To some, it is easy during these cold, snowy days to curl up with a cozy blanket, a good book, and a hot cup of tea. But where do the wildlife go? Sure, some migrate to where it is warmer (sounds like a good idea about now…) while others seem to do just fine with their surroundings! When you look at this picture, what do you see? This is a typical question we ask the…

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This week Dispatches from the Field is happy to welcome back Emily Williams, who polled some of her friends and colleagues on what their real fieldwork resume would say. Read more about Emily at the end of her post! While every career on the planet probably has its own idiosyncrasies and oddities, some careers have more than most. I’d wager that many people in the science field could easily give Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs…

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This week Dispatches from the Field welcomes Jenna Finley, an undergraduate student from Queen’s University studying plant ecology, to tell us about her first time in the field with her supervisor. Check out the end of the post to learn more about Jenna! My very first field season has now come to an end. I managed to learn a lot and pick up a few good stories at the same time. The earliest, and as…

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This week Dispatches from the Field welcomes Jenna Finley, an undergraduate student from Queen’s University studying plant ecology, to tell us about her first time in the field with her supervisor. Check out the end of the post to learn more about Jenna! My very first field season has now come to an end. I managed to learn a lot and pick up a few good stories at the same time. The earliest, and as…

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My advisor has always maintained that a field crew runs on its stomach.  In other words, well-fed field assistants are much happier and much more productive – not to mention much less likely to mutiny. There is no doubt that this is true.  Trying to run a field crew without an adequate supply of coffee, chocolate, or wine is an enterprise doomed to failure.  But – at the risk of disagreeing with my advisor –…

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“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.” -T.S. Eliot Wow 2017 was a busy year! Here at Dispatches from the Field, one of us successfully defended her PhD, one submitted hers, and one decided to start a PhD. However, we still managed to publish 43 posts that received almost 14000 views! The start of a new year is always fun to reflect on the past trip…

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One of my favourite field work stories comes from my very first field season. I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea what I was doing back then. I couldn’t identify most plants, was slightly scared (ok, terrified) of dragonflies and went to the field wearing outfits I would wear to work at my part-time retail job later in the day…what was I thinking??? Anyways, I remember it being a brisk morning…

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We are very excited to welcome a fellow #scicomm fanatic to the blog today! Tianna Burke tells us all about bringing fieldwork back to the community.  This year I have been lucky enough to put two of my favourite things together in my current position with the Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve (GBBR) – field work and outreach education. As a UNESCO designated Biosphere Reserve, one of our missions at GBBR is to support the conservation…

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We are excited to welcome Leslie Holmes to the blog today. Leslie is a PhD Candidate at Queen’s University, and while she may only be a novice field biologist…she “gets it”. For more about Leslie, see the end of this post.  While I’m no field biologist, I have had short expeditions in field biology. As a novice ‘field biologist’ I can honestly say “I get it”, that is, I get the appeal. Who wouldn’t want…

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At the end of this summer, one of my supervisors said he was coming to town and Double-crested cormorants on perches on an island. asked if I wanted to help him collect cormorant eggs on small islands in Lake Ontario. Since the double-crested cormorant is a species that I spend a lot of time studying in the lab, I jumped at the chance to get out in the field again. Despite it being August, the…

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