Un Dia de Espanol

Today our two Argentinian counterparts were in Martin's car when he picked us up. Rodrigo has been working with swallows for three years. Laura is in her last year of undergrad, and this is her first season with swallows. So basically, Rodrigo is like a Ben, and I am like a Laura... if that makes sense. Together we form the Golondrinas quartet. I'd tell you more about them, but basically since they don't speak English, I can't tell you a whole lot about them except that they are very patient with us. :) They are taking a basic English class, but they did not practice at all with us yet. I'm sure they'll take us up on it as their oral exams approach.

Martin is a great guy. He slows down his Spanish when speaking to us and what more could you ask for? Really though, he's very nice and just what you'd hope a host would be. He explains the cultural differences to us and guided us around the city the past couple days. He's working on his doctorate, so he's got a lot on his plate right now in addition to this project.

That being said, today was the first day that we really had to speak in Spanish without the possibility of switching back to English if we weren't understood. Perhaps that's why it took so long to do everything! hehe. Ben likes to tell jokes in Spanish, but it is usually lost in translation. It's great that he tries though. Today he was trying to explain something while we were in the woodshop and finally quit, saying in Spanish that he couldn't find the words he was looking for. Then Rodrigo guessed at what he meant and Ben replied that yep, those were the words!

We bought some more wood and nails, attached traps onto all the nest boxes we made yesterday, and painted the posts today. Then Martin dropped us off in the field where we checked the eight nests that had eggs in them yesterday. Swallows lay one egg every day, so we had some new eggs to measure. When we check the nests, we are quantifying the "completeness" of the nest (on a scale of 0-4), how many eggs are in it, the temperature of the eggs (on a scale of 1-4), and then the length, width, and weight of each egg.

We are also supposed to estimate how many feathers are in the nest cup and how many are outside of it. Now, remember when you were a kid and had to estimate the amount of jellybeans in the jar? Imagine that you can't see the top of it (ie the nest cup) and you can't see three of the sides. Estimation just got a WHOLE lot harder!!! These swallows use feathers in their nests, and it is thought that they are used for insulation. As this site is full of all kinds of birds, there is certainly not a paucity of feathers. I'd say the nest have at least 50 feathers in them. Nests in the US might have 5-20 feathers making their job at estimation MUCH easier. We'll see how it goes though!

We finally finished and got back to the apartment at about 4pm. Mind you, I hadn't had breakfast this morning, and we didn't stop for lunch. You can bet I finished off my lone sandwich bag of trail mix I brought from the states! For dinner Ben and I had beer and cookies. It filled us up and certainly made up for missing lunch. :)