I am so, so sorry for the late post. I've been having a lot of technical difficulties, but I finally got my other laptop back from the Geek Squad, and everything is good as new! So we're safe.
Anyway, can you believe we're already done with Week 8? That means there's only two more weeks of my on-site internship. Time is going by way too quickly, but as much as I love my internship here, I need a small break, as I'm sure you all do too (I hope school isn't killing you too much).
I'll try to keep this post short and sweet. I know a lot of you have been worrying about the Great Horned Owls, because I really haven't talked about them lately (kestrels are just so interesting!). So, to keep you updated, I have in fact been researching the owls some more. I've found that owls are also changing their nesting habits. If you remember from like 5 posts ago, owls don't make their own nests, but rather take others (usually red-tailed hawks) or find a crevice somewhere. It's a rather detailed study, but to sum it up, "urban owl nests had significantly lower site basal area, higher conifer composition, and lower shrub cover. Both urban and rural owl nests showed lower canopy cover and closer proximity to forest edge, paved roads, human habitation, and water than random sites" [Smith 2012]. So, it looks like owls nesting behavior is also changing due to urbanization. Yay, research!
Now, as much as I would love to inform you about my work on the kestrels, most of it now is related to my final product, and I really wanted to keep that a surprise until presentation day, By my calculations, this product is going to take a lot of work and I need to make sure that it's successful before I start raising people's expectations.
Okay, I promised a shorter post, and I'm going to try really hard to fulfill that. Next on the discussion list is my week at Liberty Wildlife. To be honest, I pretty much forgot everything I did (my friends call me a Dory). I'm sure most of it was either research or intake, but there was this one time where I got to help feed the infant bunnies (because we have like 30 cottontail rabbits now so it takes a long time to feed them and give them their medicine). On Thursday, I remember I couldn't find my on-site mentor, so I ended up going around the whole education trail (where they keep the birds they use for presentations and tours), so I got to meet some new friends!
Apology: the pictures are bad because there's a mesh cage messing up everything, so I'm sorry.
Now, time for the animal of the week, the Luzon Bleeding Heart Pigeon!
So, if you weren't already aware, the Bleeding Heart Pigeon got its name because of the dark red spot right in the middle of its chest. This bird actually prefers to stay on the ground, and only leaves it to begin nesting. In fact, if approached by a predator, the pigeon will actually run away instead of flying away. I tried to look more into this, like why do they choose not to fly and how fast can they run, but apparently these birds are "elusive" and "shy", so not many have actually recorded this kind of information. Oh well, maybe that can be someone else's senior project.
These birds also mate for life (for some reason, we've been choosing a lot of animals that mate for life).
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| A Bald Eagle |
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| A Turkey Vulture (Whose name is Bailey) (Which is my last name if you don't remember) |
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| A Female American Kestrel Looking up at the sky dramatically |
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| A Male American Kestrel Who is really fluffy and cute |
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| Hi, I'm a bird. Tweet tweet. |
These birds also mate for life (for some reason, we've been choosing a lot of animals that mate for life).
Finally, these birds will often fake injuries to lure predators away from their nests, which I guess is really brave of them, but seeing as their main predators are birds of prey, crocodiles, snakes, and monkeys, this can also be really dangerous. Well, I'm sure they know what they're doing.
That sums it up for this week! If you have anything to say to me, comment below. If you don't have anything nice to say to me, best to say nothing at all. Or lie. Have a nice life, and don't let the schoolwork get you down!
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| This is how you win the lottery. |
