Birds

It's been an interesting few days. It's becoming more and more obvious how little time is left in the semester, and oddly enough I'm becoming a little more ok with it. There are a lot of things that I just want to be done with, as is usual, and it doesn't really matter that that also means that my college days will draw to a close. This place has done a lot for me, but part of me feels like it can't help me anymore, and that I need to move on to other things.

Yesterday was Relay for Life, and for some reason the energy of the previous two years just wasn't there. There were fewer people there, and everyone seemed to be less into it. It wasn't necessarily bad, but it wasn't the experience it usually is. Andy stayed for a while this time, and I spent a lot of time talking with him. It made me feel good about where I'm at in my life, and where I'm going. Grad school is definitely in my future, but first I need to just explore. Explore the world (or at least parts of it), my options, and myself. Because I'm starting to realize that I don't have as firm a grasp of myself as I thought I did. Which is a pretty strange thought, and I'm not sure how to articulate it so I won't say anything further about that.

Now on to the title of this post. I left Relay early because I had to get up early today to go on Dr. Schultz's bird walk. Well, I didn't have to, but I wanted to. It was at 8 (which is late for a bird walk). I didn't get much sleep because I had one of my weird dreams and woke up, unable to fall asleep for a good long while. I've been having a lot of dreams like it lately, where I create this task for myself in my sleep, and I wake up absolutely convinced that I'm supposed to get it done in real life, and that I've procrastinated it or am somehow on a really tight schedule and should figure it out so that when I wake up I can just get right on it. And they're absurd things. Like last night, I was supposed to count plants for DUBS. There were strips of grass and sod with little flowers in them, just laying on the ground in Mitchell, and Bridget kept telling me that I had to count the flowers. It didn't make sense to me why (it certainly didn't seem very scientific) but I felt like I really had to do it. But for some reason counting wasn't just a simple task. I'm not sure why it was so complicated, but it began to really stress me out. And then in my stressed out state I couldn't fall back asleep. I'm also not sure how much of this happened when I was fully asleep, in the dream, or half awake.

But I digress. Back to the birds. A good number of people showed up (5 students in all: myself, Meredith, Liz, Sarah, and Alice, and of course a bunch of people from Granville). There weren't many birds out (it was the morning after a storm and the temperatures were cooler), but that didn't really bother Dr. Schultz, who was really good at explaining the biology of everything that we did see (most of which was fairly common). There were quite a bit of tree swallows out, which are pretty common (they're utilizing a lot of the nest boxes that are set out) but they're one of my favorites anyways. And I found out that there have been SANDHILL CRANES at Dawes recently, and I would REALLY like to make it out there. That is a very rare sight in Ohio. Overall it was a good re-introduction to birds for me. I started learning my birds last year, but then never really continued that this year. I'm surprised I didn't try more over the summer. Hopefully this summer I'll work on it a bit more.

After the bird walk I helped Meredith check buckets, and there were a fair amount of salamanders (mostly males) leaving the pond. Unfortunately, a lot of toads decided to go back and forth as well, and they were not so fortunately toxic. Raccoons had raided many of the buckets, and there were a lot of mangled toad carcasses. The ventral portions were eaten and their backs were left, of course, because that is where their glands that produce bad-tasting chemicals are produced. And oddly enough, there were eggs scattered around, so when a gravid female was eaten the raccoons left the eggs alone. I'm kind of wondering why, as I would think they'd be nutritious and delicious. The worst part was that a decent amount of toads had sustained really severe injuries but were left alive in the buckets. The first toad that we saw was in one of the minnow traps (so I don't know HOW a raccoon managed to do this) and had the skin ripped off of one side of its body and a hole through the axial muscles so that you could literally see into its body cavity. And it was hopping around relatively normally, though more sluggishly than most toads. When I set it down on the ground and it tried to hop away from me, some intestines started poking their way through the hole. A lot of other toads had various organs spilled out, but were still alive (barely). There was one female with a large tear in her side and eggs and viscera were spilling out, and an (uninjured) male was in amplexus with her. She was still alive, but barely. Why the raccoons didn't just finish these toads off I don't know. But it was a little traumatizing to see the results.

And so that I don't end on such a gruesome note, I'll say that after checking buckets Meredith and I picked Liz up and we went to the indoor farmers market and I got some more grass-fed beef (only a pound this time, because it doesn't have to last me super long). I also got a delicious chocolate chip scone from the village bakery. And all of this was accomplished before noon. I actually kind of like getting up early, it makes me feel so productive. And I should probably get used to it anyways.