Last Day of the Field Season

Yesterday marked the last day of the 2015 field season. We ended at the Common Room nest site at Hawk Mountain with an afternoon downpour while on the slope of the ridge.
Soaking wet and tired we finished up our last veg plot.

Within the last two weeks we have done vegetation sampling at 12 nest sites.
Each nest site has 6 plots (nest site circle and 5 randoms), so all in all we did a total of 72 plots. At each plot we are measuring the nest tree characteristics, canopy and ground cover, shrub density, the diameter breast height (DBH) and species of each tree. A few of the abundant tree species we have seen at many of the sites include, Black Birch (Betula lenta), Red Maple (Acer rubrum), Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus), Red Oak (Quercus rubra), and Blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica). 

We are so thankful for the amazing group of people who helped us complete this task. A big thank you to our field assistants, Zach, Corinne, Randy and Cassie and of course our fabulous volunteers Laura, Heather, Holly, Rob, Kara, Marc and Terry. It was hot, humid, there were ticks and mosquitoes  and thick patches of briers, mountain laurel and rhododendron, but we did it!
Thank you all again!

Laurie, Zach and Corinne working on a plot at Stoney Acres

Veg surveys at Mud Pond in the Delaware State Forest 

Dr. Terry Master and Dr. Laurie Goodrich identifying trees

Last plot at Mud Pond before moving down the road to the Silver Lake nest

Corinne recording data for Laurie (who is somewhere in all that Mountain Laurel)

We found her!

Corinne and Laurie at the Game Lands 106 site

Zach using his ocular tube to determine ground cover while Marc records

Everyone hard at work at the Coal Mountain site

Zach walking the transect while measuring canopy cover

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We are also happy to inform you that the movement map with the tagged birds is up on the Hawk Mountain webpage for your viewing pleasure.  Check out
 http://www.hawkmountain.org/birdtracker/ 
to follow the birds in 2015 as they leave their breeding grounds and head south in the fall.
You can zoom in to see where the birds are at currently, and compare movements between those from the same area (Delaware State Forest), those from different forest types (Hawk Mountain and Delaware State Forest) and compare this years movements with the migration pathway from last years tagged bird, Abbo.