1. De dödar fler än i våra grannländer.
2. EU vill ersätta dem med militären när de delar av befolkningen som blir dödade (hint: inte de rike…) opponerar sig.
3. Det hjälper inte att bo i USA. Man kommer inte bort från polisvåldet i alla fall. Det blir snarare mer extremt här. Read the rest of this entry
The PA list has now been updated with the following data:
Natural History Museum, London
Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford
Gothenburg Natural History Museum, Gothenburg
Rock Shop, Moab
My personal collection (partial)
Attentive readers may have noticed that there is a new page here, PA List. Read the rest of this entry
As expected, MrJet are not repaying me. Here is the exchange: Read the rest of this entry
So we missed our flight to Vienna, and British Airways kindly decided that that meant that we also didn’t want our subsequent flights (from Vienna to Gothenburg for me, and from Vienna to Lisbon, and then to Gothenburg for Heidi) so they cancelled them. This is apparently standard procedure, and one of the many reasons why the travel industry needs to be reformed. When you buy a ticket that is multiple-destination, with week-long stops at some of the destinations, that is for some idiotic reason treated as layovers, so if you miss one leg of the trip, it is assumed that you won’t make it to the next leg so why should they hold the seat you’ve paid for in case you can manage to get a new flight to your destination? Far better to just cancel it and sell it to someone else, so that you can get paid TWICE. Yay!
I’ll be calling British Airways today and see if I can get a refund for the trips that they cancelled, so there may be some light at the end of the tunnel… However, even with a refund, I think the continental part of my trip is irrevocably cancelled, as it’s unlikely that I’d be able to find any cheap enough flights in the next few days. So once again, I’ve had to mail Tomas in Brno and cancel my visit there, and Marek in Wroclaw… it seems I’m not meant to go there… I’ll get one more opportunity when I go back and do field work this winter, though (if I do field work this winter)…
Still, if someone wants to meet up in Gothenburg while I’m here (until the 23rd), feel free to contact me! No phone, but will be at Skyman’s the whole time, working on some papers, so I’ll have all internet-based communication systems at my fingertips!
Har bokat biljetter för fältarbetet nu. Vi kommer flyga härifrån den 2e maj, via Chicago och Amsterdam, och anlända på Landvetter kring halv tolv den 3e maj. Jag flyger hem igen kring lunch den 23e juli, efter att också ha besökt London, Wroclaw, Brno, och Wien.
The last week of this field trip was spent in and around Gothenburg and Jönköping, with lots of things happening, and lots of things going wrong. Read the rest of this entry
A total of 75 birds searched today, with lice from two Ruffs Philomachus pugnax and a Song Thrush Turdus philomelos! The former seemed to have only Lunaceps holophaeus, while the lice from the latter were menoponids, probably Menacanthus sp. I think 75 is the highest number of birds I’ve ever searched in one day, but there may have been some day in Japan when I searched more birds.
I’ve booked lodgings and tickets to London and Berlin, and my host in Wroclaw has booked their guest room for me during my stay, so all I need to take care of is the train ticket from Berlin to Wroclaw. Tomas will set up things in Czech Republic once he gets back home at the end of the month, and I’ll still need to buy a ticket from Brno to Gothenburg/Jönköping…
Today, Heidi left Sundre, having searched 962 birds (I’m at 931), and by now I think she should be on the ferry, or at least waiting for it. She’ll spend the night in Oskarshamn, and then take a train down to Kalmar tomorrow morning, and arrive here at Ottenby sometime between 3-4 pm tomorrow, depending on which bus she gets on. Once she gets here, we can finally start doing more hippoboscid phoresy trials. I’ve done two when Tomas was here, but usually, I either have live lice or live flies, not both at the same time… And the few times when I have both, I don’t remember that I’m supposed to do these trials until I’ve already killed one of them… Hopefully, we’ll get something done once Heidi comes here, at least…
Preliminary plan for next spring:
Tomas to Umeå again (Umedeltat or Stora Fjäderägg)
Me (and some assistant with a driver’s license) to Sotenäs, Hammarö, Landsjön, Tåkern, and maybe some other place.
