south carolina dept of natural resources hired me to assist in a couple projects in the winter of 2006. primarily sampling wintering shorebirds for avian influenza (bird flu) along the sc coastline. i lived on santee coastal reserve near mclellanville, a historic rice plantation and legendary duck hunting club. i was allowed to lived in the now vacant hunting lodge, a 20 room plantation style house for americas elite during the early 1900's, which to this day i question whether it was haunted. i worked for Felicia Sanders, a state biologist and extraordinary successful advocate for all things winged on the east coast.
most mornings started before sunup by boating out to a barrier island where the birds overnight in huge flocks. we set rocket nets on the tideline near the congregated birds and then retreat to the dunes with hopes that the birds will return to the area. the rocket nets are exactly what they sound like; think cartoons or some bad action adventure movie. three steel tubular cannons are packed with gun powder and attached to a 100 sq ft woven net by shackles. charges are wired and a lead of wire allows us to sit in the dunes and remotely trigger the net to fire as the birds return. an explosion as the net casts over the birds and we run to extract them carefully. the birds are swabbed with qtips, banded, and released.
resting after an early morning catching birds. shelton (usda), marc (scdnr), i forget
western sandpiper, looking at covert tracts
we also worked in yawkey wildlife refuge, a private refuge donated by the former owner of the boston red sox to sc dep of natural resources. its closed to the public and used exclusively for research and preservation, consequently there are huge numbers of shorebirds on the mudflats, remnants of rice paddies. rocket nets were impractical in the mud so we opted for mistnets. 
overlooking the mudflats and mistnets waiting for captures
processing the birds in the mobile "sterile" lab
working up a semipalmated plover with the help of a coastal carolina student
for all you bird nerds the differences in least (yellow legs, shorter bill) and western sandpipers
i helped a grad student from clemson, christy hand, who was studying feeding behaviors of american oystercatchers in cape romain wildlife refuge. it was some horribly boring work staring through a scope for 8 hours a day with a stopwatch, but i got to wear a cool pirates eyepatch to combat eye fatigue. another story of the size of the world i had met christy in hawai'i at a party years earlier, and again in florida a couple years ago.
working with sc dnr allows you to experience some unique opportunities like; squirrel huntin', cuttin' down big ol' trees, chewin', dippin', drivin' trucks, and burnin' STUFF like forests! YEAH buddy!! i got to help on a prescribed burn on one of the properties near santee. it was fun until everyone left me there by myself to go to get mtn dews and moonpies from "da stow"
dj wiggedy whack!! towards the end of my stay in the huge house i got some visitors. two researchers from univ. of delaware came to study "secretive marsh sparrows". they were using song recordings to determine presence of certain species of difficult to find sparrows in the tidal marshes. i helped them set up some transects and being a amazingly strong man i carried the boombox the lure the birds in. "i got beats to make all the lil warblers go tweet tweet/what what/ all the rufous colored wrens say HO/yeah yeah" i think i got a chance with avian hip hop!!
we also sampled hunter killed waterfowl for AI. not one of my prouder moments (you know the paparazzi) but heres me caught in an intimate act with a teal
