I have arrived

I am in Nags Head, NC. I start work tonight at 1900 and am done tomorrow at 0600...I will be dragging ass tomorrow morning.

I am so excited, this is going to be a terribly boring job but I am excited for the fact that I am here. I am overjoyed that I have a Wife cool enough to let me do something like this. Thank you Regina!!!!!

So the job is a night turtle survey contract job. Not sure how long it will last it could be 7 days it could be a month. I am working with a Guy his name is Mark whe is a turtle guy and I am a bird guy. He is a former Marine I am retired Navy...this should be interesting. He is a nice guy I am looking forward to this job for the experience it is going to give me.

I am on a public server that I can hit when ever I want but It is about 3 miles from the apartment, which I have to drive :( So i don't have my own personal internet or a phone...

I thought my cell phone was going to work here but unfortunately it does not! grrrr! I am thinking about geting new service that is more nationwide just so I can talk to Regina and the kids when i want...it just won't have unlimited everything.

Ok I am starting to ramble so I am going to hit the road I have to go buy some bread chips and apples for 'lunch'.

And so we go....

Damn DC is expensive

So I finally left yesterday morning for the next leg of this adventure. I left Bar Harbor at 0700 and motored on down the road. I made it to D.C. for the evening around 2100. I stayed the night at a Best Western. $94 dollars later and a huge breakfast I am just about ready to motor on out again. I am writing to you from the lobby of the Best Western.

I talked to my new co-worker Mark. He is from Texas and loves to fish. I will get more information when I get in to Nags Head tonight.

And so we go...

So I was mistaken

Well I haven't even finished this adventure and the next one has started. I will NOT be coming home as planned. I just accepted a posistion in Nags Head, NC. I will be walking a beach everynight to watch for nesting sea turtles. I will get everyone up to date as soon as I can with what is going.

I Leave tomorrow morning at 0600 and will hopefully make it to Nags head tomorrow night and start my job. WOOHOOO!!!

Not sure how long this will last 1-3 weeks for right now. I will hopefully be home sometime at the end of October! I really need to reconnect with my family, School and friends.

Love to all

And so we go...

My last post from Acadia

Wow I can’t believe that this part of the journey is just about over. Time here has flown faster the a Peregrine Falcon chasing a Wilson’s Warbler for dinner. So I have thought about what I want to write for my last post from Acadia. I have not come up with anything, so what i am going to do is write about my last few weeks here like I normally would. I am going to ask for comments at the end, I want to hear from those who read my blog and see what it is that they remember from my time here. I can then maybe elaborate on some things that I may have glossed over or things i didn’t explain well enough.  Hope this works out.

My life has become Beavers and Applications. Every day for the past few weeks My partner, Bik, and I have been out bush whacking through some ‘backcountry’ on the island. We are conducting a complete census of Mount Desert Island. We are following a census that was performed in 1997 and looking at how the population dynamics might have changed of the last dozen years. The worst part about this project is that it leaves you exhausted at the end of the day and feeling nasty. You have to wear chest waders while walking in these out of the way places. Chest waders have this unfortunate side effect of not breathing, so five minuets after you start walking you are pretty much soaked from chest to toes in your own sweat. by the end of a 6 hour day of doing this you feel pretty damn nasty. The up side to this is I have gotten to see some of the most beautiful areas of the park that no visitors will ever get to see. These beaver created ponds and lakes are incredibly beautiful. There was one recently that I approached that had a beaver swimming along quietly with a dozen wood ducks floating near by and a few mergansers further back. The sun was shining and there was no wind so the pond was as smooth as glass. I ended up sitting there for about half an hour just soaking it up. Unfortunately I do not have photos of any of these areas, they are difficult to reach and as such I don’t take anything that can’t get wet, let me explain why. There are some areas that we check and we don’t need the waders, however we don’t know that until you actually arrive. More often the not you are traipsing around marsh area that looks pretty solid tall grass low shrub/scrub. what you don’t see are the four to five foot deep channels that are hidden in these location. It makes walking a sport to be sure. Also hidden are sink holes that are created by the Beaver tunneling through the soft mud under the floating hummocks. It is pretty funny really, you will be walking around and focused on where you are headed and then suddenly you are buried up to you chest in water in the middle of a hidden channel. Your lucky when you don’t top your waders, it gets close a lot.

