Ah, the Frustrations of Field Work

Yesterday, I was up in the Sierra attempting to do some field work for my dissertation.  As I have discussed, the species I study is the Evening Grosbeak, a large finch that can be found throughout the mountainous areas of North America.  Can be found, that is, if you are lucky.  I was not lucky yesterday.  I spent my day at the Boca Springs Campground near Truckee, CA.  I visited this spot that last year, at this time, and found a decent number of Evening Grosbeaks hanging around the campground and nearby wet meadow, so I was fairly hopeful that this trip would be a success.  Well, as so often happens, nature did not fit in the nice tidy box that we humans frequently try to put it in.  There were no Evening Grosbeaks at Boca Springs.  Amusingly, there was a flock of about 8 or 10 Red Crossbills this visit, where there had been none last year.  This just serves to illustrate why both of these species are examples of nomadic species, and one of the major reasons they are hard to study.  Still, I did get to spend a lovely morning birding in the mountains which included seeing all three species of nuthatch that occur in California, so even when field work does not go well other rewards are there for the taking.

The full list of bird species that I saw this trip included: Steller’s Jay, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Mountain Chickadee, Dark-eyed Junco, American Robin, Northern Flicker, Clark’s Nutcracker, Mountain Bluebird, Green-tailed Towhee, Pygmy Nuthatch, Acorn Woodpecker, Yellow-rumped Warbler, White-breasted Nuthatch, Chipping Sparrow, Red Crossbill, Song Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, Townsend’s Solitaire, Brown Creeper, Red-tailed Hawk.