Team Poop!!

On March 10, we had another super productive day at the beach. With three of us there, we were able to keep the nets open most of the time, and we hit our desired sample size of 15 females for each of two species (small and medium ground finch). We were also able to capture a few more birds that we were able to process, which was great! Sarah has trained me in how to measure the finch beaks, which is great. I have been watching my colleagues measure for three seasons, so it was nice to get my hands on the calipers and contribute to the dataset.

On March 11th, we hit our target sample size today for the parking lot! We were there well before sunrise, and had our nets in place. The finches are molting, and thus, are not breeding. This means that they tend to flock more, especially at dawn, so we had hit our target by mid morning. Today I set up a time laps video for fun. We'll see how things turned out with it! The most interesting finch we got today was some sort of hybrid, the top beak looked like a fuliginosa, and the bottom looked more like a fortis. I don't think I'd seen anything like this before!

We discovered a lovely place in Puerto Ayora above the Proinsular grocer store. They have amazing desserts as well as scrumptious snacks like patacones with queso fresco. It is on the second floor and overlooks the port.

Amazing view of the docks at Puerto Ayora

A yacht that had hit a rock or something had been on shore for repairs, and was heading out back to sea. Given how small and narrow the channels where marine craft can navigate, it's amazing this large yacht got out at all. The yacht managed to get to open sea by way of water taxis which are single outboard motor boats normally used to ferry passengers from a boat to port. Somehow, there was enough horsepower to get the yacht out!

The yacht getting pushed out of the port with water taxis.

We have decided to unofficially call ourselves Team Poop (and cat) for this field season. After all, our twitter and instragram hashtag is #HappyAboutPoop but you will have to ignore anything about happy toddlers pooping in the bathtub.