The other half of my life is applying to any job that I have even a little bit of qualification. I come home shower talk to Regina while i apply and then eat and then pass out from exhaustion. I am getting just a bit nervous now. I had hoped that I would have a few possibilities by now but so far the only call back I have had was from McFaddin NWR in Texas. I have heard nothing since that interview. I have seen little movement on the jobs through USAJobs.gov only two have been passed on to a real person. As far as the non-government jobs go, I have had one get back with me telling me that the job was filled but thank you for applying. Two other jobs told me that they had received my application and that I could expect to hear from them in November. Any jobs that I apply to now will not start until November or later. I have applied to three different ground observing companies in Alaska but the training doesn’t start until December and the contracts will start in January. I must say that if any of you have a job, even if you don’t like it, KEEP IT! It is a tough market out there right now. I base this on the fact that there are people applying for the traditional ‘Intern’ jobs that college kids apply for just out of school which makes it really tight.

Enough about that…it depresses me every time I think about it.

So other things that have happened since last time…

My friends Mo and Bernie came back to Bar Harbor for a wedding and stayed with us in our extra rooms. It was a great weekend. They brought there sister Mary, who, just like the rest of the family is pretty awesome. We caught back up and chatted and just had a great time visiting.

Yesterday I climbed the Precipice with my roommates, Adam and Jen, and Had a great climb. I was really proud of Jen because she is terrified of heights and she didn’t freak out once. She made the summit! Grats to you Jen.

The next time I write to you all I will be home, I can’t wait to get back and see my family. While I am home I plan on visiting Oxford a few time to get my final project done and hopefully graduate next year. It would be nice to finally say that I have graduated from school.

And so we go…

 

I would love to hear from everyone that has read, glanced at, or just visited once my blog. Let me hear what you thought was my biggest adventure, the funniest thing that occurred or ask some questions I will fill in any blanks that i might have left.

My next adventure will be driving home and my visit with the Fam.

Take care all!

Almost done ;(

So I have about three weeks left here in Maine…for the last two months I have been searching for that next adventure in my story. I have been sending out applications like they are going out of style. The farthest I have tried for a job was in the North Mariana Islands in the South Pacific. I have applications out to a permanent job in Florida working for a state park, Rusty Blackbird study in Mississippi. I have probably over 20 pending applications out in the government job system. So I am trying to find anything for right now. Some good news, I had a call today from McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge near Port Arthur, TX. I will keep everyone informed as to where I end up next for the continued adventures. I can guarantee that i will have about two weeks home before I leave off again.

In further news, I am still looking for a small point and shoot to use while i am out and about. Oh yeah so while I was on Petit Manan my long lens suddenly started working again. Not sure why but at least i don’t have to manual focus for a while.

Ok I am tired and am Migraine grumpy so I am going to sign off for now

Be well everyone

and so we go…

Petit Manan Island National Wildlife Refuge (PMI)

I am still thinking about my time on PMI and am trying to think of a way to get back out there. I had the most fantastic time out there. It was peaceful and i got to band! so where is PMI from where I live? allow me to show you:

So I was to meet Linda Welch the US FWS person at their office at 0800 and we were to head out from there. It takes just over an hour to get to Milbridge, ME from Bar Harbor, so I left at 0650 to make sure I got there in time. which I got there at 0800, nice timing I thought. When I arrived Linda was not there just yet so I looked around the office and got my float coat for the boat ride out to the island. Linda arrived shortly after I got there. I followed her to the boat launch and put my things onto the boat. The trip out to the island took about 30-40 minutes. When I arrived there was a crew out there painting the house and one scraping the boat house in preparation for painting. Jim, the boat operator, lead this crew until 1400 painting and scraping.

