Reflections

Designing and implementing a field research study definitely presented challenges for me. Firstly, it was the middle of the winter when I chose my site. I personally love McConnell Lake because you can walk around it and because of the old growth. A major challenge for me is that I am a single student mom and have an 18 month old along with a 10 and 11 year old hockey player and swimmer (tons of drop offs and pickups). All of my field work involved me working around my older children’s schedules and packing my son around while I collected data. With my initial assessments of the sites I saw moss and snow as well as some tracks mostly human and canine. After reading an article on microclimates I went around the lake and tested old growth and 1st and secondary growth for differences in temperature and humidity but my instrumentation wasn’t sensitive enough. When I designed my research study, it was based on the fact that I had seen Red-winged blackbirds at McConnell the summer before. Through Feb-April there were no Red-winged blackbirds. I recognized I had to alter my design and found three locations in Kamloops that had varying densities. When I began counting I just chose one point at each site and counted however I found myself counting more birds than my estimates. I bounced back and forth between variable circular plots and transects and points. In the end, I decided to stay will variable circular plots and randomly selected points so that I could include all my data in my final report. I went from just counts and distribution to surveying aggression Yet, the challenges didn’t end there. In interpreting the data using two-way anova with replications tests, I recognized that my predictions: male-male aggression would be higher when there were lower female to male ratios; and female-female aggression would be higher when there were lower male to female ratios—were wrong. Or at least, the findings were insignificant and failed to disprove my null hypotheses. My goal was to collect all the data before the primary females nested. Although by the end of my surveys it was evident that they were because I (with my son in his carrier) were getting dive bombed by the males. The males will alert call to the females who will alert back before the females hide in the bulrushes or matted down sedges (I assume close to their nests): When the females alert back it’s as if to say the predator hasn’t gone away which sends the males into a tizzy. Despite trying to be quiet and still at the points once the males knew we were there they were relentless. To say the least, all of this experience has given me an incredible appreciation of how ecology theory is developed. I’m just glad I chose Red-winged blackbirds and not Grebes.