Friday Fun!

Like I said in my last post I went out this morning and determined start points for Witch Hole raptor survey route. When i was done with that I headed out with a researcher who is looking at the intertidal zone. Specifically the disturbances that can occur within this zone. This includes Birds, Humans and the Tide. My job…watch birds! I couldn’t believe it when Bruce told me what i had to do. The researcher, Elliot, has to watch the area of concern from one hour before to one hour after low tide. two hours of bird watching and sitting on the coast, it was tortuous ;)

It was so much fun, that is pretty much what I did on Friday. Here are some photos.

One Other thing I saw while I was conducting the research… It makes me laugh every time I think about it, bird watching as research… I saw a seal out in the water. Its head was as big as the Great Black-backed Gull. It was really cool!

I plan on going hiking tomorrow. See you all later.

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.

Banding PEFA Part Duex

I have to start by saying that I LOVE my job!!! My boss is great, the ‘work’ I do is time consuming yet rewarding and I am continually astounded that I was selected for this appointment. I have now ‘worked for seven days straight, Saturday and Sunday were only partial days but still I worked.

Yesterday was an easy day, thus the reason I am rolling it into this report. Bruce wanted me to go on an orientation field trip for some history on the park. It was a really interesting trip. Donna if you are reading this you are right the geologic history is incredible in this area, we talked a lot about the glacial erratics found around the park. This trip lasted most of the day. When i got back to the office Bruce wanted me to check on the status of a nesting loon on Upper Hadlock Pond, so I did. Found it on the east side of the lake just sitting there in a bowl nest. Bruce wanted me to also check on the Eagle Lake nest but by the time I was passing by where i would turn in to see it it was getting late and I know Bruce is concerned by how much I was working so I went back to HQ and checked out for the night.

Today I got to work at 0800 and Bruce was waiting for Chris to arrive at 1000 so we could determine whether to not we were going out to Beech Cliff to band. We also had some work to do on the fish monitoring equipment. We decided that we should wait, it would take several hours to complete the fish work which would put us past the time Chris started and we didn’t want to miss him. I was tasked with organizing three years of loon observation data and consolidate it into smaller folders that were more easily managed. By the time I completed this task Chris was there and we where headed out to Beech Cliff, Banding was on!

This is what the site looks like:

The first time the Adults took notice of us was not until 1230. It took Chris quite a bit of time to make it to where he was safe and tied in to begin the procedure. From the nest side we set up a guide rope tide on to the cliff and then we wrapped it on a Birch tree for the lower anchor point. then slid the chick in a bag that was attached to the guide rope down to my location. From there we lowered the guide rope to retrieve the bag and start the banding process. there were a total of four chicks at this nest. Two female and two male ranging in age from 22 days to 25 days, approximately. I got a few images of the chicks.

By the time we were done with banding today it was time for us to head back to HQ and time for me to go home. I will sign off with that and write some more tomorrow… Hopefully the day that I get my internet, I say hopefully because i did not get my package today with the router. I was told it would be at the house before the technician arrived. Whatever, guess phone and cable companies are the same everywhere.

 

See ya!

Peregrine nest sites

Betty (she is one of my roommates, lots of stories with this one) and I headed out today to look at the four peregrine sites today. there are two that are active one that might surprise us and one that was not successful. Not much to say other then the plan is we might band the Beech cliff chicks on Wednesday.

Very sore today after the climb up the precipice trail yesterday. Man i am getting old.

I also met with Karen the GIS person here Acadia so she could orient me to the file structure she has set up for the park. Currently they are using ESRI ArcMap 2.9 update 16. hope it isn’t too much different then 3.0.

 

I finally went out to look at Loons and their nest site today…by myself :) it is pretty cool to be able to hear these animals in the morning. when I finally get my pocket camera I will try to digi-scope some images. Of course if anyone know someone that has a friend that might be able to get a deal on a canon 100-400mm lens they shuld let me know. and then i would get AWESOME photos.

Off to bed.

Banding Day!

This is one of the days that I have been looking forward to the most since I accepted this job. Its not like i had to wait log for it either; what is it like day 6?!?. Today we head out to band Peregrine Falcon chicks on Precipice Trail. in order to get to this scrape, that is what falcons nest in a scrape, we had to climb up the several hundred feet to get to this site. It is also necessary to drop over the side of the cliff to get to the nest. This was handled by Bruce, the boss, and Chris, a park ranger who climbs. Here is a diagram of what i am talking about:

We started the climb around 1100 and got to the area just above the nest at noon. I would just like to state for the record that this is a, for a big guy like me, difficult climb. at some points we were using these metal rungs to climb exposed faces of the cliff. It was tiring, exhausting and FUN! I would do it all over again if they asked. There was only one minor (?) mishap on the entire climb. Yes you guessed it, it involved me (why else would i be telling you right :D). right before i got to where I stood for the banding I was climbing down off of one boulder to the shelf and my foot got stuck under me so i yanked it out with all my waning strength and kicked another boulder that was right there with my shin. OUCH! Not what i actually said but my kids might read this ;) I pushed on to where Bruce and Chris were going to drop over the edge to get the chicks. just before Bruce went over he looks at me and asks ‘did you hurt your self?’ I look down and this is what i see. The next photos are not for the feint-of-heart.

