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?