{"id":244,"date":"2019-08-09T13:49:14","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T17:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/?p=244"},"modified":"2019-08-09T13:49:16","modified_gmt":"2019-08-09T17:49:16","slug":"guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blog by Emma Burke: My field field experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Emma
Emma banding a Savannah Sparrow nestling.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

              In the summer\nof 2019 I had the privilege of doing an internship in the field fresh out of my\nfirst year of college. I am an Environmental Studies major and I have always\nwanted to try out field work to see if I liked it. Prior to this I had never\nlived completely on my own and had almost no idea of what to expect, which made\nit really exciting and helped mask any apprehension that I felt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Because I\nlove camping, I was so pumped to camp for the first 2 weeks on the job before\nmoving into my apartment at the beginning of June. Little did I know how\ndifficult it would be camping while also working full time in the field. It was\nMay when we started so it was still pretty cold and wet at night and in the\nmorning. This spring apparently was much rainier than most, as illustrated when\nI arrived at the campsite and set my tent up in record time before it down-poured\nand thundered the first night. We would get out of a long day in the field but\nnot really have a comfy place to crash and relax. Though hard on the body,\ncamping helped bring the birding team close together. We had some great\nafternoons together chatting, playing cards and making dinner with what we had.\nI was the youngest on the team, so everyday of the 8 weeks I was in Vermont I\nwas learning something new from my coworkers who were all extremely supportive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              The first\nweek was by far the most difficult. The only thing I knew for sure was the time\nI had to wake up: 3am. There was a lot I did not know on the first day: what\ndid Shelbourne Farms look like? Would I be able to find any birds? What would\nthe work day be like? When we arrived on the first day, I still did not know\nwhat it looked like because it was dark for the first few hours before the sun\nrose. We spent the first part of the day stumbling around in the dark setting\nup the mist-nets. Everyone on the team was very helpful in teaching us how to\nset up and take down nets. Most of the job was learning by doing and making\nmistakes on your own. On the first day one of the guys on our team, Tom, took\nme aside and took me step by step how to extract a bird from a mist-net, which\nwas incredibly helpful. There are few things in this world that I have\nexperienced as exhilarating as seeing a bird caught in a net from across the\nfield and sprinting through the tall grass trying not to trip and finally\nextracting it and bringing it over to be \u201cprocessed.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Some of\nthe tasks that we were responsible for seemed impossible at first. For example,\nEmma White, the grad student working with Noah, mentioned \u201cresighting\u201d and\nidentifying the color and metal bands on a bird\u2019s legs from far away. This\nseemed impossible, as bird bands are tiny as it is and birds can fly very fast.\nHowever, as the weeks went on, I figured out the best times to catch a glimpse\nof their legs, las they were landing and when they were perched in the trees or\non grass. Eventually, I found resighting to be very enjoyable and interesting and\nit helped individualize the birds in my head (though at sometimes maddening\nwhen the birds wouldn\u2019t cooperate and let us look at their legs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Another\ntask we were given was nest searching in the tall grass. Throughout the\nentirety of my time in Vermont, it was a whole different story. It was always a\nchallenge for me. I would identify \u201cnesty\u201d behaviors of a female bird and\nsearch in the grass, but it was always so difficult for me to narrow down the\nexact spot the female bird had the nest. It was so discouraging and always\nseemed near impossible to find a tiny nest in grass that was up to my shoulders\nat some times. I always preferred to resight birds over nest searching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              One great\nthing about field work and this internship was that no two days were exactly\nthe same. One day I might be off the farm resighting other fields to try and gauge\nif any of the birds born on Shelburne Farms came back to a field other than the\nfields on Shelburne Farms. Other days I might be on Shelburne Farms. On a\ntypical day I might be banding chicks or nest searching, resighting or setting\nup nets and trying to catch \u201cbirthday birds\u201d that had been born and banded on\nShelburne Farms the previous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              You learn\nso much about yourself while working in the field, as you have plenty of time\nalone with your thoughts while scanning the field for activity. For one, I\nlearned that I am not a morning person. It was very hard to get myself\nmotivated in the mornings when it was dark, wet and cold before the sun had\nrisen and I felt homesick and discouraged. But as it warmed up, it was a lot\neasier to be motivated and tenacious in my work. The amazing thing about this\nkind of work was that the birds don\u2019t care if we are hot, tired, or if it\u2019s\npouring and thundering out; they will continue to go about their day, meaning\nwe have to continue monitoring, studying and collecting data. Though difficult\nat times, I gained really valuable experience and I can\u2019t wait to try different\nkinds of field work in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

              In the summer of 2019 I had the privilege of doing an internship in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGuest Blog by Emma Burke: My field field experience - Perlut Lab<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guest Blog by Emma Burke: My field field experience - Perlut Lab\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"              In the summer of 2019 I had the privilege of doing an internship in the …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Perlut Lab\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-08-09T17:49:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-08-09T17:49:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2019\/08\/emma-burke-768x1024.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"perlutlab\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"perlutlab\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"perlutlab\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/#\/schema\/person\/00ec553d6852f0e9bdbae1440eab3499\"},\"headline\":\"Guest Blog by Emma Burke: My field field experience\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-08-09T17:49:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-08-09T17:49:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/\"},\"wordCount\":1056,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2019\/08\/emma-burke-768x1024.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/perlutlab\/2019\/08\/guest-blog-by-emma-burke-my-field-field-experience\/\",\"name\":\"Guest Blog by Emma Burke: My field field experience - 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