Lo somewhere?
Someone on Ottenby?
The main goal would be to compare birds during breeding season with birds during migration. I’ve searched 67 species since I came to Ottenby, and for 16 of those I’ve searched more than 20 birds, which means some sort of comparison could be made. Most of the old material from Sweden has also been migrating birds, which brings the number of searched bird species at Ottenby to approximately 135, with maybe 50 species with sample sizes over 20 (the only summary I have is mixed between Japan, Canada, Australia, the USA, Tanzania, and Sweden so I can’t be bothered to work out the exact numbers now…)
However, both when I was catching Willow Warblers Phylloscopus trochilus in Padjelanta and when I was catching Reed and Marsh Warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus et A. palustris in Torslandaviken, infestation rates were much higher, despite sample sizes being lower. It is sort of known that at least some lice have breeding cycles in synch with those of their hosts (I can’t remember the reference now…), and it would make sense, perhaps, for them to be in synch with migration cycles as well. Comparisons with breeding grounds would be very interesting. I think we could get some data on at least some breeding birds from Landsjön, Tåkern, and Sotenäs, and possibly elsewhere; Ottenby is not as good, as very few passerines breed on the cape, but then again it could be interesting to compare spring and autumn migration.
(I also don’t want to let go of the comparison-with-Mediterranean idea, but we’ll see…)
Hoppas att Nicklas och de andra kom iväg ordentligt, för det gjorde inte jag. När jag kom till flygplatsen kunde jag bara skriva ut första boarding-kortet mellan Salt Lake och Minneapolis, så jag frågade vid gaten om jag var tvungen att checka in igen i Minneapolis. Men han som satt där tyckte att det var konstigt och tog fram min resa på skärmen. Han kunde skriva ut resan SLC-Minneapolis och Amsterdam-Göteborg, men inte den emellan, så han ringde runt lite, och det visade sig att platsen var bokad och betald, men (om jag förstår det rätt) själva bokningen hade gått ut.
Något fel dök upp den 6e juni, vilket var den dagen då jag fick mail från Via Egencia att det var en tidsändring på planet SLC-Minneapolis, vilket flyttats framåt en kvart. Kan vara ett sammanträffande, men det är den dagen då de tydligen (enligt mannen vid gaten) inte godkände mellanresan ordentligt så att den inte går att använda, och då gick den resan ut, och kan inte användas.
Jag fick reda på detta ungefär 45 minuter innan ombordstigningen, och stressade med att ringa någon sm kan ringa internationella samtal (det går inte från min mobil), men det gick inte. Skaffade ett telefonkort och kom i kontakt med Via Egencia en kvart innan ombordstigning. Den norska damen jag pratade förklarade indignerat att de minsann inte gjort något fel, och att det inte fanns något de kunde göra för allt såg minsann bra ut på hennes skärm. Hon upplyste dock om att alla biljetter går ut efter ett år, vilket inte varit något problem Via Egencia besvärat sig med att tala om när jag bokat om biljetten tidigare.
Det incheckade bagaget kunde inte tas av planet till Minneapolis i tid, och de jag pratade med i bagagehanteringen trodde att det skulle kunna komma tillbaka först imorgon. Så nu måste jag invänta bagaget, skaffa ny biljett, ta mig ut till flygplatsen igen, och komma iväg försenad på grund av att Via Egencia inte kan klicka i allt de ska klicka i… Störande, men förhoppningsvis får det inga följdeffekter… måste skaffa nytt pass i Sverige innan jag åker till amerikanska ambassaden i Stockholm, men blir det fördröjt får jag skjuta på ambassadbesöket helt enkelt.
Glad att jag inte jobbar på GU längre och är begränsad till Via Egencia, utan kan resa hur jag vill. Förutom resan tillbaka nu kommer jag också behöva boka en komplicerad Göteborg-London-Berlin-Wroclaw-Brno-Salt Lake City resa, men det kommer nog i görligaste mån ske med tåg…
Fler foton:
More photos: Read the rest of this entry
Treeweasels 