Falling the infested nest tree

Thanks to the concerns of my friends. I am still doing fine - just a lot of work lately and tired day after day. But I am confident the rewarding end will truly justify the means.

A barbet's nest tree had been cut down today due to the fact that it was located in an area infected with the Brown Root Rot Disease caused by pathofen Phellinus noxius. The maintainence workers helped us cut down the trees, and our job was to oversee the cutting of the nest tree and bring the nest tree into the lab for future measurements and analyses.

Before arriving at work, this was one of the Crested Goshawks that I saw trying to catch squirrels for breakfast.

This was the nest tree to be cut down.

It was a particularly successful nest tree with 5 different excavation attempts and two successful nest cavities.

The workers working hard under the blazing sun removing the debris.

Boom! The bottom of the nest tree was already infested with termites, so taking it down was a quick 20 seconds (or even less).

The top part of the tree was already decayed so some of the nest cavities turned into rotten wood when it fell onto the ground.

Some of the bottom ones remained in good conditions.
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Crested Goshawk and Comic World Taiwan in NTU

Last night was unbelievable with the howling wind and heavy rainstorms. This morning, however, the typhoon turned much milder and we had light rain ever since.

Today, a friend invited me to see the Comic World Taiwan (CWT) hosted at National Taiwan University. Not wanting to miss out on a chance to understand Taiwan's unfamiliar culture (to me, that is), I immediately said yes and headed towards NTU. While there, my friend pointed out a Crested Goshawk that flew right by her clawing a Chinese Bulbul. I guess work habits die hard (my friend is also my co-worker at TBG). What a handsome bird.

If you look closely, you can see the feathers from the bulbul in the goshawk's beak.

Returning to the main focus of the day, CWT was an eye-opener in terms of quantity and quality of the underground Taiwanese anime artists and fans of the costume roleplay (cosplay). What an intriguing part of Taiwan's culture. After checking out different booths and photographing some generous cosplayers at CWT, my friend and I headed to Ximending to eat a late lunch, and she showed me around the area which was full of her childhood memories.

Overall, it was a great day considering that otherwise I'd be staring in front of the laptop all day and be unproductive.
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Crested Goshawk, Dr. Miller, and Mr. Hoodi

Yesterday (Friday), before I arrived at work, a group of people was standing on the pathway of TBG looking at something. So I stopped and took a look too.
It was a Crested Goshawk, perhaps a fledgling or a juvenile, staring at the pond below. Swimming (and squawking) in the pond was an adult Common Moorhen. One of the watchers told me that there are moorhen chicks hiding in the bushes in the pond and the goshawk had been staring at them for quite a while now.

In the end, the goshawk finally made its move, but somebody (an elderly lady, it seems) in the audience screamed when it happened, so the goshawk came away empty-handed. I am not totally sure what to make of that.

Before noon, I attended a special talk given by Dr. Jeffrey C. Miller of Oregon State University on the topic of "Repeated Standardized and Consistent Measures for Assessing Lepidoptera Biodiversity through Time for Assessing Climate Change." Quite a mouthful, no?

Besides describing his researches in various sites around the world, the more intriguing part of his talk was his "cyber-field guide" on Lepidopterans - "Lepidoptera Wing Pattern Identification System" at this URL. Basically, when you came across a museum specimen or an individual in the field that you couldn't identify, you can take a picture of it and submit it to this system. By selecting reference marks on the wings of the Lepidoptera, the server will immediately pick the best matches in its library of images and tell you what this species is. What a wonderful tool it is, especially for an amateur naturalist like myself! I can't wait for them to get grants to build a faster server and a better library of images (not just in North America but the entire world). I feel great potentials of using system not for Lepidopterans only, but also for other confusing taxas, such as spiders, ants, marine invertebrates, fishes, etc.

Anyways, after lunch, it was all office work for me. During my breaks, I photographed our next-door-office cat named Hoodi (means Tiger-brother in Chinese). Isn't he just handsome?

If there's one thing changed about me from this internship, it was transforming me into not just a dog person, but also a cat person too. I just love these independent and cool-looking felines!

Today (Saturday) will be all work (and this blogging) from home, so don't expect another post from today. Have a great weekend, everyone!.

All beautiful creatures to me & Typhoon before weekend trip

I came to work early today to check out if the nestlings are ready to fly or not. (By the end of today, the nestlings still had not left the nest yet - meaning overtime work for my co-workers who have to come in during the weekend to try and capture the fledgling barbets.)

Almost, but not yet.

Father Barbet waiting for his break once this clutch is over.

While preparing to go to the botanical garden in the morning to check on the status of the rat traps, a research assistant observing the barbet nest called us and said that a Crested Goshawk had just landed on the nest tree of the Muller's Barbets (just like last month). So I hurried and got to the garden to see the goshawk sunning itself in a majestic manner.

