Happy Friday

It's Friday night and what are you doing? I'm sitting at the dining room table with binders of research spread about me, reading up on monitoring protocols. In a little while (10:30), I'm going to be going to bed because I have to wake up at 5am tomorrow. In about seven more hours, I'll be rolling out of bed, nuking some old coffee in the microwave, and driving an hour into the mountains to go... birding!

That's right, the fun part of my job is about to start. I'll be following a team of 7 biologists as they train and prepare for a summer season of landbird monitoring. The birds are the most active in the mornings so we've got to be out in the field by 6:30am. I'll be armed with camera, pen and paper, and my new toy, a digital voice recorder. I'll try not to get in their way or step in a nest.

My job, after this fun field trip, is to take their stories and communicate their science through a variety of projects that I'm just starting to develop. One of the first ones will be premiering next week:

rangermikefriday.blogspot.com

This is my new weekly blog (starting next Friday), where I post essays and photos on my travels throughout the Pacific Northwest. Should be fun.

So birding this wejavascript:void(0)ekend and then visiting Olympic National Park on Monday and Tuesday!