After returning to UEA in late July, most of the autumn and
winter has been spent digitising field maps in ArcGIS and carrying out initial
analyses of the productivity, cavity and habitat data collected during the 2013
field season. A couple of brief, but excellent, interludes have been provided
by UEA’s first hosting of the biannual European Ornithologist’s Union
Conference in August and the second year undergrad Ecology Field Course in the
south-west of Ireland (upon which I demonstrated).
Given the difficulties experienced in finding ‘natural’ nest
cavities in Cyprus during the spring, I’ve also decided to commission another
22 nest boxes to install across the study area in 2014 (thanks Dad!) These will
be finished in February, then shipped out to Cyprus for collection in the
spring. It also looks like I’ll be joined by an MSc student from UEA to assist
with field work in 2014, which will be great.
However, one of the most exciting developments for the
project is the development of novel GPS loggers for deployment upon the rollers
next spring. If they work as well as hoped then we should be able to get really
high resolution spatial data from the rollers, both during the breeding period
and during migration/winter. Fingers crossed we catch some more birds this
year!
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