What a beautiful creature!

After awing over the beautiful raptor, we went to check out the traps. In the end, 7 out of 20 traps (just like I predicted) caught rodents - one Norway Rat (Rattus norvegicus) and six Asian House Shrews (Suncus murinus). This was my first time doing rodent survey in Taiwan, so even unimpressive results like this was still exciting to me. Although I was a bit surprised by the lack of squirrels caught by the traps.

Norway Rat (above photo) and Asian House Shrew (bottom photo).

We released the shrews on-site since we were able to identify them and their small body size won't able to tolerate being trapped in a cage for too long.

Shrew or not, I think they are quite beautiful too.

The Norway Rat was trickier to identify since there are other similar sized rodents in Taiwan, so we brought the rat back to the office for more identification.

In the end, it was definitely a Norway Rat because of the slender head and a blunt nose. Nevertheless, everyone in the office agreed that it is a charismatic rat.

A typhoon is heading towards Taiwan! Unfortunately, our internship program is arranging us to go on a weekend trip to Eastern Taiwan (where the typhoon is passing by) this week, I am still contemplating about going or not. Sigh, such a tough choice.

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First Accipiter Saw in Taiwan

In the morning, we went back to where we released the fledglings yesterday and searched for them again to see the interactions between the offspring and their parents.

While observing the above fledgling, I discovered an interesting observation.

In a large crevice of a Camphor tree, I saw three different Muller's Barbets utilizing the hole as a drinking and a bathing hole. It was pretty exciting to see so many barbets busy on a certain tree.

The barbets had a refreshing bath as they got their feathers nice and wet in this hot day.

Nearby, a Swinhoe's Japalura was saw hugging this branch.

When I got too close, it got scared and ran away. I picked it up and placed it on another tree.

That was when it gave me the scary look and showed me teeth.

On the way to lunch, I came across another Black-crowned Night Heron - standing on just two sticks in a pond. Quite a sight. For some reason, the Night Herons in Taiwan are just as active as when they are at night. Totally defies the meaning of a "night" heron.

Besides finding a bath hole for the barbets and getting good photographs of the Night Heron, the highlight of the day probably seeing my first Accipiter in Taiwan! It was a Crested Goshawk (Accipiter trivirgatus) perched on a tree that was also a barbet's nest tree!

Even though it is a common Accipiter in Taiwan, today was my first time seeing them. And memories of the beautiful raptors back in Canada came rushed back to me.

What a handsome raptor! Its look reminds me of the Bald Eagles and Red-tailed Hawk. Oh, how I miss my bird friends.
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Successful birding Monday

Yesterday's weather wasn't so nice, so I didn't even bother to step outside. Today was pretty much the same but minus the rain. Animals (humans included) usually enjoy going outside after being sheltered for so long - either because of boredom or because the basic need to feed.

Cloudy gray day.

Great Blue Heron Number One.

Coming to Quilchena Golf Course, I saw four Bald Eagles flying across the marsh and starting to land on the trees. However, they were being extremely playful (or territorial) and air-tagged one another. Seeing this wonderful scene, I quickly ran to photograph this moment.

However, as soon as I ran past, I realized that there was something on a tree across from the ditch and the Bald Eagles. It was an Accipiter and the conspicuous eyebrow makes me believe that it is a Northern Goshawk, just like the one I saw last time. So I had the dilemma of either going after the playing Bald Eagles which I see quite frequently or this uncommon Goshawk. Actually, I am faced with a similar situation in my job-searching life, but I am not going to dwell on that here. In the end, I decided to run back and took pictures of the special Northern Goshawk.

Taking these pictures make me feel like a paparazzi - exciting but a bit shameful of disturbing the privacy of such a beautiful creature. Here are some cropped pictures to see the bird better (please let me know if I incorrectly identified this bird, thank you).

Then the Goshawk took off and caused a bit of scene from the near-by passerines. I found that it flew to a tree inside the golf course, but the picture of it ended up just a dark spot in the photograph so I decided not to post that.

The Bald Eagles (two adults) were still around, but no more acrobatic flying displays.

Great Blue Heron Number Two.

Great Blue Heron Number Three. It was trying to catch something on the field but was unsuccessful.

Northern Harrier flew by.

Walking around the Terra Nova Rural Area and I saw these extremely shy Hooded Mergansers. I kept walking back and forth (and they kept swimming in the opposite direction) just to get some pictures of them.

Walking back, I saw this lone adult Bald Eagle.

When it suddenly...

Turned around and mooned me! Ha.

A treetop full of noisy Red-winged Blackbirds.

Good evening.
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