Me and my binoculars

This month I took up bird watching in the pursuit of scientific research. This mandatory bird watching was a requirement of a research report for my other summer paper Biology, investigating whether or not native birds are more commonly found in native gardens. Yes at first glance of the assignment brief I groaned and moaned for a good five minutes but luckily my resistance wavered at the joy of completing some quantitative work.

So after scouring the net I soon found some great tips and instructions on successful bird watching on a New Zealand website: Land Care Research. Armed with a comfy bean bag, a set of binoculars, a bird guide and some bird sheets I begrudgingly set off at 5am each morning to complete my bird watching rounds at four different gardens.

Well, I am not going to lie it was boring for the first few mornings. And sometimes the motivation to get out of bed early just wasn’t there. As beautiful as the birds were the time did seem to drag on. That was until I saw my first Silver eye up and personal. What a gorgeous bird! Their markings look like over dramatic eye make up Lady Gaga would wear!! From that moment I was hooked and I actually began to enjoy my mornings spent bird watching.

                                                               Silvereye Bird

But I digress from the most important result of my bird watching: the data. By keeping to a strict, time consuming bird watching schedule I ended up with a huge amount of data. The larger sample size made it fairly easy to show a connection between native fauna and native birds. My results section was a breeze to write and I actually had to cull over half of my discussion because I had so much to write about. And that was all down to simply mucking in and turning what was a supposed terrible situation *into a great chance to learn about the environment around us.

As students of science it is important to put discomfort and boredom aside in the name of research. I am really glad I did and the benefits extended beyond my assignment. I learnt so much about how birds interact with each other and noticed their adaptive survival behaviors and feeding routines. I must admit I am a bit hooked on bird watching now. Since finishing the report I am still dragging my binoculars around religiously hoping for a brief glimpse of a Karearea (New Zealand Falcon) and I even slipped my bird guide into the beach bag for a bit of light reading. Oh well there are worse hobbies out there I guess……..

(*Now I only call enforced bird watching a terrible situation due to the Biology stream sight being inundated with whiny posts about the injustice of us students spending precious summers hours watching birds!!)

My preferred role: Plant

If life were just one long groundhog movie set at a university, what role would you play? Would you want to be the ambitious, diligent bio scientist? The lazy but brilliant student who always passes without studying? It’s a no brainer for me; I would choose to be the scatterbrained professor rushing around the university grounds with a stacks of seemingly unorganised papers mumbling to themselves about how to solve capitalist america taking over the world or reminding myself to water the tomatoes tonight. Why would anyone want to be the eccentric, continually preoccupied soul of the campus? Well, I would because they have all the best ideas of course.

I love ideas. I love ideas of ideas. I love ideas that are shocking. I love ideas that err on the side of no possible chance in hell of ever happening. I mean, who needs logic bogging you down anyway right???  I love ideas that create or show others a different way of looking at something. I love ideas for the sake of the conversations they create. And at work I love ideas that create solutions. In fact, I may even be slightly obsessed about that last type of idea. So much so that I have found I have developed into the “plant” of my work team.

As the plant I find myself continually putting my thoughts and ideas out there during our team meetings. While my fellow workmates: a monitor, a co-ordinator and a implementer, sit around discussing the strengths of our current behavioural plan and to put it plainly, playing it safe, I am thinking about the weaknesses and how to initiate change. Of course not every idea I have is a good one, and sometimes I allow a stream of consciousness to exit my mouth without thinking. But I wouldn't change a thing about my preferred role. I start conversations, initiate new ideas and often my extroverted method of communication encourages a sense amenability that allows others to share their ideas easier.

I love being the plant and feel my team role leads me to be an impassioned care worker continually going the extra mile in order to enhance the life of another. Hmmm, do I hear a Mother Theresa complex anyone??? Close, but no cigar. One of the downsides of my team role is that I tend to overvalue my skills and therefore underrate the skills of my fellow workers and overlook their strengths that could be focused on and utilised. Luckily my team get along and work well together so that helps alleviate my messiah type characteristics. 

I have grown personally and professionally through adopting the role of the plant at work. I use to be timid and incredibly unassertive but now I have more confidence and the fact that I did not shy away from the Team Leader position in our group assignment is a good representation of how I have grown. Don't be afraid to fill that slot needed in your group even when you are unsure you have the ability. Challenges are how we grow and mistakes are those lessons that help the most.