Computer Woes

On Thursday we found out that my IT paperwork had never been forwarded to the correct person. so we got it to him late Thursday, but he was gone, of course. The IT guy was in early on Friday and was able to get it started. I got my user name and temporary password, YEAH! I can finally have more fluid communications with Bruce now. NOPE! I had to log on to a training system and take these training courses that take a couple of hours. so i go and attempt to log on, too many times. I was locked out of the system. so I call and find out that i can’t even think about this training until my name is ‘in the system’. Great!

Since i couldn’t do the training i headed out to nail down some raptor survey routes. I am trying to recreate a study that was preformed last year. we have Decimal Degree lat/longs for all the survey stations. the hurdles that are in our way are fairly easy to over come. One is that the researchers that conducted the study are both currently in the field and will be until the end of June. We need to start the surveys sooner then this. Our solution is to head out the trusty GPS in hand and find the stations. This is where the other hurdle comes in, we are not sure where the start positions are. We have a rough map that shows the station locations and it is easy enough to figure out on some of the survey routes but some are overlapping, at least it looks that way. One other thing, we are changing how to move from station to station during the survey, me and my big mouth.

Bruce and I had a talk while driving from falcon nest to falcon nest, best time to have meeting. I was asking him how the researchers moved from station to station last year. Bruce replied that they did it by car. I mentioned to him that that could have a limiting effect on the raptor survey. I explained that when a car pulls up and stops any hawks that are on the wing before the survey is even started. I explained to him how Bal-chatri trapping is conducted and how hawks will fly off when a car stops to throw out a trap and that it is better to roll slowly by and drop the trap out of the car while moving. I ask if we had a golf cart or a hybrid car that we could use. he said that we had a golf cart but that it could be a logistical nightmare to get it moved form location to location. then I had the bright idea that a bike might be useful too. Bruce jumped on that and said that a bike would be no problem and that he really liked the idea of me riding the bike down the survey routes.

let me explain what I am talking about. a survey route has anywhere from 5 to 13 stations with about 9 being average. The stations are one half mile from one another. I will be, on average be biking about 10 miles a day. Whew! I guess i am going to lose that weight i have been complaining about! I am really looking forward to doing this survey, it won’t be too bad, I get a 5 minute brake every half hour.

Thursday night I went bat banding, It was fun. The group had a camera that they didn’t know how to use to well, it had a 60mm macro lens with macro flash set up. It was kinda dreamy using it. still would rather have a 100-400mm canon L lens, but the Prime macro has given me something to think about. here are a few photos of the banding. That is all for now.