Birding, Lemurs, and Taxidermy: A Day in the Life

Join me for one day while I take you through A Day in the Life of a Nic Schooler. Every day brings its own exciting experiences, but Friday was jam-packed with cool stuff.

That morning, I met my Wildlife Surveys class at 7:25am in the Duke Forest for a bird count survey. (No, this is not our normal class time.)

 

 I didn’t get close enough for any bird pics, but here’s New Hope Creek, which was beautiful even on this very gray winter day.

 

At 10:05, we had a quiz on bird calls in the actual Wildlife Surveys class. If you want to start learning bird calls, the Cornell All About Birds site is a good place to start.

After the quiz, we began stuffing birds. Yes, stuffing them. This was pretty gross and sad at first. They all died flying into windows on campus and were collected in the Bird Collision Project.

 

 Mine was a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.

 

At 12:45, I finished stuffing my bird. Once you got over the fact that there was an actual dead animal in your hands it was pretty cool. When else do you get to see such a beautiful creature so up close and personal?

 

Yay taxidermy!

 Selfie with my first and hopefully only attempt at taxidermy.

 

At 1:45, I met my Tropical Ecology class at the Duke Lemur Center to learn about Madagascar and see some really cool lemurs and other prosimians like slow lorises. Zoboomafoo’s offspring also live at the Center!

 

Not Zoboomafoo though :(

 Adorable Ring-tailed Lemur.

At 3:00, I met with my fellow ESC students for our weekly seminar class where we heard from 2nd years about their Masters Projects so we can begin thinking about ours, since our very first proposal for projects is due pretty soon.

Later that night I worked on this blog post, an article for my assistantship in the Communications Office, and applications for the Stanback internship program.

I think that about covers it. To close, here’s a picture of beautiful Environment Hall last night, just because:

Our lovely LEED Platinum building.