Field work in Puerto Rico
A map showing the locations of color-banded Adelaide's warblers in the Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge. The letter combinations reference the leg-band colors (e.g., LbRbY wears light blue, royal blue, and yellow). Map by Apoorva Kulkarni.
The lab spent May and June studying Adelaide's warblers at the Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge in Puerto Rico. We caught a lot of birds, bringing our total to 76 color-banded individuals. We also acquired DNA samples, developed color measurement protocols, found nests, and mapped territories. With the help of our excellent field assistants, Orlando Medina and Luis Rodriguez, and a bunch of great volunteers from the University of Puerto Rico, we recorded long bouts of morning singing from 45 of our banded males. With this large pool of color-banded, recorded individuals, the lab is well-positioned to hit the ground running with playback experiments in the Spring of 2017.