Ready for the next 1/4 of century

Cory's Shearwater chick.

I passed my last birthday in Gran Canaria, one of the islands of the Archipelago of Canary Islands. By the time the clock marked 0:00, I was in a car going up a mountain with two people that I hardly knew 24h before. It was the first night of the annual field campaign to anneal Cory's shearwater chicks, and my first time in a field campaign out of the practices of the university. It was the best birthday present I had so far.

The work was hard, not only because we had to find the nests of the shearwaters hidden among the rocks of a steep cliff that left to the sea and the ground was sandy and instable but also because we had to do it at night. This was because is the time when the adults come back from the sea to feed the chicks and, the PhD student that came with us needed to see their parasites.

Larus ridibundus in Texel

If this wasn't enough, obviously we had to use head torches and, given that it was the beginning of the autumn and the island was almost tropical, you can imagine that we had a nice sample of the 6-legged wildlife flying just onto our faces.

 Additionally, some nests were situated together inside caves, and we had to crawl inside then on that dusty ground covered by feathers, feaces and fleas. Needless to say that I loved the experience. During the day, after sleeping some hours, I went to the cyber café (if you could call it like that...) to see if I had any news of my prospective boss, the PhD student of Morocco.

George & Infant

After the field campaign, I spent one day at the house of the Great Portuguese before flying to the Neatherlands and cross them to reach Texel, the small island where the Catalan and I went to represent our research group in an international seabirds' dissection workshop. Then run to Barcelona again, just enough time to pack and hit Madrid to quickly prepare everything to start the best period of my life so far, going after macaques in Morocco. 5 months later, I had a break in Spain preparing PhD applications and proposals and arranging everything to get here. After others 5 months, I’m getting everything ready for my first lonely travel in Africa while waiting to know if I get an amazing job I applied for or not. Guess this has being a really amazing year; but I have the feeling that the next quarter of century is going to be unbelievable