New Orleans pictures!

Ah yes, been awhile since I've posted. I'm back in Florida now, but I got to stay a couple days in lovely French Quarter New Orleans. I got there in the afternoon and got a sweet hotel room with a balcony overlooking quiet Ursulines Street.

Ursulines Convent from the hotel

 

Looking northwest down Ursulines Avenue

 

Looking across Jackson Square to St. Louis Cathedral the next morning
 

Breakfast: a delicious beignet from Cafe du Monde. Damn now I want one.

 

Walking to the cemetary tour on some of the residential streets in French Quarter. And below, some cool shots of St. Louis Cemetary No. 1:

Travels to Big Bend

     As of about a week now, I fulfilled my promise of six months of work in south  Texas, and am now an unmoored wanderer bouncing my way back home. Of course, my first stop required me to go further west, but the detour was definitely worth it. Thus I came to hike and camp three days and two nights in Big Bend National Park.
     All in all, a very interesting place where a mountain range is an island in the desert. Crowds were manageable since the heat kept most people away. I ended up hiking in the mornings, seeing tiny Mt. Carmen white-tailed deer, Mexican jays, spotted towhees, and all sorts of animals and plants. Anyway, here are some pictures...

Me on Chisos Basin Trail, with the Window behind

Casa Grande formation from Chiso Basin Trail

Another shot of Casa Grande from Lost Mine Trail

A mountain dawn from Lost Mine Trail

Castolon Peak from Ross Scenic Drive

Walking through a wash on the Devil's Den Trail

Leaving the ranch, on to new adventures!

End of point counts: a commemorative set of haikus

I'll preface this by saying I recently submitted a challenge to my parents to immortalize their adventures and observations as haikus, starting with their going to home games of the Marauder's baseball team in Florida. Receiving their excellent and elegantly phrased poems and having come to the end of my field season bird point counts, I thought I would attempt a reply, albeit one with awful writing and a Monty Python reference. For those with brave hearts and terrible poetic taste, read on!

 

Two walk a long time

Listen for the birds singing

But where are the birds?

 

Breeding season gone

Birds a-flocking, taking flight

Ten minute silence
 

Bored out of our skulls

Think of something, just anything,

Bring the coconuts!

The long walk between point counts...

South Texas birding highlights

The problem with on-the-job birding is that you see a lot of cool birds (and also a ton of mockingbirds) but never have a chance to actually get pictures of them. Anyway, because I happen to like pictures, here are some of my favorites and new additions to my birding life list, all of which I saw in the wee hours of mornings May through July here in south Texas.

 

For those playing at home the birds in reading order are: Audubon's oriole, Bullock's oriole, groove-billed ani, greater roadrunner, painted bunting, orchard oriole,  blue grosbeak, pyrrhuloxia, dickcissel, hooded oriole, green jay, northern beardless-tyrannulet, varied bunting, yellow-billed cuckoo, and long-billed thrasher. (Photo credits in photos or from wikipedia.org)

Heading into thick catclaw scrub ...

"El Sauz and Back Again: A Birder's Tale" by yours truly

     Updates (from the person who cannot pass up a semi-obscure Lord of the Rings reference)...I went to El Sauz two weeks ago and did some birding. I've probably said this before, but it's a pretty cool place, but it's definitely some hard work just getting around. The marshes are slightly drier, but it still was hairy in some places driving the work truck. This might go without saying, but driving a little Toyota Tacoma on a muddy road-less-traveled at pitch-black 5am is not exactly ideal. But I also got have a change in scene, some new bird species, time with the herp crew, and some delicious BBQ.
     Back at the main ranch point counts proceed per usual. The summer heat is starting to dial up, sometimes getting up to highs of 99 degrees, and we're getting less in the way of rain. In between bird surveys, we now are setting up and checking bat detectors. The equipment itself is pretty nondescript, consisting of a black box recorder the size of a DVD player, a microphone, cord, and a toolbox to stow the black box out of the rain. At certain points, we secure the microphone to the top of a painter's pole and then lash the pole to a tree. After formatting the storage card, replacing batteries, and some fiddling with the recording settings, the whole apparatus is up and running, ready to record anything in the bat sound register during the night hours.
     The bunkhouses nowadays seem full of people, which as can be imagined causes occaisonal friction and drama. With our fearless crew leader with the herpers at the other ranch, issues are bound to come up. Questions like: is it worth it to call someone out because they used your shampoo without asking? What about if they leave all their dirty dishes in the sink for days on end? Why is it nobody thinks to get firewood? The hazards of living in close quarters I guess. Still, it means I have plenty of people to talk to and hang out with on the weekends.
     Anyway, probably closing in on the last month here in Hebbronville. Birding surveys are slated to wrap up by the end of July, although admittedly they originally were supposed to be done by now. Currently searching for new jobs and looking forward to a little time off to explore and visit home. New and exciting things are sure to come!

