"Light as a feather".
At this point, I know that phrase all too well. This past week, I was trained in a new procedure which allows us to find the portion of each feather which is pigmented. First, we weigh the whole feather. Then we weigh the pigmented section. Sounds easy enough, right? I thought so at first.
Our study is concerning the pigmentation of house finch feathers. This is what a house finch looks like:
For some perspective on their size, this is someone holding a house finch and one of their feathers:
So you see, it's not all too difficult. In the lab, all we have to do is use tiny forceps and tiny scissors to cut the red tips of the feathers from the rest of them. I have become remarkably good at holding my breath. As my adviser said when he saw me working on this process: "Don't sneeze". I've made the mistake of breathing too hard; I was crawling on the ground for hours searching for crown feathers which couldn't have been more than a few millimeters long.
As I start this task which already has taught me so much patience, I'm also given the opportunity to see how my work is helping. The post-doc that all my work has been helping the past few weeks is presenting her findings tomorrow. I love being able to contribute; I would gladly hold my breath to help anyone I've met in my lab.
Thanks for reading, guys.
Caitlin
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