I got a summer job as an avian field technician in Colorado! I’ll be doing “point counts” — waking up before 5AM to stand at a series of spots for six minutes each and record every bird I see or hear. The data are used to generate maps of how many birds are in an area (“density”) and in which areas each species is found (“occupancy”). They’re renting a car for me — a 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I’ll use it not only for transport, but also as a house for the next 2+ months. The survey sites are all over Colorado and I’ll be sleeping in a new place most nights. I’ve started using a program called Larkwire to memorize bird sounds.
I have zero experience but a lot of drive. This winter I applied to more than 50 animal or outdoor-related summer jobs in the western US. I got interviews for four of them, this bird job being the best opportunity and therefore the highest-stakes interview. L heard my panic when the interviewer asked what species I had seen “on birding trips recently.” She darted in from the other room and thrust her phone in front of me with Google still loading a list of Western species. I’m not sure how I got hired, but it probably had to do with a good recommendation.
I start in three days. Now L and I are zooming out of Las Vegas, no longer living in Sin. I won’t miss these roads and their unsettling resemblance to Mario Kart raceways. We made a good nest for ourselves here, though. I haven’t done much bird practice in the past two weeks. All my attention has gone to end-of-semester projects. Nervous about my level of bird knowledge, quizzing myself on the songs of blue grosbeaks and lazuli buntings as we fly down the highway.
