well as vocally, by singing. In this sense they are not so different from us, we both live in social networks and no one of us is alike.

So, take our best known social network: Facebook

You can:	Birds can share:	We study:
-share status	“I am the best great tit ever!” “I am much more reliable!”	Fitness consequences of personality
-share locations	“I am near my nest-box right now”	Spatial behaviour
-share songs	“teacher, teacher, teacher”	Song
-befriend/unfriend	“If you sing in my territory once more..”	Social Networks

So we are trying to put all this in a 3 a 4 minute movie-clip. Yes we are. It’s quite interesting acting to be yourself and it’s amazing to find out how many hours go in a minute, apparently.. And although it will never come close to having that red fox stumble on your feet, we hope to amaze you never the less..

The story of NB023 and NB042

It is late in the afternoon. The sun has been up for several hours. Two buzzards are circling around each other, vocalizing like two female tennis players on Wimbledon. Attached to a tree, a tree like most other trees, not very well hidden from the eye, is nest-box 23. A nest box very close to nest-box 42 (why this is completely irrelevant I will explain later). Nest-box 23 was, until a week ago, still empty. But not anymore. Next to some moss and feathers, now lies the evidence of a crime. A murder has been committed..  

There lay a little blue tit, still good in her feathers, rigor mortis has not taken her yet. The evidence of the crime is clearly visible on the back of the head. Where some pretty little violet feathers used to be, it was now bold and a bit bloody. Despite this little grim some detail, the bird looks like it is sleeping in the corner. I take her out of the box and give her a place between the leaves on the ground. While doing this I know the murderer is close, maybe even looking. I was warned that this would happen. Still seeing it is, and will always be, a little bit sad.

So, who did it? Who is this cold blooded killer? It was a great tit. Yes, that cute little yellow-black bird, that you mostly see dangling on a bag of peanuts. That’s the one. Why? Competition reduction by means of instinct? Somehow great tits feel the unstoppable need to kill the small birds that they find accidentally in their nest-box. A clear case of wrong place, wrong time. I have read in a book about great tit ecology that great tits sharpen their beaks on a twig. One of the ideas is, that this might make their beaks better fit to eat insects instead of the seeds they have been eating in winter. Well, now I have an additional theory. Nothing seems innocent in nature..

Then there is nest-box 42, the nest-box close to 23. Box 42 has a very active singing owner. During the rounds we make to measure singing activity, this little guy is rarely absent. One early rainy morning I heard him song matching. Great tits only have a few song types and they usually share some of them with their neighbours. In this way they can direct their singing to a specific neighbour (or so is the idea). Bird 42 was happily singing his song, when a neighbouring bird very loudly interrupted him with another song. Bird 42 is not of the type that lets other birds walk over him and so replied immediately with the same song. That neighbour will think twice before invading his territory!

There are more than 200 nest-boxes in my study area, but some just stick with you. Imagine my excitement when I learned that 42’s female had layed her first egg. How will this family develop? Will he be a successful parent? How many of his young will fledge? The disappointment was big when the day after, the female was found dead on the nest. Maybe an egg got stuck? We can only guess. The nest-box was cleaned and 42 was left with an empty box and without a mate. However, such an handsome singer must have the ladies for the picking. And to our surprise, within 3 days the nest-box was full with nesting material again. And today, barely a week later, there was.. an egg! That was quick.

The lesson from all of this?
Lead singers get all the girls!

But also, behind every nest-box there is a story. We only see fractions of what is really going on around us. Luckily there are webcams. At www.beleefdelente.nl you can look at the birds in the boxes 24/7. Of course Vogelbescherming Nederland has only great tit box in the Netherlands not having anything going on (that box used to be in my Dad’s backyard). However, I am sure this will change, and in the mean time there are 10 other bird species to spy on.
No need for television if you can watch life itself!

Cheers

Stalker

So who was studying who again?

The all-inclusive update

As predicted these last couple of weeks have been very busy. The first 2 weeks of fieldworks have been exciting, exhausting, surprising, amusing and sometimes a little bit ‘not as expected’. So much has happened that I do not know where to begin. I can’t get into too much detail, so I will give you a rough outline:

After two days of preparing all the Encounternet devices (think about batteries, setting parameters, soldering, superglue things etc) we were ready to tag some little yellow-black songbirds.

The roosting expection was very successful and the following day the whole team was kept busy with testing birds, tagging birds, releasing birds and hanging up base nodes. I was positioned in the tagging team (read: writing down details of the bird and superglueing my face). It all resulted in releasing 34 Great Tits with little transmitter backpacks the same day.

