Harbour Seals and Raptors!

When I started this blog I decided to write it entirely through my iPhone in an attempt to
be efficient. Right now I am at URI waiting to meet with a financial "advisor" to determine how much I can take out for a private loan. The max college loan amount from a private institution is normally the tuition subtracted from the University determined total expense for the year. Ugh. Anyways.

Lots of birding these days. I saw a super neat bi-colored seal at Rome Point the other day. I was able to Digi-iPhone her (at 60x, though it looks further away than it would if you were just looking through the scope). There were ~60 seals hauled out. I am looking forward to hearing the noisy seal choruses that occur when there over 100 hauled out. I was hoping to see a Rough-legged Hawk and the short-eared owls at Sachuest NWR but instead there were 2 Red-tailed Hawks and 2 Northern Harriers. I Digi-iphoned one of the Red-tails at a fairly close distance. So beautiful.

















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Short-eared Owls!

I have been birding fairly intensely the past few days and my effort has resulted in a few amazing encounters. I fell in love this Sunday with a Short-eared Owl . She was hunting in a field with two Northern Harriers at Sachuest NWR. Absolutely amazing! Watching a Short-eared Owl through a scope is a magical and life altering experience. Apparently the next evening there were 4 Short-eared Owls, 2 Red-tailed Hawks, and 3 Northern Harriers are in the same field!!! I was tempted to drive over there but I was busy birding Jamestown and was spellbound by a coyote that was hunting around Fox Hill Pond/Salt Marsh (Fort Getty). I wish that Coyote was a Wolf but I am glad that we at least have Coyoti. It is a botanist's and ecologist's dream to have Grey Wolf back in the Northeast. The deer are overabundant and are destroying native flora and negatively impacting forest regeneration. Not only do they spread invasive species but their overabundance leads to extensive herbivory and browsing. Enough ranting... For the Birds- Ryan

This Fall and my RI Big Year!

So I have not updated this blog in quite sometime. I got pretty wrapped up and absorbed in my studies this last semester. I finished with a 3.94 which raised my gpa by .01 (Bringing it to a 3.9). My classes were challenging, relevant, and exciting! Field botany was a dream! Squeezing in work was a challenge and required alarms set to 5:00 am and bushwhacking runs through the forest. I finished vegetation classification surveys for three locations and surveyed over 60 transect points. The surveys were to monitor landbird
habitat and each transect was located at a breeding bird survey point. Currently I am working on the New England Cottontail survey effort which requires searching for and collecting pellets when the weather (snow) cooperates and trapping when it doesn't. Super fun work!!! I absolutely love it!
I decided to do a RI big year! A frivolous incentive to go birding, chase down birds, and have adventures. I am sitting in my car writing this, waiting for a pair of Tundra Swans to show up(it's 5 degrees F). I am hoping to get a lesser black-backed gull later at Ninigret NWR. As of now I have 77 species and I am looking forward to picking up more including some lifers. The listing excitement can be followed on http://ybl2011.ribird.org/lists
I have been filling the surf void with birding. RI has been flat for weeks and thus I have not surfed in weeks, anxiously awaiting swell!
Always chase your dreams and fight for your happiness! -Ryan

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Home in Rhode Island!

I left Louisiana to come home to Rhode Island eight days ago. It has practically taken a full week to start feeling recovered and back to normal. I am very glad that I responded to this horrible calamity and in the process gained a lot of unique experience. Fortunately on my thirteenth day down in the gulf I had an opportunity to get out into the field and search for birds. I left from Myrtle Grove-Port Sulfur and proceeded to Barataria Bay. My heart sank and my eyes swelled, there was oil everywhere we went. On St. Mary's point I saw washed up boom that was saturated with oil so heavily that it was as black as tar. The cordgrass was inundated and dead. Snowy egrets and juvenile white ibis were walking through, standing, and feeding in water that was coated with a sheen of oil. I saw a laughing gull that was so heavily oiled that she could barely fly. My colleague and I made a rescue attempt but were left with empty nets and hurting hearts when she escaped with gobs of oil hanging from her legs. Bay Jimmy and Wilkinson Bay were as damaged and oiled as St. Mary's point. Snowy egrets with spots of oil and worn looking plumage's were literally everywhere. The birds looked ragged and most of them looked "wet". I saw brown pelicans holding their wings out like cormorants, a behavior that I have never seen before. I used my iPhone and birdjam to call out to clapper rails that were surrounded by oiled marsh with the hope that we may be able to catch an oiled one. A few rails deep within the marsh, practically impossible to capture with only two people, called back. It saddens me to consider their fate. After ten hours and numerous miles patrolling for birds we only saw a total of a dozen or so boats actively sucking up oil from the shores of an oil impacted marsh. One crew placed bright white boom out and six hours later we saw the same boom dark brown with oil. On our way back to the dock a dolphin jumped four feet from our starboard side and swan with the boat for a few hundred yards. My thoughts are on the plovers and rails...

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Day 10

I have been stationed at the Hammond bird rehab center for ten days now though it really feels like 100. My days are long and my perception of time has become distorted. My body and mind are craving adventure though the ability to get out and go birding is not a possibility. Even though the "restless" side of me feels neglected, I am very happy to be down here. My heart wants to be on the frontlines of this response, exploring beaches and marshes. I know my work here is important and I am happy to do it but I should be down there looking for the clapper rails and black skimmers that are being swamped by the onslaught of oil. Anyways, I feel very fortunate that the path that I chosen and have worked hard to carve has facilitated the coalescence of my passions and livelihood.

Gulf oil blowout and Ninigret!

I am sitting at TF green airport on my way to Louisiana to respond to the Gulf oil blowout. The call came in for me to go Monday afternoon and my thoughts have been racing ever since. Moments before I received the message Jen and I were exploring, birding, and swimming Ninigret pond tidal flats! Definitely one of my favorite places in the world and to experience it with Jenni cultivates warmth and contentment in my chest. I feel so inspired after a day with my love. Jen is becoming a proficient birder and was quick to spot a solo cedar waxwing! Nothing is cuter then that.

I will be stationed in Hammond, LA at the bird rehab center. I have an appointment of two weeks with two additional days for travel. My days will be long with 12-15 hr shifts. I plan on completely embracing this experience regardless of how emotionally challenging it turns out to be.

Jenni found a moon snail at the tidal flats!










Ninigret pond tidal flats!










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Monomoy N.W.R. Roseate Terns!!!

Today I traveled to Monomoy N.W.R. for tern band re-sighting training. I love Monomoy! The second largest colony of common terns on the Atlantic nests there. Monomoy has a diversity of habitat including dunes, ocean, freshwater/saltwater marshes, and freshwater ponds making it an important island for numerous shorebirds. We had the opportunity to count flocks and re-sight the bands on roseate terns. Re-sighting a "field readable" (a small tiny metal band with a combination of letters and numbers that provides information about the bird and the breeding colony that it is from) was very difficult though super fun. Using an elite level spotting scope is a necessity. The wind was gusting at 20 knots and the sky was overcast which made reading the bands a challenge but kind of fun! I am now confident that I can read bands accurately and distinguish roseate terns from commons. Pretty damn excited to get back in the field and search for roseate terns!!!

I tried digiscoping with my iPhone but the wind was making the scope unsteady.








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