Yesterday I defended my thesis & become Dr. Kaeli Swift. For a little girl who couldn’t read until she was 8, who for so long thought she was doomed to academic failure, this is a huge moment. 2nd person & 1st woman in my family to boot. I’m really fucking proud of myself. 
Wow. Just wow. The outpouring of support here has kind of blown me away. Thank you all so, so much.
I have to say in some ways finishing my grad program is bitter sweet. Sweet for your obvious reasons, but bitter because, well, I freaking love crows and I want to study them forever!
And while determination can get you a lot of places sometimes you also just need to pay the bills. Which is another way of saying while I’m not asuimg working that with crows again is impossible, I’m not ~banking~ on it.
That said, I will /always/ be here to play #CrowOrNo and answer crow or animal death questions and for my own sake please keep coming here for that!
So, yeah, I’m sad to say goodbye to the crows for now. But...I’m not yet saying goodbye to the corvids altogether. I’m thrilled to share that in less than a week I leave to start a year long PostDoc in Denali NP to study Canada (grey) jay foraging behavior!!!
Which is exciting not just because Canada jays are ADORABLE (look at that lil face!) and important climate change indicators, but because I’ll get to do more of what I didn’t have the ware with all to do with my crow work...show and tell more stories from the field.
The #DenaliDaries start next Thursday! I hope both my old and new followers stick around for them. If the experiences from my March trip were any indication...it’s going to be awesome.
