And on a trip I did go

So today was interesting. I went on my first Ornithology class field trip, which was conveniently located on the North Fork, and was most likely a once in a life time trip, for we were banding birds. After waiting at the ferry port for about 20 minutes (evidently because of something Gaby did), Dr.MG (and the cool kids in the class who went in this trip) rolled off the ferry in his highlander, picked me up off the side of the road, and off we went. After arriving at the park, it was only a hop, skip, 5 minute walked that was really 10 minutes, the smelling of a dead animal, the meeting up with the worlds best bird artist, and we were at the banding station... Onto the main attraction. Now, birds (the feathery little things that flutter about in the sky and poop on your car) are wild animals and quite frankly don't like humans, and so in order to capture them, you need to set up nets. There were two set up, both very simple in design. Two metal poles sunk into the ground with 5 black plastic strings running across, and an extremely fine mesh net held up by said frame work of strings and poles. At the bottom of each layer of netting, there is a little pouch formed, and in theory, the birds should hit the net, fall down into pouch, and get tangled up so it can be collected and banded. Analogy- The birds are like bugs getting caught in a spiders web... except the birds are usually fine in the end. All the birds we collected were tinny and really cute looking. The first two collected were a Swamp Sparrow and a Golden Crown Kinglet. The man who was teaching us knew all the birds by heart and kept asking me what they were, but because I am who I am and idk all my birds, I felt as dumb as a box of rocks. I soon redeemed myself my successfully retrieving a tufted titmouse from the net (Dr.MG failed at retrieving his bird... just saying). I also got to record the second batch of birds...a White breasted Nuthatch, Downy woodpecker, and a Cat bird. The third and last batch of birds consisted of my Tufted Titmous, a Phoebe, and a Bird so cute April wanted to ingest it so its cuteness would be inside her... the Ruby Crowned Kinglet. Said Kinglet was by far my favorite bird of the day, due to its small size and colorful plumage. It did not have a red patch on its head though, which after googling, I am quite sad I did not see, but now I have something to look out for on our next birding trip. Interesting things I learned this trip. Birds keep fat in a hollow in their upper chest. A bird can loose all its weight in one flight that can last 24 hours or more.