I'm on my first weekend off since my parents came to visit. Last week marked the third-month anniversary of Chasing Birds in Florida, which means this internship is officially the longest I've ever held. It also means I'm soon reaching the halfway point, but I can't tell you how little that fact has yet to sink in. Once more my life is defined by nest searches, nest checks, chick ages, and the absence of weekends because the birds don't have them. It's a bizarre mentality that repeats itself every field season; individual days lose meaning entirely as we repeat the same activities hour after hour to collect a mountain of data. Then all of a sudden, a month or two or five are gone, and the only reason I'm aware of their passage is that the dates are written down in my field book and the official nest cards.

For example: On March 7 I was at a territory when I was lucky enough to spot the male carrying twigs straight to his nest. Over the next few weeks the pile of sticks grew into a platform, then a basket, then a basket lined with palmetto fibers. By March 26 the female was incubating four eggs. We checked them every three days for 18 days until the chicks began hatching on April 13. Some time between April 19 and 22, an unseen predator picked them all off. The nest was labeled "Empty/Failed," and everyone was back to square one.

I found the re-nest this week, which we weren't sure the pair would attempt given the lateness of the season. But even more striking was my feeling of déjà vu upon pulling up in my ATV and getting ready to watch them all over again. Sure enough, the male behaved in exactly the same way and led me directly to the new nest. April might as well not have happened, Nest #2 could just as easily have been #1, and the reality that my days were completely interchangeable made me a little dizzy. And then I fed the birds some peanuts and started a new nest card for them when I got back to the station.

Obviously things have changed between January and now. Two interns hired in October have finished their projects and left. The scrub oaks are putting out new leaves and slathering pollen on everyone. Most of all, it's freaking hot in the afternoons, and the humidity is rising to alarming levels. (At 7:00 this morning my shirt began sticking to me.) But until we get the all-clear to give up on nest searching, my days will be exactly the same as when I got here. And when we start our independent projects, I can promise you I'll be doing the same experiments for two straight months before the number-crunching begins.

Yes, I know I've signed over the next six years of my life to this routine. If I'm not careful, my 20s could be summed up in a box of yellow field books. (And let's hope this doesn't happen.) But I don't think that'll be the case, 'cause the jays are goofy and the scrub is wonderful and as long as I get to grin at stuff every day, the work is worth it. Go figure, I can actually get a degree doing this!

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Lots of photos; browse at your leisure:

Two weekends ago the research station, which also owns a ranch nearby, hosted an ecology and evolution conference. The interns got to ride around with the symposium attendees on a seriously old buggy thing.

Not too much like scrub, huh? Lots of studies on nutrient cycling and effects of grazing are conducted here. Next week is the annual ranch 5K, and I resolve to get a better time than my dismal February run.

Cooper's hawk perched at the station, preferably not on the lookout for jay babies.

Coachwhip, named for its coloring and the speed with which it shoots away from you. (Not poisonous, Dad, don't worry.) Also a jay predator.

Young gopher tortoise!

Um...this is a beetle. With funny footprints. A stag beetle?

Common nighthawk dozing on a snag. They were all over the place in Maine, too, and I'm always reminded of my last job when I see them wheeling overhead.

"Peanuts?"
This breeding pair simply refused to nest this season. We watched them forever and bushwhacked through their massive territory, and they just never did anything. But the male and female are both ridiculously tame, and I have a lot of fun messing with them when it's my turn to follow them around.

"Peanuts!"
Interns are, after all, walking dispensers.

Here's a video of the entire family stuffing their faces on the back of my ATV.

Some photos of jay chicks. Hello and welcome to the world!

And your siblings too! Please all survive! (edit They didn't.)

Seven days old and freaking humongous compared to sparrow chicks. There used to be four in this nest, but no longer.

Looking highly disgruntled at ten days. Jay chicks take 18 days to fledge (in comparison, sparrows leave at nine). The first few have begun teetering out, and the parents go berserk if you approach them.

Gratuitous self-portrait. In the background is the male from a territory whose nest I found yesterday.

(Remaining photos by April and Eric) I attended a research burn last week, and it was one of the craziest things I've experienced. A fire regime is essential to the maintenance of the scrub ecosystem; lightning is the natural source of fire, but we have a station land manager who schedules controlled burns throughout the property.

We are so cool in our flame-retardant clothing that I'm not even going to compare them to huge yellow pajamas.

Slumber party of assorted plant and bird lab interns.

First, the boundaries of the plot are hosed down to provide a barrier for the fire when it reaches the edge.

A drip torch creates instant flames.

Things start smoking up.

Depending on the vegetation structure (and therefore quantity of fuel) within the plot, the fire can be low intensity...

...or high. Sarah's happy because her project focuses on the effect of fire on soil biogeochemistry, and her data collection begins RIGHT NOW.

Remaining flames are extinguished with the hose, which is hooked up to a massive tank that holds several hundred gallons of water.

Contrary to what the smoke and blaze may have suggested, the plots we burned were actually quite narrow. Sometimes the fire crew burns entire stretches of land, and you can see the smoke from anywhere on the station. Charred plants and ashy sand line the ground for weeks until new growth begins poking through.

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Tomorrow I'm going to Orlando to accompany an intern on her apartment hunt, and I can't wait to be in a big city again. Our boss recommended an Asian store in town, and I am SO ready to buy 5 gazillion bags of dried tofu and frozen dumplings and soy sauce and rice! Civilization, here I come...