Avian Ecologist

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 […]

Best Birds of 2024 – Running List

I start this as a placeholder blog annually to keep track of bird sightings and dates, to summarize at the end of year! Today it truly begins… …more to come…and to be fully fleshed out in a NYE post!

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 […]

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 […]

Remote Sensing for Birders

Or: Birding in the era of climate change In my previous job as a researcher, I modeled hydrology of wetlands, including the playa lakes region. Visiting Kansas this weekend was my first time getting to spend time in that region since that project concluded, but sadly, I got to see the phenomenon we were testing: […]