I met the two women working the island as the banders, first was Pam:

and then there is Alison:

When I arrived Pam and Alison were in the middle of their banding day. I started immediately with helping them on net runs and banding birds. It was good to take a bird out of the nets again. Today continued another project, shorebird banding. Apparently they had been trying different methods to capture shore birds for the avian influenza study. They had tried a large bow net contraption that apparently did not work, unless you consider a slow motion trap a success. I will see if i can get the video they took of the net closing. The mist net was a success, easy to set up, not too many birds so the pace was not hectic. typically they would set net up for passerine banding 30 minutes before sunrise and band for six hours and start the shorebird net no more then an hour before the end of passerine banding. this was also dependent on tides. In the photo above the rocks you see are all covered during high tide, what you see here is low tide. the reason for waiting till high tide is that at low tide all the birds are dispersed over a large area. At low tide they are concentrated in small areas and with the proper placement of the net you can capture quite a few birds in a single run. The first day we captured Least Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper and a Spotted Sandpiper. the Songbirds were much less exciting, Savannah Sparrows dominated the nets. there is a resident population on the island so the majority of birds captured were of the SAVS variety.

I went for a walk around the island after the events of the day to see what I could, here are a few images from my first day and my walk.

 

 

Saturday was blur for me…I had a migraine and was not into anything that day. I took my pills and took a huge nap and woke up refreshed and ready to take on the night…ugh! I had to get up at 0450 the next day. Pam and Alison had made dinner that night and offered me some which was really nice because I was not in any mood to cook. Here are some images from Saturday, this is really the only way I kinda remember this day:

 

Sunday we got up at our normal time but the winds were at a sustained 15 mph. So we sat around staring a one another trying to stay awake. So I sat and listened to my iPod, which at this point was dangerously low.

***just a side note, I wasn’t told much about the living conditions before i got there so didn’t expect much. when i arrived they told me that there was power, solar, and that if i needed to charge anything that I could with no problem…If i had known that i could have brought my laptop too… Oh well maybe next time.***

it wasn’t until 1000 that the winds had died off enough for us to open the nets. so we headed out and got net up by 1030 and started banding. We ended up having a great day. that is until i fell of the stupid boat ramp and got soaked…although that was kind fun too especially since I didn’t hurt myself. I also climbed up to the top of the light house this afternoon it was pretty amazing view, here are the photos I took Sunday:

Monday was a copy of the other days, with out me falling into the ocean.  We did have quite the collection of shorebirds in the area:

• Willet
• Ruddy Turnstone
• Sanderling
• Semipalmated Plover
• Semipalmated Sandpiper
• Least Sandpiper
• Spotted Sandpiper
• Dowitcher
• Black-bellied Plover

Here are the photos from Monday:

I say this in one of the photos but I thought of the Circle of Life song every morning, here is something for the next few pictures

 

Tuesday – The original plan was for me to get picked up early from the island and head back to the main land so I could go to work. Well at 0930 we got a phone call that said they would be out around 1330. Well there goes that plan…I did get to enjoy another full day of banding…of course I didn’t get back to MDI until 2030. Oops, Guess I am not going to work today, LoL.

these are the last days sunrise, we were so slow that I got a great series:

 

and finally one thing that occurred the entire time I was there was a family of Peregrine falcons and a pair of Merlins kept harassing the shorebird population. the Peregrines were particularly vindictive, they would tail chase the birds until they almost had them and then break off from the chase. they would return several times a day and chase the flock. Kind of funny really. Well the Merlin landed one time and we took the time to stalk him and this is the best shot i could come up with:

Well I have been sitting in fonrt of this computer all day. I am ready to relax now. Miss everyone, I have less then a month till I am home.

 

And so we go…

Oh Yeah!

