Discontinued

Well, as it turns out, it's quite challenging to blog and finish a PhD. So, I opted for the latter and am

My dad and I at my graduation ceremony

now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. You can find out more about what I'm up to here. I hope this blog has been of help to some folks out there interested in a career in science!

Cheers,

Matt

It's been a while...

Clearly a lot has happened since July. For example, the fall semester. Much of this time was spent pouring over the loads of data I've been collecting for the past four years and trying to make sense of it in order to write a cohesive doctoral dissertation improvement grant (DDIG) proposal. Although I didn't apply for one this year, this is the format of the second scary exam you have to take as a PhD student in our department: alternatively referred to as the "5th Semester Exam," or more commonly "Comps", short for comprehensive exam. For this one, all your committee members (5 faculty members) are present and you basically spend 3 hours discussing the written proposal, what you've done thus far, and what you will do to finish up your dissertation. Fortunately, I passed, and as of about 12pm December 13th, I am now a PhD Candidate! Woot!

Since the beginning of this semester, my collaborator and good friend, Hakan, came for 3 weeks to bring a second year of blood and feather samples from Turkey, which he collected largely by himself last summer and help with DNA extraction and the start of paternity analyses for our two years of data from that population. I also submitted a couple grant applications, am working on a review with my advisor, Becca, and a professor from Oxford, Nat Seddon, and we are already starting to get geared up for the field season. One of the main take homes from my Comps Meeting was that I should repeat the experiment I did last year in Colorado to achieve a bigger sample size. We have also added a lot more field sites, thanks to the efforts of Amanda Hund, our newest PhD student, so we are interviewing a lot of undergrad field assistant candidates and helping them write grants for summer funding...the search for money is never ending. And that's the long and short of it.

Cheers,
Matt

Science is...tedium

Well, it's the middle of July now, which means the field season in Colorado is slowing down. We have most of the birds banded and IDed at nests now and the first slew of nestlings have fledged. That means I now have a bit more time to dedicate to catching up on neglected emails, organization, and that old evertask, data analysis. Currently I'm going through my recordings from Taiwan and trying to pick out songs which miraculously sound clear over the constant rumble and clanking of trucks going somewhere at 3:30 in the morning. Also, I'm listening to my dictations recorded on a separate audio channel where I mutter to myself as I strain my eyes in the morning dim to identify the bird I'm recording to avoid analyzing the same bird twice. It was maddenning doing this, and now I feel my frustration overtake me at times as I go through it again. Still, it will be cool to measure these songs and see how they compare to other subspecies. After all, if it were easy, somebody'ed have done it already...

Back in the States

Taipei's most important temple, Longshan Temple

Well, I made it back stateside, after another harrowing 28 hours of travel. I've now been back for about 2 weeks and am finally mostly temporally adjusted, though early morning banding here in Colorado has made the transition even more difficult. Overall, my trip to Taiwan was a whirlwind, but a great success and I made it back with all my blood and feather samples and song recordings. I'm now beginning to input all my morphological measurement data and to annotate and measure songs for individual males to see how the Taiwanese population compares to others I've sampled in other countries. From a very preliminary look, it seems like the Taiwanese birds may "rattle", or produce really rapid pulses at the end of their songs, at least as rapidly as our Colorado birds, and maybe faster. A lot of tedious measuring is required to see if this bears out, so we'll have to see--but this is exciting for me, because I had thought that this population might make up for short streamers and pale breast with having a really impressive song. But, again, we'll just have to see if this hypothesis is supported once I've measured a lot of songs for several birds. Well, that's all for now.

Cheers,
Matt

Mission Accomplished!

A large bee on one of Taiwan's endemic flowers (Academia Sinica campus)

A night heron showing off his balance

Yesterday I went out to record at 3:30am, the earliest so far, and was rewarded with a change of fortune. I got good recordings for 3 known individuals and 2 unknowns--bringing the total to 8 known and 10+ total. These are the numbers I was looking for, but they really bely the effort that went into collecting them! Those 100+ songs amount to about 350 seconds, or just under 6 minutes! These 6 minutes required around 13 hours over 5 days of some of the most difficult and highly frustrating recording of my life. I had hoped for recordings from 10 known birds, but the remaining birds are either in the nestling phase of breeding (not singing), or "hate me" and only alarm call when I'm around--so I feel proud and lucky of the samples I've got!


