my sandbox

Of course there are birds here, and I’ve taken pictures of a couple.  Bird numbers are high, but I’ve not seen very many different species so far.  There are a ton of tree swallows, who like to pick up insects from the lake.  Also common are grey catbird, yellow warbler, common yellowthroat, house wren, barn swallow, cliff swallow, and American robin.

There are a bunch of nestboxes here on fences and phone poles.  I don’t think anyone’s doing anything with them now but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were part of a research project in the past- maybe David Winkler’s work on tree swallows, since he’s a Cornell guy (I took ornithology from him!) and since the boxes are primarily occupied by tree swallows.  One of the boxes close to the chicken coop is occupied by a pair of eastern bluebirds:  here’s a couple of pictures of the male:

And, here’s some of those tree swallows:

As promised, some pictures. You can check out more pictures (individual commentary attached to some pictures) here.

This is the chicken coop,where I and most of the other interns live. It’s divided up into five units, which are studios with small kitchens, bathrooms, and living areas: I have the leftmost unit. The central part is a common area, where we sometimes play cards.

Gazebo overlooking the lake. This is basically the front lawn of the grad students’ house, which follows:

(I don’t know why I have so much trouble holding the camera straight).

This is our little harbor with a couple of the research vessels.

And this,which used to be a barn, is now our office and lab space- it’s directly across from the chicken coop.

Sometime I’ll take some pictures that actually have people in them - that will be nice.

Howdy. So I’ve reached the end of my first week at Shackleton Point, on beautiful Oneida Lake here in fabulous central New York. The folks here keep saying that this place used to be a “gentleman’s farm” before the gentleman kicked it and left the land to Cornell back in, oh, I’m going to pull the date 1940 out of my ass (+/- 10 years). It’s around 400 acres, meadows interspersed with woods studded with white clapboard houses and barns and things.

I live in what used to be the chicken coop, along with 6 other interns. Before I came I was told that I’d be living with the grad students, who get to inhabit the ol’ massa’s house, with lake views and the whole bit, but it hasn’t turned out that way- no room. But, I’m glad - the other interns are a fun bunch, despite the (sometimes shocking, to me) disparity in our ages. The one bad thing about them is that many of them live around here, or down in Ithaca, which means that a bunch took off for the weekend, leaving the place feeling rather deserted this evening. The chicken coop consists of two Quonset huts joined in the middle by a more permanentish structure which serves as a common area. The Q-huts are divided into 5 apartments, one of which is unoccupied. Three are occupied by a pair of interns each, and the last is my domain- I get to live alone because of my general elderliness and venerability.

Each apartment is kind of a little studio, with a kitchenette stocked with random utensils of varying degrees of functionality, a bathroom outfitted with small plants that grow out of the drain, and a sitting/bedroom area well-equipped with live spiders and dead flies. If you let your imagination roam just a little bit you can still catch a whiff of chicken droppings. Fortunately I don’t anticipate ever having to shut the windows.

Our first few days mostly involved orientations of one kind or another. We had an overall orientation, then a lab safety orientation (which I had to take because I’m going to be working in a building that has labs in it), then a boat-safety orientation (which I had to take because I will sometimes, if not often, go out on a boat). The orientations were typical of their ilk in that the ultimate goal was not to convey information or keep us safe, but to obtain our signature on as many pieces of paper as possible as magical talismans against future litigation.

We’ve had a couple of social events - a pizza meet-n-greet on the first day and a potluck on Wednesday (this will be a weekly occurrence). For the potluck, I made an appetizer by slicing up some granny smith apples, smeared them with cream cheese, and topped them with smoked salmon- this caused quite a stir. One of the staff objected that they didn’t usually have this sort of thing, and that the traditional appetizer for potlucks was beer. Turned out he was ok with having both, so all was well in the end. A subset of potluckers hung out around the bbq pit for a few hours after dinner, which was a good time.

So at this point you may be wondering about, you know, that job thing that’s the whole reason for me being here.  But, the laptop’s running low on juice so I’m going to save that for another post.  Also forthcoming:  pictures.