Field season finale

Well, another field season has been completed, and in many ways it was very ,very different from the last season, but in one way it is the same. Once again, I am “rained” in on the day of my departure, and with all my gear crammed into my small 4WD, I am awaiting news from the traffic conditions report and once again eating too much sugar. This year, like the last, leaving the field was hastened by the need for meeting some sort of bureaucratic or logistic deadline, but unlike last year the recording conditions remain good enough to stay. However, in the absence of bird breeding, I must return to the city and start the many joys of computer analysis and journal article writing.

This morning, as the rain pelted from the sky, the Cottagers came to bid me farewell (or rather unbeknownst to them, they came for their last meal of bread). The bedraggled group came and foraged in the backyard picking off the misfortunate insects stuck in the mud, while a few of their members came and helped themselves to the rest of my bread. Being wet and probably somewhat cold, the group was not eager to hang around, but I was happy that a few of them stuck around in a small fuzzy clump on the veranda.

Leaving the field and returning to the city is always an adjustment for me. There is a certain charm to waking up with the birds (literally) and heading out in the light of dawn, and spending the best parts of the days outside. However, I always have difficulty taking a day “off” and to date, for all seven months of the total time that I have spent in the field, I have yet to take an entire day off where I am not popping out to see the birds, going through sound and video files or analyzing data. That does lend to some exhaustion, especially on arrival in the city at the end of the season, but that exhaustion usually corrects itself after a few days of sleep, watching movies with hubby, cooking, gardening and hugging my pet chickens. But I do miss the field and miss my birds.

This field season, like the last, has lent itself to a lot of great stories to remain written and hopefully in the next few months I will get some of the stories out of my head and on to paper (or the computer screen for the most part).