Abandoned car at main ranch

Open grasslands at the main ranch

Possibly: skeleton plant (Lygodesmia texana)

Mexican burrowing toad (Rhinophrynus dorsalis). Why are they awesome?

 

"The only species, within the only genus of the family Rhinophrynidae, and with over 190 million years of independent evolution, the Mexican burrowing toad is the most evolutionarily distinct amphibian species on Earth today; a fruit bat, polar bear, killer whale, kangaroo and human are all more similar to one another than this species is to any other amphibian."

http://www.edgeofexistence.org/amphibians/species_info.php?id=1355



 

 

New species:
-Northern beardless-tyrannulet (Camptostoma imberbe)
-Gull-billed tern (Gelochelidon nilotica)
-Black-tailed gnatcatcher (Polioptila melanura)
-Mexican burrowing toad (Rhinophrynus dorsalis)

Ordering at a restaurant after a week of field work...

Let the proofing begin

(Dated from June 12)
     Spent a mind-numbing week doing computer work at the bunkhouse. Now that we have only five birders and have to do surveys in pairs, it unfortunately leaves one person a week as the odd person out. There's always something to do, that's certainly not the problem. The problem is that the priority is proofing data.
     The activity sounds innocent enough. For those not in the know, handling data goes through a process. You collect it during a survey, writing everything down in a notebook or datasheet. Then everything is transcribed into an electronic copy for the computer, which is "entering" it. The last step before actually analyzing it is a necessary and arduous process called "proofing." Going back and forth between the field notebook and the computer, you make sure every in the computer file, every keystroke, every observation, is legible, consistent, and makes sense. Checking back and forth is mind-numbing, it requires listening to background music and some caffiene to get through it with sanity intact.
     Standard proofing for the mammal data had been done. But now it needed to be checked again, focusing on the color codes for the recaptured mice. The task was to make sure that no two mice had the same color codes, that certain mice that had died did not mysteriously reanimate the next day, and to be sure that the mice did not spontaneously change species, sex, age, or reproductive condition. If they did (and they certainly did), I had to figure out what the faded colors on the mouse could have been and then change the code to the code that made the most sense.
     And that's what I spent my week doing. Now to El Sauz...

Not being able to stop birding...

Quiet week

Another week, some more birds. Business has been pretty good, with cooperative weather, not so terrible brush, and no crises. Pretty quiet on the whole, not much to report aside from some side stuff like applying for other jobs.
Probably the highlight of the week was the birder's impromptu potluck event. Although most of the vegetation crews leave for their magical 3-day weekends and the herping crew has departed for El Sauz, we managed to make a ridiculous amount of food for a decent turnout. Burgers, pork, sausauges, deviled eggs, cornbread, salsa, apple bread, cake, and even some nilgai meat made an appearance. The end result was favorable: we all got stuffed and have glorious leftovers.

Birdwatching?

A confusion of scientists, an unexpected day off, and avoiding the hedges of peril

