Fingers crossed

I'm not proud that the manuscript (well, the main one of two) for my MSc research took me THIS long to get out... but as of this evening it is done and being submitted to Functional Ecology tomorrow. As my supervisor said... "Fingers crossed". And that's what I'll be doing for the next several months, as I wait for the manuscript to go through peer review. My first paper took about a year from first submission to print. The first journal I submitted to, Journal of Plant Ecology, is a lot easier (at least I think) to get published in than Functional Ecology, so I can only hope that the process goes smoothly. As long as it doesn't get rejected right off the bat, I think we're good.

Yesterday I spent a few hours out in the field with Sarah. It was sooo nice to be outside again. We measured out the area for my main project up at the Bracken Tract in Westport. On the way home we took a slow drive down Opinicon Road to look for, well, anything cool. We saw loads of partridges and a couple turkeys. I checked out a great blue heron soaring above with my binoculars and we also saw a pileated woodpecker and a loon. I have actually never seen either of them before. So that was exciting. The woodpecker surprised me, it was a lot bigger than I would have envisioned it. When I looked it up, it said they can grow to be half a metre tall. They're mostly black with a bright red crest on their heads. I didn't get to see him for too long, but it was super cool.

The site of the main part of my PhD project, looks like nothing right now, and to be honest, I don't think it will look too different by the end, haha. 

The long-term watering experiment... still standing. 

Stole this picture from google, but this is the pileated woodpecker. Gorgeous.