Avian Ecologist

Great Horned Owl “Hooting Season” Over

While I still hold out some hope, we’re largely past the key window for detecting great horned owls vocalizing. “In Wisconsin, territorial hooting ends in mid-Feb, in keeping with timing of first eggs laid…” – Birds of North America Across the state, birds are probably on eggs by now and thus less conspicuous. Since this […]

Fastest Fitting for Bayesian Models?

Right now, I’m focused on computational efficiency (and thereby speed) of fitting Bayesian models. For my dissertation I used R-INLA, so in this “lab notebook” of a blog I need to jot down my thoughts around some current methodological hangups. Right now, even though it seems to be the fastest thing available, it’s honestly still […]

Valentine’s Evening Luck: Barred Owl!

I was so thrilled to have my 2nd identifiable sighting of an owl that might breed here last night: I saw my 1st ever barred owl in my atlas block! Unfortunately, it was just hunting, so I didn’t have any breeding activity clues. It caught my eye when it flew up to a telephone line, […]

Linux: Fixing Broken Dependencies

Before I forget: sudo apt-get -f install

#NameThatBirdSong (Twitter Sci-Comm Game)

Today’s bird of the day is: ring-billed gull! Birds I’ve covered for my twitter game so far are… American black duck mallard herring gull common raven Canada goose common redpoll painted bunting pileated woodpecker wild turkey bald eagle American robin American crow black-capped chickadee

Considering Planning a “Spring Break” Trip

So I don’t really get spring break anymore, but I’m thinking about heading to the Black Hills Mar. 24-Apr. 1 this year. I want to bee-line to the Badlands (get to Blue Earth, MN Friday night and drive the rest of the way Saturday). I hope to catch some straggling gray-crowned rosy-finches before they’ve left […]

The Latest Bayes in R

What good fortune that I looked up advances in Bayesian methods the day a new task view was published! If you’re just starting with Bayes, they even have packages listed here designed to help you learn. I’ve been using R-INLA and for a few reasons I became curious what else was out there. I’m still […]

A Possible Owl Sighting at Dusk, Finally!

At 5:38 PM I spotted an owl flying away from me! I didn’t get binoculars on it in time, and from the angle and distance it would have been hard to ID even if I did. I want to say from size and shape it may have been a great horned owl, but I’m not sure.

Warm Temps = Snow Melt = Snow Fleas!

We went to Sax-Zim bog this afternoon and found so many spring tails jumping around! I dare use the other common name, because it did make me hopeful for spring. The longer we have warm temperatures, the more bearable this winter becomes. We walked leisurely along the trail behind the visitors center before driving at […]

1st Night of Atlas Surveying for 2018!

Tonight from 5:00-7:30pm I went out to check my atlas block for the 1st time this year! It was a warm, windless evening, but dusk occurs now while after-work traffic is still relatively high. So, some of the spots I surveyed last spring close to the highway were too noisy. I went to Wisconsin Point […]