Field Notes: Hot and cold – field work explorations during a gap year and finding your Goldilocks zone

I’m walking on the beach, sun beating down on my head, sweat soaking the back of my shirt. I avert my eyes from the bright sunlight, but even so, my eyes hurt from the glare reflecting off the sea and white sand, and a headache is building. My first day on this job, I was not serious enough about reapplying sunscreen throughout my 8-hour shift, and every bit of exposed skin burned to a crisp. Even the backs of my calves burned as I walked. Today, I set reminders on my phone to reapply sunscreen every hour, but a heavy wind has been blowing sand around all morning, and putting on sunscreen means rubbing gritty sand into my cherry-red skin.

It is a few weeks after my college graduation, and I am working a summer job in shorebird conservation with The Wetlands Institute in southern New Jersey. Desiring more field experience before applying to graduate schools, I had decided to spend a gap year working in temporary, seasonal positions. This is my first field technician job, but besides the physical discomfort that comes with working full-time on the beach in summer, it has also been mentally frustrating: rather than working hands-on with the birds, most of this job consists of enforcing protective regulations. Constantly reminding vacationers to leash their dogs and keep out of the fenced-off areas is demoralizing… and occasionally scary when those partying beachgoers are belligerently drunk.

Still, I do love watching birds on this beach. I lift my binoculars to scan the sand, picking out tiny white shapes from the speckled gray background. Good – the Piping Plover chicks are still alive and well, bouncing along behind their mother like little cotton balls on toothpick legs. I continue along the beach, and the shrill cries and whirling white shapes above me tell me I’m approaching the tern colony. I give the nests a wide berth so as to not disturb them too much – adult terns will dive bomb intruders to protect their chicks. Mixed in among the terns are some of my favorite birds: Black Skimmers. Their ridiculously oversized lower bills look like they would weigh down their necks, but the adults still wheel and dive gracefully, skimming the water to snap up fish. The chicks are less graceful, and also remarkably un-skittish; I nearly trip over one as I turn to make my way back up the beach. Protecting these tiny, adorable, vulnerable young birds is an amazing feeling. But are the sunburns, gritty sand, threat of heat exhaustion, and interactions with drunk vacationers worth it? I’m not sure.

Five months later, I’m sitting on a bench on an exposed platform on top of a ridge overlooking Lake Superior, under a steel gray sky. I am now monitoring the autumnal raptor migration at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in northern Minnesota. Wind whips around me, driving a chill into my bones, and tiny snowflakes prickle on my cheeks. I have a scarf covering my lower face, but my breath has condensed on it and frozen it stiff. The cold wooden bench below me saps my body heat and I shiver. In these subfreezing temperatures, it is impossible to retain any warmth while spending hours sitting still outdoors exposed to the wind, as I have been doing since sunrise. I need to stand up and pace periodically to keep my toes from losing sensation.

Just like in my previous job, I spend a lot of time scanning seemingly blank backgrounds through binoculars to spot birds. If I thought picking out Piping Plover chicks camouflaged against sand was hard, spotting raptors in the sky from five miles away is even harder. At least today there are some clouds to provide definition against the birds’ silhouettes: in a clear sky, the pervasive blue light swallows up any distant bird-shaped speck. Many raptors fly so high during migration that they appear only as tiny dark silhouettes, so I’ve had to learn to identify species based on the slightest differences in relative wing and tail lengths, how tapered the wing tips are, the speed of the wingbeats, and the pattern of flapping, soaring, and gliding. It is challenging but rewarding to my pattern-seeking brain. Plus, on some days I get to help the raptor banding team trap and band birds as they pass by our corner of Lake Superior. On those days, I hold hawks, falcons, and owls in a tight grip, making sure to always keep the talons under control, while we identify their age and sex, measure their wings and tails, and sometimes collect feather or blood samples for genetic studies. With some shiny new bling added (a uniquely numbered leg band), we send the birds on their way again. It is incredible to come face to face with such fierce, wild predators during their migration south from their remote northerly breeding sites. But are the numb fingers and toes, frost-crusted scarf, and neck pain from long hours spent staring directly upward into the sky worth it? I’m not sure.

Fast forwarding five months again, I am now deep in an Appalachian forest, hiking through the trees to get to a chickadee nest. Soft, dappled sunlight filters in through the verdant canopy above. It is warm, the ground is steep and uneven, and I am starting to sweat, but I pause in the shade to lean against a mossy tree and scan the forest. Aha! I spot the artificial nest tube, camouflaged as a dead tree trunk, where we know a chickadee pair has built their nest. I am now working with the Curry Lab at Villanova University, studying Black-capped and Carolina chickadees at their hybrid zone in Pennsylvania, and I absolutely love it.

I hike over to the nest tube and gently tap its side. There is no movement; this tells me that both parents are currently out foraging, so I’m not disturbing an actively brooding bird. I open the top of the tube and peer into the dark cavern within. At the bottom I see an immaculately constructed little nest, with a soft floor of moss that has been carefully harvested from the forest and brought inside one beakful at a time, and even some strands of deer fur woven in. Lying in this nest are two brown-speckled white eggs, each the size of a jellybean, plus six slightly gooey, bald, bubble-gum pink baby chickadees. The chicks’ eyes are still sealed shut, but they bulge out of their heads, dark purple above yellow beaks that look too big for their faces. Tiny featherless wing nubs wiggle uselessly as the chicks try to sit upright, but their oversized heads weigh them down. What’s more, one of the eggs is rocking side to side, looking like it too will hatch at any moment. I managed to get to the nest on hatch day! I mark down the data in my field notebook. Once the chicks are 14 days old, we will return to collect data on the outcome of this nest, band the parents and offspring, and collect blood samples for genetic testing.

Working with the chickadees is rewarding and fun. I love spending my days hiking in the forests and observing chickadee behavior. In fact, listening to them calling back and forth to each other sparked my interest in a research question focused on their complex communication system. I ended up joining the graduate school at Villanova to work with the Curry Lab on the eastern Pennsylvanian chickadee populations for my master’s thesis. There, in addition to continuing these routine nest checks, I designed my own study on chickadee vocalizations. Studying a theoretically interesting question, with a species I adore, in a landscape that I enjoy spending time in, is my Goldilocks situation – it fit just right.

If you are a student considering scientific research as well, remember that you don’t need to know exactly what you want to do right away. In fact, I highly recommend taking some time to explore options first so that you can find what fits you perfectly too.

Clay Jones (they/them) is a 1^st year PhD student in the Animal Behavior Graduate Group at UC Davis in Dr. Gail Patricelli’s lab. Their main research interests are in communication, social information use, and social dynamics among group-living animals.

[Edited by Cassidy Cooper]