     It's been a couple of weeks since coming back from El Sauz. So what's been going on? Well, first off we have a ton more people working out here now. When me and my crewmate got back from the other ranch, we were greeted by almost completely full bunkhouses. It's hard to say how many we have at one time with some people coming every couple of weeks, but at any one time we might have our vegetation crew (4 people), another vegetation crew (3-4 people), another herpetology crew (2-3 people), and various interns helping with birding or working with cattle. It was a bit cramped before, but now I'd say we're bursting from the seems. We all cook our own meals in one kitchen, and we're a little short on fridge, cabinet, bunk, and every other kind of space. I admit I can't get everyone's names, but it is good to have some new faces around here.
     We also miraculously got a day off for Memorial Day, making it an unexpected 3-day weekend. Didn't know until a few days before, but I did manage to go somewhere interesting. Four of us made the trip to coastal South Padre, where things went well if not as expected. The event that we went to see turned out to be sadly lacking on the live music, food, and general entertainment, but at least it gave us an excuse to get to the ocean. We were not prescient enough to bring swimsuits, but the weather was good and I got a walk on a real beach. Well, something I could call a beach: the "beach" at Port Mansfield by the other ranch is rather pathetic. Ate some seafood, scouted out some places to go next time around, had a good time.
     On the birding front, I think I'm getting all right with the identification. Of the birds that are out here I can identify most by song alone. There will always be a few unknowns, from only hearing bits of the song, just hearing contact calls, or seeing just the tailfeathers of some flying far away from you, but the process is certainly not as overwhelming as it was a little over a month ago. Collectively we're pretty familiar with our sites, and the new topographic layer on our GPS units helps us figure out the trouble spots in moving from point to point. Basically, it shows us an aerial view of where we are, which is pretty useful. Evils like impenetrable hedges show up like shadows and might as well be marked as "here be dragons", and shortcuts like cattle trails and unmarked roads appear like light threads. The weather has been with us, so far. Fortunately none of the major flooding other parts of Texas are seeing.

New species:
-Groove-billed ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris)
-Audubon's oriole (Icterus graduacauda)
-Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula)
-Yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)
-Western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta)
-Long-billed thrasher (Toxostoma longirostre)

Me and my crewmate trying to identify a bird at 100 meters...

Birding in El Sauz

Yeah, I've been a little behind on postings...these are pictures from about two weeks ago when me and another birder went to El Sauz for about a week. In short, three of the five grids had parts under water, one was in thick oak forest and sand dunes, and the other in rolling grasslands. There's definitely a different set of birds over there, with a number of shorebirds like white ibis, black-necked stilts, laughing gulls, willets, plus yellow-billed cuckoos, green jays, great-tailed grackles, red-winged blackbirds, and even some least grebes.

     It's also a little closer to civilization, so we were able to get to places that cooked food for you (restaurants, yes I think they're called restaurants?) a little more often, and on the day that got rained out I wandered around downtown Harlingen. 

 





Me crossing one of the salt marshes on the first day. The rain boots I'm wearing were at this point filled with water.

Wind-driven well surrounded by submerged marsh on ranch interior. Mostly red-winged blackbirds at this point.

 

Me on one of the higher points of the ranch, a huge sand dune surrounded by oak scrub. Note the goofy look, binoculars, and oh-so-fashionable snake guards.

Sand dunes at El Sauz.

 

From the tops of sand dunes.

Anyway, now I'm back at the main ranch, and I'll post something more recent as I can.

Birding continues

(Dated from 2 weeks ago?)
Another week, another set of grids. The birding schedule has been pretty packed in the last week or so, with only more to come. With helping our resident grad student, owl surveys, and the daily point counts the hours have been pretty packed and don't leave much room for my brain to work. Some of the grids we've been working force us to travel through some pretty thick vegetation, so along the way I've been adding to my ever-changing collection of embedded thorns, prickly pear spines, and scratches. And although I'm not usually a person for naps, I could say they've become more or less necessary for me to function.
I could go on, but that's getting a little old just reading that over again. As I had with the mammal trapping, I've been slowly improving my song recognition skills. I still have a lot to learn, but at the very least I can say I'm getting better. I saw my painted bunting, along with a number of other new breeding and migrating species. The other day I saw roadrunner chicks in a nest. No more close encounters with rattlesnakes (though I still wear the snake guards), but lots of lizards are scurrying along and legions of butterflies are taking the skies.
Last weekend we met with the ranch manager and some of his guests at the fancy lodge. We were lured us in with beer and food (it doesn't take much), and the guest writer sort of ambushed us with some questions about who we were and what we thought of the ranch. I found out the photographer was Wyman Meinzer, apparently renowned in Texas and a contributor to National Geographic and a host of other things. He had some pretty good stories about his years-long quest to befriend the roadrunners.
Anyway, things are going.

New species:
-Painted bunting (Passerina ciris)
-Mississippi kite (Ictinia missippiensis)
-Dickcissel (Spiza americana)
-Ash-throated flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens)
-Brown-crested flycatcher (Myiarchus tyrannulus)

Day to day work in science ...

Flowers of S. Texas (part V)

 Pitaya Cactus (Echinocereus enneacanthus)

Purple Pleat Leaf (Alophia drummondii)

 Dayflower (Commelina erecta)

 



Flax (Linum rigidum)