Now that I am halfway through my field season of surveying for rails and bitterns, I can definitely say that this experience has been wild. Pun intended. Traveling across the state in search of elusive King Rails (KIRA), Yellow Rails (YERA), and Least Bitterns (LEBI) has lead to a number of eBird checklists, many long hikes at night, very few observations of my focal species, but some amazing views of nature and sunsets.

While writing my first post, I had only visited three of my survey sites: Lake Belle View, Lake Koshkonong, and Kettle Moraine. Since then I have surveyed Mack SWA, Lower Wolf River Bottoms, Rat River SWA, the Ahnapee State Trail, Crex Meadows, Amsterdam Sloughs (sort of), Lost Land Lake, Bear Lake Sedge Meadow, Powell Marsh, Thunder Lake SWA, Mud Lake-Columbia Cty, and Mud Lake-Waterloo. I have also revisited Lake Belle View and Lake Koshkonong and completed those survey sites. To give a better idea of my survey sites, I have seven in the northern part of the state for my YERA and eleven in the southern part of the state for KIRA. I kayak/walk/drive to each waypoint, which is a pre-determined location based on where these birds have been found previous. They are usually on a trail, road, dike, or water body. Once I reach each waypoint, I stop and do my passive listening for five minutes. This gives me an idea of what birds are in the area. I take note of all birds that I hear and use those notes to submit checklists to eBird. Once I do my passive listening, I play the focal species calls. I bring bluetooth speakers and use the Merlin bird app to broadcast the calls at the waypoint. In theory, if the birds are they respond to the calls and this is an “observation”. I play the calls for 30 seconds and listen for 30 seconds. My focal species are obviously KIRA, YERA, and LEBI. However, I do have “species of interest” that I also document in my data. Northern part of the state sites I also look for LeConte’s & Nelson’s Sparrows. At southern sites I look for Black-necked Stilts, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, and Black-crowned Night Herons. At all sites I look for Virginia Rails, Soras, and American Bitterns.

Experiences Thus Far:

I have always thought I live a feast-or-famine type of life in terms of experience. Some days are absolutely boring and then some yield the craziest stories. This survey project is no exception. Some days are less eventful where my survey sites are just road surveys and I don’t hear any rails. Then there are days where I’m out kayaking in the middle of the night, not being able to find my last waypoint because everywhere I navigate my kayak I see cattails, so I resort to paddling an hour back to my car, overshoot the access point because it’s pitch black out and the only reason I made it back in one piece was because a hippie couple was camping on top of their jeep in the parking lot area and still had their campfire going. Or even the time that I was at Powell Marsh on a dike road and the property managers tell me they’re safe and that I shouldn’t need waders… Then find out that there is a hole that no one was aware of and I get stuck in water and muck past my knees. That was a fun one.

Not everything is bad and scary though. I have definitely gained more confidence in my ability to identify these species. For reference, King (rare) and Virginia (more common) rails have very similar grunt calls and are often mistaken. Makes it challenging when hearing it in the field as it always means getting the bird to call multiple times. Thankfully, I have been able to find a few observations of the rails/bitterns so that makes this project worthwhile. I had more success with KIRA. I found two at Rat River, which had one of the most recent observations of them. Then I heard one while kayaking Mud Lake-Columbia Cty, which had also had recent observations. The last was at Lake Koshkonong, which I don’t know too much of the backstory on. Then I got one LEBI at Mud Lake-Columbia Cty. I have had zero luck with YERA so far. I have found many of my “species of interest” though! Sora, Virginia Rails, and American Bitterns seem to be a much more common occurrence. I find Yellow-headed Blackbirds occasionally when I visit southern field sites in the day. Mack SWA and Mud Lake-Waterloo are hotspots for them. LeConte’s Sparrows are my species of interest at my northern sites, along with Nelson’s sparrows, and I heard three observations of those! Both of these sparrows are ones that I had never heard before so it’s especially exciting to find these. I keep having to remind myself, or have my advisers remind me, that these are all rare birds and so I shouldn’t be discouraged if I don’t find them but celebrate when I do. Not finding them is still important data.

If I could sum up what I’ve learned so far, it would be that research involves a lot of adaptation and improvisation. I do my best to plan things out ahead of time, but that doesn’t always work out. Sometimes property managers are new to the site and aren’t aware of these birds or the exact area that I’m going to be in. Sometimes I don’t ask the right questions to the property managers and find myself figuring it out on the spot. Other times I travel all the way up to the site just to find out that the water is so low that I can’t kayak out to my waypoints or reach them at all (I’m pointing at Amsterdam Sloughs for that one). Research cannot be plain and simple. Things come up, conditions change. The weather hasn’t been my friend on many occasions and I can’t change that. This has been a difficult year weather-wise and migration-wise but that’s the beauty of this research. Someone needs to see how this is impacting all of these species…

Goals:

My goals for the remaining part of this field season have shifted slightly. First and foremost, my goal is to get back to a point of happiness. To those reading this, I don’t know what type of picture I’ve painted of my project, whether that this project sounds super fun and cool that I get to travel in search of rare birds or that this is incredibly scary that I’m going out alone in the middle of the night in marshes that I’m unfamiliar with. Either way, this past week especially was a challenge. I had gone up for the first time to six of my seven northern YERA sites which are at least 3.5 hrs away. It was A LOT of driving and A LOT of sleeping in my car ( since my survey times aren’t conducive to normal sleeping hours at hotels and campsites). I hadn’t found any YERA and then I had my situation at Powell Marsh and missed a couple waypoints. I had been doing a lot of surveys back to back with little success and everything was wearing me down. I started questioning if I’m the right person for this and if I had the mental and physical capacity to take care of myself when I’m out surveying alone. I need to remind myself that I am capable and that I need to believe in myself more. I’m not the first girl to do night surveys and I certainly won’t be the last. I just need to find a way to find enjoyment in this instead of stressing out so much. Otherwise I’m blowing a great opportunity to take in all that nature in Wisconsin has to offer.

Second goal: Focus on what could make surveying easier as an evaluation deliverable for this project. I feel that I have been (inadvertently) finding out flaws that could have been avoided early on. This is definitely a chance to use my skills that I’ve learned thus far in the program. Although this project has been an experience, to the next lucky individual who gets to check out these sites, I want to help set them up for a higher chance of success.

Going Forward:

Going forward will include revisiting and getting the second round all of the sites that I had just visited. I can reach very little conclusions based on only one visit, so having the data of the second visits will make it easier to evaluate my data. After I finish the field season I will be able to a) generate maps based on the observation locations b) use topographical maps to compare and contrast each site c) attempt to determine if there are any connections between where these birds are found. However, I don’t know what to expect! This project has had many curveballs. But as I’ve learned thus far in this project, don’t make plans that you aren’t willing to change. Maybe that should be my new motto… ha!

Til then, wish me luck and happy birding!