I finally made it back to the wi-fi cafe to do an update on my blog. Of course the only reason I made is was I got a flat tire way up in the National Forest last night and had to drive back to Blodgett after I fixed it. Now I'm in Placerville waiting for the mechanic shop to get me a new tire. I'm around 11th in line to get fixed, but first the shop needs to get an OK from Enterprise to fix it. They aren't always that quick at calling back. The shop promises that it'll be changed before they close tonight. Yet I still need to work all night tonight.
I'm coming home at the end of the month and moving in with my bestest friend, Su. I'm really excited to see all my friends again. I miss them so much.
Last I wrote was a long time ago, so I'll add a quick synopsis of what I've been up to. First, there was my job as a pooper-scooper. :)
If you don't know the reason for my work out here. Here's a quick explanation. We have Spotted Owls radioed in the Tahoe and Eldorado National Forest. It's an experiment with the Forest Service. Some of these birds' territories are being logged (experimental group) and some are not (control). We are finding their foraging patterns before, during and after the tree harvest.
The big wig of the project (Rocky Gutierrez) decided to add a little more to the project. There is a hormone in the dark matter of the owl's scat that can measure the stress level of these birds. We wanted to get these hormone levels before, during and after harvest. I was the first to get assigned this job as pooper-scooper.
I had a hell of a time getting out to the bird I was assigned and when I did get there, he almost crapped on me right away. I almost felt I was back on a tern colony with gulls and terns aiming at me. I dug through the leaf litter collected my samples and trudged my way back to my truck (via falling/sliding down a drainage and ripping my pack open on a branch) and raced over to the liquid nitrogen tank to store the sample. I was way proud of myself.
Turns out two days prior to when they were going to start logging in this bird's territory, he basically "went on a vacation" and left. In other words the sample I collected isn't usable anymore. None of my other coworkers have been lucky enough to get a scat sample on any of the other birds either. There goes that research idea! It sucks, but we can't control our birds. It happens.
At that point, we've lost 5 birds. One was ran over, two we've lost their signal completely and two we can pick up the signals, but we haven't been able to get close enough to them.
A few weeks ago, I finally was able to locate one of the birds and so far we've been able to keep up with him on his whereabouts. The other birds that are missing we flew for. We were only able to get a location on one. The two other birds that we couldn't even pick up their signals weren't even heard from the air.
HOWEVER, last Thursday. I picked up one of those signals that we thought were lost. While I was trying to locate the bird the signal abruptly stopped. That explains why we couldn't pick her signal up. We're all still trying to fix a location on her, but she is DEEP in a canyon and the signal is very weak IF we can pick it up at all.
Last weekend my coworkers and I went on a pelagic bird and whale watching tour in San Francisco. I got to see some great birds, but unfortunately no whales. As luck would have it though, we inadvertently scheduled our tour during "Flight Week." We had Navy Blue Angels screaming over our heads and pulling stunts while we were heading back to the docks. Awesome.
Time to run. The tire shop just called and told me my truck is ready. 'Til next time!
Happy belated Halloween! I just had to put this pic in. My coworkers and I carved it out last year for Halloween and I never ended up posting it. I love this pic.
Would anyone care to identify the bands on this bird??
