Written by California Raptor Center volunteer Billy Thein

One of the biggest trade-offs I have to endure as a field biologist is that I rarely know what I'll be doing season to season. For the past several years I've worked for several different Forest Service districts jumping between raptor, mammal, and herptofauna work. This last season I spent employed with the USGS assisting a doctoral student from UC Davis. Our work is mostly out of the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area just south of Suisun. Together we are investigating local avian predators with the primary focus being on Northern Harriers.

We look for Harrier nests, put cameras on the nests, and measure the chicks in the nest to look at growth and survival rates. We set out live mammal traps to determine prey abundance and diversity. By far the most interesting part of the job is finding out what their daily movements and migrations are. We do this by trapping both wintering birds and breeding birds in the summer and putting transmitters on them. Trapping harriers is extremely frustrating but also very rewarding when it works out since they're very nervous birds that are wary of anything even slightly unnatural in their environment. The rest of my duties for the USGS involve monitoring other predatory birds such as great horned owls, red-tailed hawks and ravens. Now that the nesting season is over I've been rocket netting for ducks and building traps for Ridgeway's Rails.

See some of Billy's fantastic photos from the field below (also, fun fact: many of the photos used on our website and social media are taken by our talented volunteers ~ especially Billy's photos!):