I finally was able to get to my designated site today to conduct the first Black Tern flush counts and vegetation surveys for Audubon! And. ... a small pop up shower decided to bestow upon the area as I pulled in. Great. I'm stuck here waiting, already later than the best survey time of mid morning, but that's life sometimes. The work I'm doing is something they heavily rely on to monitor this endangered species... I will be live momentarily while conducting my survey but will not disclose the location to protect this fragile bird from more human impact than necessary. All this said, I have everything ready to go... my small boar is repaired... I have sunscreen and insect repellant, the data collection app loaded and all the volunteer manuals saved to my phone to refer to as this is my 2nd successful year completing this work. I'm happy they also gave volunteers official signage to eliminate stressful public interactions.
I highly recommend volunteering for michignaudubon.org and am fully invested in the work for their organization 😁
We shall see how this survey goes...
Fingers crossed 🤞