This is Bubbles. She was christened by my field-station friends after I explained why I had stuffed and FedExed a dead bird to myself. Essentially, Bubbles is a blackbird blow-up doll. When placed in a male's territory, her copulation solicitation pose is highly effective at collecting seminal fluid.

Bubbles has been through a lot. Her bill got damaged at Cornell when she was made this spring, and her tail requires a hair tie for extra support. She was also attacked yesterday by a female that was supremely pissed by her presence on the territory. (I heard myself yelling "NO!" and wading as fast as I could to rescue her from being pecked to pieces.) But the worst scare happened my first night here when I left her in the bird lab with the rest of my supplies, only to come in the next morning and find her surrounded by a mess of feathers and mouse droppings. The mice took out some of her back plumage, so she has a bit of a gray spot where the down is exposed. Now she spends nights in my cabin, where occasionally I wake up to the sound of scratching outside and look around to make sure she's still there.

You know a piece of science equipment has worked its way into everyone's heart when people ask at lunch how Bubbles's morning was. Also, my field notebook contains lines like, "Male mated for third time w/ Bubbles. 0700."

It is a well-known fact that males of many species court rather indiscriminately and can, especially when deprived of sexual activity for some time, be induced to mate with remarkably incomplete stimulus objects. �Grandfather of blackbird ecology Gordon Orians, 1969

(Explanation of audio: I was accompanied by two GIS interns who wanted to see how Bubbles worked. They were looking at a frog when the male came in.)

I just want to say that I've seen Bubbles in action multiple times, and every time I still cannot believe it works.

Please please please have your proteins intact.

And that's what I'm doing in Ontario.