Starting Work

My first week at work was pretty interesting. I learned a *lot* of new things.

I got familiar with the lab, which is actually divided into two parts. We work with zebra finches in the animal care facility (which is very nice and organized), and we analyze blood samples in the "lab", which is part of the biology department.

We started off the week by setting up some bird cages and nest boxes so we can breed our zebra finches. The next day, we picked out females that we'd like to breed (basically the ones that were available for the job--we didn't discriminate between "good" or "bad" birds) and took blood samples from them. I've never taken blood samples before so it was interesting to learn. I'm not perfect at it yet but I'm getting pretty good. We also weighed the birds and measured their tarsus length. This helps us assess their body mass vs. size.

Then we picked out the males, and also weighed them and measured their tarsus. We didn't take blood samples from them because we only care about the females' red blood cell concentration ("hct"), since we're investigating how reduced hct specifically affects the females' parenting behavior.

The birds were then paired up. It was so interesting to see how they behaved upon pairing! The male starts singing to the female almost immediately. I knew about this before but I've never seen it, so it was fascinating.

I also learned how to make egg food for the birds, which I'll be doing every morning.

Later in the week we went out to see the field sites, which was a great experience for me. The field sites are located at two farms south of Vancouver, close to the US border. I pretty much grew up on a farm for a good portion of my life, so it felt a lot like home. We checked out starling nests that have been set up and assessed them for the number of eggs and chicks. They are just starting to hatch, so I was able to see eggs, newly hatched chicks, and older chicks. Below are some photos from one of the field sites.

My boyfriend and I also checked out the Bloedel Conservatory this week, which houses exotic plants and birds like parrots.

Overall I'm enjoying my time here, except for a couple of quips. Those would be 1. that food here is like 2x more expensive, which sucks because it's something you *have* to get and can't really "save" on and 2. that I dropped my $600 camera this week. It's not entirely broken but can't focus properly anymore.

At least my work is going well. Everyone in the lab is friendly and my project is enjoyable.

I'm off for a run. :) See ya next time!

PS: I have tons of pictures I'd like to share but inserting images in these posts is really a pain in the posterior... maybe I'll figure out an easier way soon.