The next days we hang up even more base nodes, tracked birds and tried to download data. Because some *confidential information* here and there, I was busy until deep in the night preparing forms and devices for the other day. When we finally seem to get in a sort of routine, something *confidential information* happened! After a day of *confidential information* the birds, we had to go out that night for an emergency *confidential information*. This was relatively successful. However, the following morning one of the MSc students *confidential information* a tagged bird. But no man overboard, because we still could *confidential information* another bird. But in the end all the tags *confidential information*.

So now you are informed about that, you will be wondering what are plans are now. Luckily, prepared biologists as we are we have plenty of plans. The next weeks will be about analyzing the data we got, doing song activity rounds at 6 am, recording bird song and executing playback experiments (which mostly involves pretending to be a Great Tit). And that is saying nothing about the next month! Our birds seem to get in hurry to start the breeding season so we have to keep up.

But all things taken together I just want to emphasize what a great team we have! The three master students, without whom we would never have could have done all of this. And our in between PhD and Post-doc freelance scientist, who knows what a good plan B is. Our field technician who knows so much about our winged subjects! Information that we thankfully use! And my promoters who are there when they need to be and know how to keep the spirits up!

Besides the stress and a bit of exhaustion these last weeks, I spend some nice sunny days studying birds in a beautiful forest with some very nice and interesting people. It is not possible to say anything *confidential information* about that!
Keep you posted!

The quest, the damsel and the kiwi

If I had to guess, than I think today was a typical PhDer-Sunday. Headbreaking over the schedule for the coming weeks, while listening to a 'learn the songs of songbirds-CD' on the background. Ok, it may have been more a Biology-PhDer Sunday than anything else, but still. It is not easy making a schedule, because it is constantly making trade-offs. It is exactly like evolutionary ecology: making a lot of small eggs (chicken) vs making one big egg (kiwi); produce a very large clutch at once and die (stick-insect) or produce several small clutches and live long (termite); etc. Well, that is sort of what I have been dealing with today (the making trade-offs part, I mean). Balancing, available hours and unavailable hours, with minimum amount of people needed, not letting anyone work to many days straight and getting a halve day off myself every once in a while.

Wow, that sounds pretty boring doesn't it? I did some fun stuff also. I went along with a roosting control on the Hoge Veluwe. Just to be clear, this is not my project but someone elses. We help eachother out sometimes, the social animals that we are. Ever been in a nature-parc (in the Netherlands) at night? Walking in the dark guided by light rain trying to find your way through the bushes, nest-box to nest-box? Well, I have. The plan was to put tags on female Great Tits. Of course in the quest of my little group (me and Maaike) we found about everything in the nestboxes except female Great Tits. We had boxes with male Great Tits, boxes with Blue Tits, boxes with Nuthatches, one box with a dead Great Tit, boxes that where empty and one box without a bottom. Luckily the other groups were more in luck and we managed to get a lot of females tagged after all. And off-course we ringed all the Great and Blue Tits we came across, so we did not do it for nothing! When you get home at 00:45 that is very comforting, the next morning..

The next morning, back to the field! Trying out the playback equipment in a forest that is not our study field. All the cables and batteries and equipement you have to think about (I am talking about boring logistics again). We placed a loudspeaker in a tree, walked 20 meters away and played a loop-song of a male Great Tit. And we waited.. For a very short period! Because there was the great and brave Great Tit to defend its territory, singing and dancing in the top of the trees it tried to scare away our speaker. However, we instructed our speaker to stay put and so after a little while the brave bird lost interest and went one persuing a pretty damsel. Oh, notice again the similarities between life of birds and life of people.

I promised myself to make it a short blog (and failed miserably). The next weeks are going to be very busy with fieldwork and I might not be able to write every week, so I wanted to make a transition fase for you. That is why I did not say anything about me and the likelihood of me appearing in a SchoolTV episode about geese, Barnacle geese of course :). But, I will tell more about that if the planned shooting tomorrow also goes like planned.

Keep you posted!

Cleaning ladies and bouncing balls

This week was all about Great Tits, strangely enough. On Wednesday morning we went out to ‘help’ with catching and ringing the birds. To catch the birds in daylight our field technician Piet uses mist nets. Piet is an amazing man that knows a lot about the Great Tits and has been working with them at Westerheide for decades. Mist nets are nets that are composed of such thin strings that the birds can’t see them and so they fly right into it. Although they end up in the most strange positions (if you do yoga you can make yourself an image), but they are not harmed by it. Of course a lot of different species end up in these nets. In the three times I have seen them being used these last two weeks we had the pleasure of meeting: Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Marsh Tit, Finch, Long-tailed Tit, Blue Tit and European Greenfinch. Oh and we caught some Great Tits too!

