Episode 14: The Candidate

The past week has been more of the same, really. As is often the case in science, but really with almost any job, much of the time is spent doing repetitive tasks. And so it goes: get up; record; rest; eat; enter and organize data; eat; go band; eat; sleep (hopefully dream about something other than eating and banding); wake up; repeat. But occasionally, something really cool happens. In this case, Hakan and I caught a pair of birds two days ago that were among the darkest we have seen. The female was darker than most of the males in our study, and Yoni told me that the male was dark even for birds in his Israel population. For me, there is really no question that this male is not a European barn swallow, and is the most clear candidate Hirundo rustica transitiva in our study so far. This is another strong indication that we are actually studying a contact zone between two subspecies of the barn swallow--which is really exciting! It also means that we may actually be able to answer the main question driving my study--Can divergent mate choice actually isolate two populations enough to lead to true species formation? It's a promising finding, but we'll have to wait for all the clues to trickle in before I can say anything definite.

In any case, that's the big news for the week. Also, Ozgun and Leyla are now back, having finished finals, and are now totally dedicated (at last) to the project. Hakan and Leyla Ozkan have gone to Antalya with the car for the weekend, so yesterday we walked to town with all our banding materials and tried for four and a half hours at a number of sites to catch some birds that had so far eluded us. Unfortunately, all but one female continued to do so. The setup at Ahmediye 93 ("Ekmek Site"), where we caught the Israel-banded bird, was particularly disappointing. I was sure I covered all my bases. We put the net in a dark hay storage closet just inset from the window, closed the door, so there was only one way for our target pair to access their nest, and turned on a song playback that we've used to catch at least a dozen birds. I put the playback on loop and we stepped back, waiting and watching a little boy play with a goat and throw pebbles at chickens.

Then, after at least a half hour, the pair showed up. They perched on the end of a cane pole, looking expectantly at the closed door they usually use to get to their nest. The male made a tentative flight toward the place where our net lay (invisibly) just inside the window. He perched again. The female did the same. I listened--Yes, the playback was going. The pair sat. They sat some more. The dummy male continued to sing in a loop inside the hay closet, sounding less and less like a real bird with each repetition of the track. I cursed at the male and told him, "Go to your home! Why won't you go to your home?!" He gave me a look from his perch at the base of the pole hanging from the low ceiling, the 20g of his being challenging me contemputuously--"Is this all you got?!" Unfortunately, it was...for now. We still have about three weeks to catch that male, which just moved in from another site this week. He and his mate are building a new nest after a neighbor nailed a board over the only point of access to their site for unknown reasons, preventing them from brooding their three eggs. These birds are definitely persistent...but, I'll get them...hopefully. Well, time to go try for some birds.

Fins aviat,

Matt

Daily Dose of Turkish: I am a biologist--Ben bir biyolog um (ben beer beeohlohg um)