Oh yeah because I went to Petit Manan but more on that later. First let me start out by catching you up on what has been happening at work. I believe that the last time I updated you till the 28th of August so we shall start with the 31st of August…

on the 30th of August ‘Danny’ was supposed to hit but fell apart and basically all we got was rain. the week before we had ‘Bill” blow through. I mention this because my week started off with me heading down to Stanley Brook to see what had happened after the big rain we had. I don’t remember if I mentioned this in my last post (honestly to tired to look it up) but after ‘Bill’ came trough it basically filled up the antenna array with sand it was all but impassable. After ‘Danny’ came through it was completely cleaned out, and I mean CLEANED OUT! there used to be a sand bar that block half of the water way and sort of held up the water at the lower end of the brook. it is gone it is free flowing from bridge footing to bridge footing. That is a good thing. After this i headed to the west side to check on the pain in our collective asses a.k.a. Seal Cove Pond. It was still bad…both ponds were full again… the workers were putting things away for the day because the water was rushing through the middle of every thing. so there was no work going on there. I finally got back to the office and work on putting together some GIS maps for the Isle au Haut hawk watch for Bik who was leaving on Tuesday.

We saw Bik off this morning as he headed off to start the inaugural Hawk Watch on Isle au Haut. After Bik left  I worked on creating maps for our Big Beaver Census. The idea is that we will walk every watershed and conduct a full survey of the island to gain an idea as to the number of beaver living on MDI. Bruce and I started by heading out to one water way at Sand Beach. We walked down stream from an old fire road and found one family group area with activity. We stopped early and did not complete the up stream area. We came back to the office and had a strategy meeting on how to logistically complete the beaver census along with all the other projects we have to complete.

Today started with me creating a more field friendly beaver census data sheet. I went out with my roommates wife, Jen, and we surveyed two watersheds.

**Jen was working in Alaska for the summer on a Fish and Wildlife Service project with Pacific Salmon. She is now volunteering at Acadia with Bruce and she will now be a regular player.**

The survey was the entire day…Bruce accompanied us for the rest of Sand Beach drainage and then Jen and I went and did North Schooner Head road drainage.  I also found out today that I would definitely  be going to  to Petit Manan Island on Friday…I was SUPER excited. I will have a separate post for my trip to Petit Manan, it will be chock full of pictures.

Thursday arrived and we went out with a representative from Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IFW) a state agency. They have started a long term study site at a stream (brook, all Mainers call them brooks, whatever) called Lurvey Springs Brook. We electro-shocked from a culvert crossing to 150m downstream. It was pretty cool, we got the largest Brook Trout I had ever seen, most are around 4-6 inches this behemoth was 10 inches. We did three passes to ensure we had cleared the reach we were working. When we finished up with that in the late afternoon Jen and I headed back to HQ. When we got there Bik had just returned from IAH. We sat and talked to him for a while and to find out how the Hawk Watch went.

Bik did see raptors but not where we expected them. Every single Hawk seen was during his travels to get to the watch spot or on his ride back to the cabin. Even then he only saw five raptors, five different species but still not an encouraging number.

***The next five days were spent on PMI I will have a separate post about my time out there, I am going to pick this story up with the following weeks worth of work. Which as I write this is last week.***

September 9th to the 11th we electro-shocked Stanley Brook. Since I had missed a day of work because I was at PMI my week started on Wednesday, I was kind of wondering how I was going to make up those hours for Bruce. Well no problem there…I ended up on the plus side of things at the end of this week. we worked for three days, for a total of 34 hours. We started at 0700 every day and went till we couldn’t go anymore, which was right at 11 hours. Here are some photos (not my best to be certain) to show you the fish and what we do with them. It is like banding but with fish instead of birds.

 

**FYI, not sure if i had ever mentioned this but the info about pictures are embedded in the image, this means if you put your cursor over the image it will give you and explanation of the photo.***

 

was looking for a tie in with a knights tale, ‘you have been weighed, measured and found wanting.’

and that is what I did for the last three days. I did get to use the electroshocker, I find that I am better doing that then trying to catch the fish…especially with Bik around, he was mister trout slayer. typically Bik was the one who would catch fish, there would be a shocker and then me the bucket boy. let me give you an image, if you have ever seen History of the World Part 1 you will get this. Remember the French Revolution and the piss boy…that was me.

And so we go…

Expect a new posting soon about my PMI time.