Home for the 4th

For those of you who don’t know I came home for the 4th of July weekend. It was a really spur of the moment thing. I jokingly said to Regina that i should come home for her fifth of July party and the next thing I know I am on a flight home…It was a great weekend. I didn’t get to see Regina much, she worked the whole weekend but I did get to hang out with the boys and that was AWESOME!

I also got to have fun at the 5th of July party with my BIL, SIL and my Parents. My Mom and Dad didn’t know i was going to be there so when i came walking out of the house to greet them, they were, needless to say, VERY surprised.

Sorry to all of you to whom I didn’t get to see while I was home. I will be Home in September and make the rounds properly.

Here are a few images from the weekend.

 

 

We had a family get together:

Me and the Boys played on the last day i was home:

 

Now I am going to go write about other things and post those soon

I am back!

Sorry for not posting before now I have been busy…

I am going to start where I left off last time, or as close as I can remember.

Bruce, the Boss man, left town for annual leave and left Bik and I in charge of, taking care of ‘bid-ness’, not that anyone I work with would say Bid-ness but it is funny.

On Monday the 29th I had the pleasure of escorting around a Science Communication Intern, her name is Sara and she is from Tennessee, studying something that is not science communication related. How do I know this? Well, she and I went out to help Elliot, my roommate. The help was logging the disturbances that occur in the intertidal zone. In other words I went birding for a few hours at ship harbor :) while we were there Sara and I discussed the project, why it was happening and what we, as the park, hoped to get from the research. She was very interested in the work and said that she enjoyed the field aspect of her job. It was a cold and windy day, and we were socked in with fog. it was all in all a pretty miserable time, Glad i had somebody with me to chat with or it would have been intolerable.

Tuesday the day before Bruce came back Bik and I went out and finished scraping our macro-invertebrate bags.

--Side Note--

Donna, Thank you for the great measurements class…I can’t tell you how much I have used since I have been here in Acadia. that class has served me well and I am sorry that you are not teaching it anymore… Miami’s loss.

--Back to the story--

So Bik and I spent the day out in the streams cleaning rock and putting them back. Took care of administrative duties and called it a day. Here are some photos of the process of ‘cleaning’ rocks:

This week has been…..FREEZING!!!! it was all of 55 degrees F today… it is freaking July for gods sake… Hopefully summer will start soon, I can only hope…and the rain stopping soon would be nice too…

 

Sorry…I am tired of rain the cold is …different but tolerable.

This week I have started looking for Beavers and trying to determine family size of the different family groups…haven’t seen a beaver yet but I have seen fresh dams and lodge buildings, so i know that they are not just a myth…As soon as I see them i will have photos. also this week I was able to work on GIS for more then an hour. so I am a step closer to finishing at least one project there with another three in the wings waiting.

We have a volunteer for the next six weeks, her name is Maddie and she attends Oklahoma State University and is majoring in wildlife management. So she will be a new yet temporary player in this story. Tomorrow I am continuing the Hawk survey and will report anything from that tomorrow. Ok all I am off to bed and dream land..

 

And so we go…

Some Good Weather

We have finally had some good weather, that is where it was not raining…constantly…So I have been heading out for hikes just about everyday and then coming home and collapsing. thus my lack of reporting.

So what have I been doing? great question, and one that I ask my self at the end of everyday. Some days I really can’t answer that question; its like ‘what did I do today?’ and others like Friday I had a clearly defined set of goals that were accomplished. Here is the break down of what I have done since I last posted.

Wednesday, was one of those days where I came home and wondered what it was I did  that day. I really don’t remember. It was that uninteresting. plus it was a lot of prep work for Bruce to take some annual leave. He is gone for about a week. So a lot of Wednesday revolved around what Bik and I were going to do while he was gone. So we should actually be able to things for a bit.

Thursday was the final wrap up day with Bruce. I went out and spent two hours on the ‘beach’ at Valley Cove looking for Peregrine Falcons, didn’t see any.  So the decision was mad after 8 hours of watching that we could open up flying mtn. trail.

Went out and removed signs that closed the trail. it runs right along the beige line, the ‘beach’, which is directly below where the falcons have nested in the past.

Friday we, Bik and I, went out to conduct a Beaver survey. we checked about 25 different areas around the Island where beavers have been known to block Culverts. that took most of the day. for that last couple of hours I developed four maps that identify the majority of vernal pools in and around park property. I love GIS, easy to use and easy to impress others with, I can make a map like nobodies business. well that is all for now…

Here are a few random shot I took during the past week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

RAIN!!!!!!

OMG! If anyone knows a way to get rid of rain, and anti-rain dance perhaps, I would appreciate hearing it. It has been raining since last Thursday, it is supposed to be clear on Thursday this week and rain until the following Thursday. I am going stir crazy here in Maine. I want to go hiking, but a lot of the carriage roads are washed out because of the amount of rain we have had and the other trails have a lot of rock on them (rock = slippery).

 

Send me some sunshine and sunny thoughts.

HUGE Shout out to my Friend Kristen

Congratulations on passing your Comps!



Yeah! I wish I was there to celebrate with you!

Double D

Now all of you get your minds otta the gutter!

I had Defensive Driving training today! Geez :D

I almost forgot about it. I came in at 0725 this morning to get caught up on the emails and see what Bruce had for me today. I opened my calendar, a paper one, and saw a long line through the entire day. I thought hmm wonder what this...then i read the title and realized, by this time, that I was late for class. Whoops!

They started late so I didn't miss anything. Whew. I don't have any photos of me driving the course but it was a great time. Now I just have to stave off the boredom tonight.

Later all.

Lackluster Friday followed by Washout Saturday

Well the week is over…Finally. Not much to tell this week. the high points of the week were the baby Bard Owls in the ‘yard’ and I got to spend Wednesday Eagle banding.

The Banding was awesome, how could it not be, and we had to take a boat to the two locations in order to access both nest sites. We did two islands, Placentia and Ringtown:

We banded one Eagle at our first stop, Placentia, and aborted the attempt at the second stop. The tree, a birch of some type, was not a climber friendly tree…it was dead and squishy (a very scientific term, squishy, be careful using it in everyday conversation) here is what that looked like.

Chris, that is the guy in the photo, only made it a little farther before he called it off.

Oh yeah and here is another picture of me and an Eagle, you can tell that this one is a little younger then the last one I held.

 

Thursday I had orientation for new seasonal employees. It wasn’t bad at all. the best part was the interpreter from St. Croix Island. She was fantastic and told a great story about how St. Croix is connected to MDI through seur de monte and Champlain. We only got a sample of the whole story, but i would like to find out when and where she will do the full story.

That leaves us with Friday… a very rainy dreary Friday. We pretty much spent the entire day inside. which was good for us. We really needed some time to organize our Loon data and prepare for the rest of the season.

I also got to break out my awe inspiring  GIS skills. We are working on a project to convince the powers that be that we should have ‘beaver free’ zones in specific areas. The beavers cause a lot of damage when the streams that they dam flood the upstream area. sometimes it is not obvious right away, the water seeps into the ground and weakens the roads, trails and carriage roads. and then when it rains the roads collapse.

The maps were really crappy, not my best work. Bruce just wanted something on paper to look at and get some dialogue started on the best way to present this data to those powers that be. Did I mention that it rained all day? It did!

And all night. several Inches worth, there were road closures all of MDI because of flooding and road washouts. it has finally stopped raining but we are due some more tomorrow and it is supposed to be very bad and several more inches. The five day forecast is just as bleak. Hopefully we don’t get washed away.

 

Well that is all for now. talk to you all later.