Mid Winter Bird Count.....better late than never!

So it has been almost two weeks since the mid-winter bird count, our biggest field excursion of the winter months, but I am only addressing it now. I have had a mild case of the winter blues compounded with some delayed-onset culture shock as I encounter more everyday situations. I think that my brain and my enthusiasm had frozen over for a short time, but they seem to be recovering nicely now.

To illustrate why I am experiencing culture shock I will provide a fun example of a completely alien everyday activity. Did you know that in Bulgaria to retrieve a package you must: 1st) Notice the absense of a log book in your PO box 2nd) Stand in line in the PO box office window to inquire about it and then sign to receive an "invitation" to retraieve your package 3rd) Go stand in line in the parcel office that has it's own separate entrance from the other side of the building in order to be issued a payment slip for a small fee of undetermined origin. 4th) Go to the payment office (yes, another seperate office) on the second floor to pay and have the slip stamped to prove payment. Oddly enough the parcel office does except payments for stamps on outgoing mail, but not for this particular procedure. 5th) Return to the parcel office in order to submit the properly stamped payment slip, so that you can fill out a form with your national ID number and signiture. 6th) Receive the package! Even more perplexing, is that this procedure has been DIFFERENT every time depending on the weight of the package, whether it fits in the post box, who is working that day and possibly the angle of the sun. Again, this is not to criticize Bulgaria as a whole, but it does take a lot of energy to negotiate these wrinkles of being in a new culture, when the wrinkles so often seemingly come out of nowhere. To paint a fuller picture, all of the various ladies behind windows were extremely patient with me in my confusion, and helped me jump through these various hoops. It seems though that I am the only one confused by the existance of the hoops in the first place.

It is high time to get back to the birds. It was one cold day, although very interesting. We saw pelicans, ducks, cormorants, eagles and buzzards! It was extremely exiting to see all this, even in our limited visibility. We were in quite a cold snap at the time, and so many of our small local wetlands had been frozen over. The mighty Danube was mostly clear (although we had some concerns leading up to the day that icebergs which had been spotted upstream of us might arrive), so birds were concetrated there. Even with the cold, we were lucky to be out there. So many potential logistical snafus could have reared their ugly heads, but Emil managed to make it happen. Some of these said snafus: if the roads would be clear to get the boat to the river and allow a jeep to transport our other team along the banks of a smaller river, whether we would be able to see any birds at all in the fog, whether the Nature Park staff would be able free their boat from under the snow in time, whether the engine could be coaxed into working in the cold, which volunteers were crazy enough to come with us and no doubt, myriad other details that were lost in translation.

On the boat ride, we actually were doging floating ice. As you can see, it is an open boat, so it was not the warmest place I've been. It was also not the coldest (having grown up skiing in New England), and I should have been quite comfortable in my absurdly warm ski gear, except for the fact that I needed to go to the bathroom for about half of the duration of the trip. Anyone who has worked outside in the cold knows that "holding it" is about the most cold inducing thing you can do. But what could I do? I was a girl on a rapidly moving open boat accompanied by all males!

In the end though, it was a sucessful day. I was glad to be a part of it, and glad to help compile our data afterwards. Is it weird that I find data entry relaxing? In any case, I am continuing to learn a lot and am looking forward to our next field opportunity.