Avian Ecologist

Lawn

Well, good thing I went out to take pics of the grass panicles in my yard because the guy came to cut it today. Ultimately want to be lawn free, and the good news is, I didn’t find any Bermuda grass! I used iNaturalist and some lawn grass ID web pages to zero in on […]

RGEE on Ubuntu with your Conda environment

This should get you to the point of having rgee run off your own custom Python environment, with the downgraded version of the Earth Engine API required to authenticate at the time of this writing. A workaround for the bug in initializing GEE is starting your script as follows (bypassing ee_Initialize()):library(rgee)ee$Initialize(project=’your project name’) You will […]

Skua Inspo – March

It appears that the last MD pelagic to have a great skua this month was Mar 1 1992 and there were 2 birds seen then! Notes variably place the records at Elephant’s Trunk and near Baltimore canyon, but all records appear to be during a 12 hr trip. Similarly, there were several birds per trip […]

Pelagic <3

I thought it was only fitting to adorn the title of today’s post with the icon of the month! My heart was warmed by scores of alcids today! I stuck with pretty much the layer formula that works for me: This time I tried my heated socks, but the battery on one of them is […]

Skua Inspiration

As I psych myself up for yet another pelagic season in the north Atlantic, I review this month’s “nearby” skua sightings. On Valentine’s Day 1991, be still my heart: it appears a record from shore at Manasquan inlet NJ (among others that year) was accepted to genus level. Other encouraging records: So yet again, I […]

Best Birds of 2023

This year, my “big birding vacation” was that I signed up for a dream trip in the form of Kansas lek treks! On 4/14 I visited a lesser prairie-chicken lek and got to start the morning with some dancing chickens. The afternoon would see a possible tough miss of unpreparedness, where flying by the seat […]

Great Allegheny Passage

For my birthday, the guy I’m seeing took me on some cool little hikes in Ohiopyle. For one, we parked at the falls and walked across the 2 foot bridges.

Pelagic Overnight

We are just getting back from an incredible night and day at sea! From land, temps bottomed out at 57F and got up to a high of 79F. We started the morning at ~90 mi offshore off Wilmington canyon and worked our way back in from there. Here’s what I wore to stay comfortable… I […]

Yard Tree Candidates

From the list native to the county that would also produce some yummy fruits (for me and the birds) or add conservation value…

Compassion Fatigue

Yes, I’m writing this the day after Earth Day for a reason. I love that beautiful day we take to soak in nature in my favorite season of rebirth and new growth. However, the flip side of the appreciation that comes with being an ecologist these days seems to come with an inevitable degree of […]