I exchanged a nestling banding favor for a veg survey favor today. I helped Jon band his WREN and SPTO nestlings and then he recorded data for me while I dove into the poison oak and shouted out measurement numbers. Not quite a fair trade: I had lots more fun helping with the baby birds than he did watching me scrambling around in the brush.
The baby Wrentits were really cute. Most of their feathers had broken through the pins and the new protruding feathers were of a very nice brown. They were of an age that precedes fear and they squeaked and scrambled around in my hands while I banded them and took some measurements. The Towhee babies were also cute, a bit bigger, and with funnily extended bellies. They were also squeakers and flailers and they fold up into a nice compact shape, perfectly fitting their legs, wings and heads into their rounded bodies.
The plants were decidedly less cute. I zipped up the hood on my jacket and then crackled my way through the twigs and branches to extend the measuring tape 5m into the fray. In some situations I could tell that the vegetation extended until beyond 5m, but in other cases I had to go to the end of the tape to make sure there weren't other species lurking under the poison oak.