That is to say, my field work here is done and I've now transferred to a (much cheaper) hostel in the center of the city in order to see some sights before I fly back to Colorado. Yesterday, I traveled to the Danshui District in the far northern part of the city, along the coast. I walked around for hours in an extremely uncomfortable heat and humidity reminiscent of Alabama, perusing shops along the riverfront, poking my head into a temple, and visiting the San Domingo Fort overlooking the harbor. It was a really nice change of pace, and I'm enjoying the thought of not recording at 3am for a while! Today I'm planning to go to what was the world's tallest building from 2004 to 2010. More on that later.

Cheers,
Matt

ps--I added 47 new photos

Side trip and troublesome birdies

Lately I've been having a lot of trouble recording. The trouble is that the traffic along Academia Rd, where most of our swallow nests are, becomes deafeningly loud, with tour buses, huge dump trucks, and a phalanx of noisy scooters rumbling by, at around 6am. This has led to the barn swallows shifting their dawn song to about 1 1/2 hours before the sunrise. As one of my primary goals is to get songs for known individuals we have captured in order to match up morphological measures with song characteristics, this is quite difficult when you can's see color bands in the dim, predawn light. As of today I have a good sample of around 10 songs for 5 known males, which is not bad, but not what I was hoping for. The work continues...

The main drag in Luodong

Me, at the Luodong night market

Collecting a beetle trap

In other news, yesterday I took a side trip to some mountains south of Taipei, along with Shih-Fan and three others working in Sheng-Feng's lab. We hopped in a university vehicle in the morning and took the highway out of town, alternately passing dense city centers, thick forest, and wide, dry river basins sprinkled with watermelon and cabbage fields. When we got to an area called Cilan forest, we began a 3000 foot climb along the windiest road I have ever been on, causing me to feel carsick for only the second time in my life. Near the top, we stopped at a small rest area and tucked into a bucket of the Coronel's chicken (yes, KFC is everywhere!). At that point we turned around and the crew started to work, collecting beetle traps that had been baited with rotten meat. These traps are part of a study on competition between different burrowing beetle species as a function of temperature and elevation, in relation with climate change. It's pretty cool, and I admit a little jealousy for this field work, which involves setting 45 traps along a roadside, and then driving up and collecting them some time later. But did I mention they're baited with meat? Uhhhh! Once, someone forgot to put the screwcap on the trap before loading it back in the car---QUITE nasty smelling.

But I did get to see some gorgeous countryside and managed to get out and walk along the road with Shih-Fan while the others collected traps for a bit. We heard lots of birds, and saw a few--it's quite difficult to spot most of these guys in the thick growth of the forest. And even more tricky to snag a photo, but I managed a few that are recognizable. All in all it was a really nice day and a pleasant change of pace from pointing a microphone at birds for hours.

Which reminds me, I've got to be hittin' the hay for a couple hours before going out to try some more recording. Wish me luck!

Cheers,

Matt

Moving along

A pair of Taiwanese barn swallows caught from the nest

So the past three days have been action-packed. Along with the help of Shih-Fan, and an undergraduate assistant named Yiu-Jin, we've made much better progress than I could have hoped for. Despite the fact that weather.com insists there's a chance of thunderstorms every day I'm here, I've yet to get rained on once (though the humidity is right around 90%). And that has helped us to catch 6 birds the first night, 9 the second, and 13 last night, bringing us nearly to the amount I was hoping to catch. Because we're situated in the middle of the city, we've been waiting till most shops close down and shut their lights off at around 10pm to go ahead. We then carry a ladder, extendable poles, a mist net, two butterfly nets and other questionable accoutrement all along the main drag, earning quite a few stares by late-night passersby.  I aim to post some videos later, to give you an idea of exactly what we're doing to catch these birds, but it requires a bit of skill, a good deal of humility, and a full dose of luck. So far, it's paid off--leaving the hard part.

The endemic Taiwanese whistling thrush

The hard part would be getting around 10 clear song recordings from around 10 or so of the males we've banded. This turns out to be quite difficult when you throw in traffic noise and querulous people trying to ask you questions in Chinese and for some reason pointing and making cooing noises right near your microphone. When you add in the maddeningly unpredictible behavior of the birds themselves, you've got yourself a right old chore. So I think, amazingly enough, we're about done with our intense banding effort--I've been basically going out from 9:30 to 3 each night and then turning around to record from 4:30 to 7:30, and mostly sleeping till it was time to work again. But now it'll just be the going out at 4 for a bit till I get the sample size I'm looking for.

But for tomorrow, I'm going to take a little side trip to check out the mountain research area where Sheng-Feng studies beetles. More on that to come, and keep a look out for new photos--I've just added 40. There are updated links to the new Field Season 2011 album, and hopefully there'll be some cool videos soon. Thanks for reading!

Gan Bei,
Matt