The Great Tits that had not been caught before we took to the NIOO for the ‘Exploration Test’ the next morning. In this test we release the bird in a novel room with five artificial ‘trees’ for 2 to 10 minutes. In total 6 birds needed to be tested and I had to learn how to do it. Together with Piet we sit in front of a window (we can see them, they can’t see us) and score the amounts of hops and flights they make. The differences between the birds are remarkable! Ranging from one little lady directly taking place on one of the trees and cleaning herself the next 5 minutes to another bird acting like he had just swallowed a bouncing ball: Tree 1, Tree 2, Wall 2, Ceiling, Door, Floor, Tree 5, Ceiling, Window, Tree 4, Wall 3, Tree 1, Cage Entrance, Tree 3 within 2 minutes (and that is leaving out the hops and jumps to other braches!). At the end of one of the test we have to get in to catch the bird, but before that we have to know where it is. However, when it sits on the floor right in front of the door we can’t see it. So Piet and me both stood up to see if we could find one of the birds and then it suddenly (in the exact same moment) flew in front of the window. Ok, reading it back it does not sound very scary, but in that moment, I can assure you, it was quite scary! No, really! Those little black-yellow birds, sure know how to surprise you. Of course, we also had a little fly-away: our little cleaning lady. The lesson learned: never trust the quiet ones! We could catch her in the hallway with a net and a ladder. The smart little lady was sitting really quiet in one of the corners of the ceiling. If we had not seen her fly over there, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we wouldn’t have found her for hours. That is the nice thing of working really close with your study species, you just learn to respect them so much more!

In the afternoon I also had to learn how to get blood samples. Well if you think the birds are small, try looking at the veins! But as Piet nicely put it: “The second bird went very well”. No worries, that afternoon all birds were released back in good health in the forest where they came from.

One more thing (as I am already over 550 words again): www.beleefdelente.nl!!! This amazing site created by Vogelbescherming Nederland, will go live again from March 1 onwards. With webcams you can spy on the breeding ecology of 11 Dutch birds. Of course the Great Tit will also be there. Peter de Vries, a colleague of mine at the NIOO, will keep a journal for the Great Tits on the website and I will be the Great Tit Classroom Expert for the Junior version of the site: www.beleefdelentejunior.nl. This means that once a week I will be chatting with kids from primary schools so they can ask all kinds of questions to me about the Great Tits and I can overload them with fun facts about why Great Tits (together with Barnacle Geese of course) are the most awesome birds. It is so very rewarding that I can contribute a little bit to the understanding, respect and protection of our Dutch breeding birds. Yes, I am an idealist. Sue me!

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!!

Why ecology is awesome!

Last week was full of exciting stuff again, but I want to emphasize two of them:

The first, the NERN meeting, is the annual Dutch ecology convention. I was there last Tuesday, just like about everyone in the Netherlands and Belgium who has something to do with Ecology research. From the first minute I walked in, the level of "Hey, you are also here?!" was enormous. Most people were there to make people enthousiastic about their research by presenting a poster, a talk or both. My promoter and and copromoter both had a talk and, of course, I was there to listen. However, not next year my promoter told me after his talk. Apparently his presentation was a warm-up for the talk I am going to give next year. Nice! But, there will be a lot of competition of other very interesting ecology studies going on in and outside the Netherlands. Luckily though, none are so interesting as mine.
The feel of such a convention is so nice, like a little sub-universe with only ecologists. And the best thing is.. I am part of it! The day was closed by a talk from Frank Berendse about the Dutch nature policy. People who follow me on Facebook know that I have a little bit of interest in that topic. But there was more. Namely, books! Well, I should not exaggerate, one book. Yes, I bought a book. Again. Frank Berendse wrote a very beautiful book about nature in the Netherlands and as a total groupie I got it signed too :)! 

So how about the second thing. This was the forest field test, that this week actually took place in an actual forest. Ok. I will admit that I was not totally and utterly filled with enthousiasm to go out in the forest with this cold. But, once I was there it was wonderful! The snow cover revealed all the tracks of the forest inhabitants. In the corner of your eyes, more than rarely, you could see a rabbit jump away. Walking further inside the forest sometimes the smell of a fox sneaked up on you. Did it just recently pass by? Or maybe it was in the burrow beneath me? And the birds were singing loud and flying around high in the tops of the trees. The forest was alive, and the life was visible, smelly, hearable and feelable (I don't care if this is not a word). Ahh fieldwork, you never get closer with your research than during those days, the days you are out there, in nature.

“There are no words, no paints to express all this, only a beautiful dumbness in the soul, life speaking to life.”  (Emily Carr)