End of the First Week

Tuesday and Wednesday morning I went to one of our sites to start recording barn swallows we banded Monday evening. Hakan and the others were all in Antalya either to take or proctor mid-term exams, so I was by myself at the apartment passing the time recording or organizing our data collection system. Tuesday's recordings didn't go so well because I showed up at the site at about half an hour before the town woke up and a half dozen tractors and motorbikes chugged past while I was recording. Often, the driver would shout some greeting at me or another person on the street right as my bird of interest started singing. Nevertheless, I stuck it out for quite a while, getting about three and a half songs of any quality. Just when I had given up, Mustafa (the site owner) and his neighbor, neither of whom speak English, came down to where I was packing up my things and indicated they were about to eat and insisted several times that I come up and join them. I was very happy for the invitation and impressed with the Mustafa's generosity at inviting some Man Who Stares at Birds into his house for lunch. And though the neighbor and I tried valiantly to carry on a conversation, it appears that my 10 word vocabulary just isn't cutting it--so I'm working on that.

Sonogram of the first song recorded from a male for my study

Hakan and Metin came back late Wednesday night and were snoozing away yesterday morning when I left to try to record. As soon as I shut the door to leave, I realized I had left my good headphones inside, along with the house key. Oh well, I thought, and walked on to the site, where I found that all the birds were perched close together on a wire (a recordist's nightmare--because you often can't know who is singing or overlapping at a given time). Furthermore, my focal male was not to be seen. I started the recording and the wind started picking up (another big problem for recording), just as my first set of batteries failed. Replacing the batteries, I stood there waiting as the bird didn't show up and kids started to trickle into the school abutting the yard where I stood, occasionally peering in at me curiously. An old woman came out of the neighboring house and gave me a distrusting look, ignoring my greeting and going about sweeping the entrance to her home. Not an uncommon reaction--whether in Turkey or Colorado--I thought to myself. I shrugged internally and looked back up at the place where I thought my bird would perch. Just then--was that singing?! I turned around and looked back to the wire where

A European Goldfinch I saw on the walk home

the twenty or so barn swallows had been earlier and saw--were those tail feathers painted blue? Yes, it was my focal male. I jogged quietly (or as quietly as one can jog on gravel) over to get a stronger signal. The bird was singing his third song in a bout as the wind started to pick up. The male, seeming to sense my presence or perhaps just to mess with my head, left his perch, flew over and landed where I had been waiting for him all morning and started singing. I jogged back over into the yard, trying to record as I went, but as soon as I got there, he stopped and flew into the barn. Just then, a gust of wind maxed out my microphone and I checked the display. Batteries half full. As things were going so swimmingly, I thought this was a good opportunity to "hit the old dusty trail" home.

Recording aside, yesterday was quite a success. Hakan, Metin, and I went back to Mustafa's site at night and caught two more males and several females. We have now caught and banded 9 barn swallows for our study!  Hakan and Metin went back to Antalya today, so I'm on my own again to record and map out our sites till they get back on Saturday. I'm going to try to get to the site a little after dawn tomorrow to try my luck at recording the males we caught last night. More on that to come.

-Matt

Daily Dose of Turkish: Thank you= "teşekkür ederim" tesh-eck-coor  ed-er-im