Wednesday, May 6, 2009

weather



One of the things I love about field work is that it makes you very, very, very aware of the world outside your walls. Any given day is filled with a handful of decisions that all swing on what the weather is doing now, what it just finished doing a while ago, and what it will be doing in the near future. Case in point. One of the methods we use to catch birds involves a devise called a mist-net. These are very fine nets that, if properly placed, are difficult to see for both a person and a bird. Depending on what kind of bird you are trying to catch there are numerous sizes to choose from, as well as ways to place them in order to maximize your chances of getting birds. When a bird is caught in the net it hangs in a little pouch like a hammock until we get there to pull it out (we check very frequently and are well trained at this task). Sometimes the birds seem a little dazed and will sit in your hand a for a minute or two before it flies away. The picture is a female Ruby-throated hummingbird doing just that. These nets are very effective and can catch large numbers of birds quickly, if, and that's a big if, they are run when the weather is right. Sun is bad, it makes the nets more visible, and wind is worse because not only is something moving in the breeze easy to see but the wind can also blow the net into the nearby foliage, not good for the net or the netters. However, here in the mountains of Virginia, our biggest issue is moisture. Damp is fine, cloudy is excellent, we can even handle fog. But if it is truly misting then the nets get covered in moisture and become very visible. It is very often very wet up here. So we are constantly deciding whether it is worth the considerable effort to open nets. We compulsively scan the sky and, when the internet connection is working, check the radar to see what's coming our way. All in an effort to maximize the amount of time we have the nets open, without having the heavy clouds dump on us while we're running them. We are all amateur meteorologists. We spend a lot of time looking at the haze around the moon, evaluating the wind and always keep an eye to the sky.