When I got home this is what it looked like after cleaning it up…

NO WAY! I am not showing you guys something like that needless to say it was not pretty and i should have probably gotten stitches but it didn’t hurt and eventually stopped bleeding. My roommate, Adam, let use his neosporin.

--As a side note I will be introducing my roommates soon--

 

what follows is a poor representation of the Peregrine parents and the acrobatics that occurred while Bruce and Chris were at the nest and on their way to the nest. We were at the scrape for about an hour and the parents flew and scream at us the entire time.

 

That is for today, I am tired sore and still a little bloody, good night.

Day 4

Allow me to start by saying that Maine, at least since i have been here get a LOT of rain. It was a wash out for banding today, both literally and figuratively. It poured rain this morning and there was cascading water going over the cliff we needed to climb. It was very dangerous with all that water going over the cliff so we called it off.  I was then free for the day so I decided to go explore some. my first stop was to go find these falcons nesting cliff. It was dreary and foggy at the top of the rise they were on but I eventually found them. I was there at Precipice Trail for about an hour, I then headed off to see what kind of bird life i could find along the shore.

I was surprised! I found Common Eiders, Great Black-backed Gulls, Herring Gulls and Black Guillemots all within my field of view; three life birds!!! It was pretty amazing. I was so happy that I went out. I thought to my self i could go back to the house now and be happy, but i didn’t, I kept going found Common Loons. All the while the background noise was of Red-breasted Nuthatches, White-throated Sparrows, Black-throated Green Warblers (These are rather ubiquitous here) Yellow-rumped Warblers And some that i have not identified yet. Later at Otter Cliff I saw about 10-12 Black Guillemots just floating and swimming around. Off in the distance there was a lobster boat checking their traps. It had a small flock of gulls flying along behind. As Dave always taught me “scan the group, you never know what you might find.” So I did, and saw a Sooty Shearwater in the crowd as well. Yet another Life Bird! I don’t have a good, or working, long lens currently so I don’t have photos of the birds I saw today.

--As a side note--

Anyone who reads this and would like to take pity on a poor Graduate student and gift them, ME, with a big fat Canon 100-400mm lens just e-mail me and I can give you the address :D

--back to the story--

So I drove around the East side of MDI (Mount Desert Island) and saw some beautiful houses, if it weren’t so cold here that Regina, Erin and the boys froze to death I could see my self staying here. It is a lovely place, I just need to find the local cheap restaurants. I am currently at the Opera House Internet Cafe writing this. the sun has finally come out, which is the reason for the internet cafe. After I am done with this I am going to fill up the coffee and head over to the Village Green and attempt, again, to connect to the free internet. After next week I will have internet at my house and these updates will happen more frequently. Hopefully I will also be able to buy that point and shoot soon so i can carry it where ever i go and be able to dress these posts up. sorry for no pictures.

That is all for now, I will chat with you all later.

Day 3

Not much happening today, didn’t start till 0800 today. got to work and organized my desk (somewhat) and then started reading papers. I jus have to say that now I don’t have the pressure of school and having time reading papers is rather enjoyable. I read three papers over egg contamination study looking at piping plovers, peregrine falcons and common loons. It got a little thick on the chemistry of the different contaminants but is was still a good paper. I also read some of another paper over brook trout. It was interesting. I have also found myself looking at the citations to see if there was any other good reading they pulled from. I think i am going over to the dark side…..j/k :D

Bruce and I went out one more time with the Fish guys Matt and Todd and went to swap out two receivers for an antenna  array that they designed and built to read PIT tags of the fish that they have marked. I got training on how to down load the information for the receivers and where the batteries were located to replace the current ones. we then ran back to the office and met with Tim and …forgot his name… to talk with a local land owner to see if he would grant permission to let these guys on his land to net for bats and band them. The land owner was very agreeable and said anytime, he then proceeded to tell us of the 89 little browns that were counted in his barn one year. I think we are planning on banding them one night for the land owner.

I found out today that my personal boots are NOT waterproof. it has been raining for the past three days and today was the worst. It was foggy, misty , soaking rain that permeated everything, it reminded  me a lot of the rainforest except for the cold ass temperature.

Finally we shot back over to HQ for one last meeting of the day with Sarah. She is a college student conducting a small research project with salamander sampling. she was at Acadia last fall with a class and saw how they sampled and wondered if there were a better way to conduct the samples less invasively. Current studies use cover boards that are expensive and inconvenient. Sarah asked if you could set a sample plot and walk the plot and find just as many salamanders then using cover boards. She will be writing the report over the summer and be in contact for revisions of her paper.

I have to admit it was rather interesting sitting on this side of the table while discussing a paper that I didn’t have to write. I suddenly had flash backs to Donna ans most of our conversations concerning any paper that i had written for her. It was funny. Thanks for teaching me so well Donna I thin you would have been proud.

Well that is all for today…

Tomorrow we are going to go for the Precipice Falcons if the weather gets nice. I will have to post a bout the weather some time it is really strange thing here.

Take care all.