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So today was long. I haven’t written in a while not because I haven’t been doing a lot of stuff, because I have, no it’ because the stuff I was doing was relatively unremarkable. What we did includes,

-Another observation period on Pilot Island, this time Crissa and I were joined by a guy named John (in my head everybody’s named John this season but he really was named John I think.). After 2 days on Pilot the crew came up with a total of 149 unique bands. Our target? 150. Close… but no cigar.

-Tried out paddleboarding. Stand up paddleboarding (SUP) started in Hawaii as a way to surf without waves. It’s starting to catch on other places including one of the smaller towns around here. It was AWESOME, we rented boards for 2 hours and I was hooked! I want my own so I can take it wherever I go. (I’ll post pictures but since my camera isn’t waterproof the pictures are all on Crissa’s camera.)

-Took an awesome boat tour (sort of). Captain Matt from “Adventure Rafting” out of Fish Creek agreed to take us out to Jack Island, drop us off and pick us back up a few hours later. The boat ride was super fun, he’s got a boat that is a bit smaller then our Zodiac but has speakers and he played music for us and we did loopdydoops and went fast and flew past a big tour boat. I sat in the front of the boat and it was sweet. If you’re ever in Door County look him up. There was another couple on the tour that were on their engagement weekend. The woman was afraid of birds… I felt pretty bad taking her to one of the island but she handled it pretty well. They were very nice. I hope they live happily ever after.

-A short observation period on Jack. I’m glad we got out there and all but it was pretty boring. Total number of band sightings = 0. Which is actually not bad because we’re discouraging cormorants from nesting there, There were maybe 50ish nests on the island (which seems a big number but remember we think 400 is a small number) and maybe a couple hundred cormorants. I bumped my head on my spotting scope and have a bruise… luckily you can’t really see it under my hair.

-Got supplies ready.

This week will probably be our biggest week yet. Tomorrow we’re headed back out to Pilot to do biopsies on adult birds. Last year due to weather they only were able to biopsy 8 so this year our goal is 52!

We’ve readied and tested our traps, strung leg bands, procured the needed drugs (it took us a few hours to find a vet that had the anesthetic we needed), labeled everything, and did whatever we thought would help the process go smoothly. Now, as long as the weather holds, we should be good to go!  

We can do it (I think) so BRING IT!!

P.S- I also re-discovered the fact that fireworks make my ears hurt for around 20 hours after the fact. Next time I’m wearing earplugs!

The Shack

So we drove 4 hours to get to Leopolds Shack lastnight and OH MY GOSH IT WAS SO WORTH IT!!!!!

So this place is really like the Mecca for all Wildlife folk. We got there at the right time too, there was a tour going on it cost a little extra but it was awesome. We got to hear stories that Nina Leopold would tell. Sadly she died about 3 weeks ago so now his only living child is Estella and she is in Washington. One of the things Nina used to say that struck me was, "Why does everybody always want to go inside the shack? We spent maybe 5% of our time in there." The Shack was really interesting to be inside of though, there was hardly any room in there. They had 2 bunk beds for a 7 person family (mind you they didn't live there ALL the time or anything just weekends and holidays). We think of the whole family living in the chicken coop but infact the children built a tree house which they liked to sleep in and Leopold and his wife slept down by the river whenever possible. The shack also had a falcon perch in it, which I thought was awesome.

Random fact, the same year Leopolds youngest son had a hawk his youngest daughter had a pet squirrel. I imagine that would have been fun!

The property doesn't look like the way it did when he bought it either. They planted trees on the land which was an old farm. They did everything they could to restore this area to health back then and now it's healthy! It's too bad Aldo Leopold can't see it now, he would be so proud.

Me and The Shack



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The Sand County Sand!



I'M GOING TO THE SHACK TOMORROW!!!!!

Woot! My mother sent me a magic disk!

Computer is RUNNING!!! WOOT! Today I recieved a disk and a bunch of instructions on how to remove the virus from my PC. I fallowed about 2 of the steps on one of the sets of instructions, got confused, rebooted, and *POOF!* computers running! Do I understand it? Not one bit, but I'm not complaining! To make it an even better day my Ipod magiced itself back into existence! YAY!

Okay, now that I have gotten over my little technological magic mumbo-jumbo here's whats up!

Mrs. Fran Hamerstorm - A small rant on books and an awesome dead lady

I recently started reading Fran Hamerstorm books. She’s brilliant! She was the only female to work under Aldo Leopold. I guess I should probably explain who Leopold is first, Aldo Leopold is the father of conservation, not preservation, that’s John Muir. Aldo Leopold is wildlife ‘big shot’. If you’re involved in wildlife work you probably know about him. So Leopold was this awesome guy who had this little place in Wisconsin (see where this is going yet?) called The Shack. It was a converted chicken coop, and his families get away (and I’m pretty sure Crissa and I are going to visit it sometime soon!!). Fran Hamerstorm worked under him studying Prairie Chickens (not real sure what about them, haven’t gotten to that book yet). She was also a falconer and raptor rehabilitator. She wrote this book called “An Eagle to the Sky” which talks about her time rehabilitating and hunting with Golden Eagles. I picked this book up at the library recently and was just finishing it up on Sunday when John (the Wildlife Law Enforcement Officer that does nest destruction with us) came up to visit. Turns out he actually worked with her in the 1990’s on her Harrier project. He talked about her and told stories and talked about how she was the kind of lady who was always showing up the guys. He told me about how she called all her techs “Gaboons” and how she would never tell what exactly that meant. He talked about her meals and how you would never ask what the food was until after you ate it.  Anyways, I feel like this is the coolest thing possible and then today we went to this little new and used book store and I’m looking at nature books. I pull out a book by her open it to the front page and it’s SIGNED! It was so cool. I feel like she’s everywhere! I have 2 more of her books checked out from the library (one is from the 60’s and it looks like it’s literally decomposing but I love it anyways). So I’m set on books for a while, Thanks Fran!

 

Man that STINKS!

I believe the last time I posted was Thursday after my Cormorant Marathon. Well, at least that was the break in the race. Friday we went down to Waupon again to process the last of the birds and boy did they STINK! The last few times we had processed them they were smelly but it was okay, this time it was HORRIBLE! It’s later in the season and they’d been allowed to sit in the sun in black plastic bags for hours before they got into the freezer. It was horrible. One was so smelly I actually gagged, and it takes a lot to make me gag. HOWEVER, this was the last set of dead birds to process so we took a ton of pictures of ourselves doing every aspect of the work. At the end of my internship I have to do a power point talk on the experience and I wanted to make sure I had pictures for it. They’re a little silly because here I am in a hot pink shirt holding up pieces I cut off a dead bird. When did my life turn into this?

A Walk in the Park

It’s now Monday and I haven’t really worked since Friday just because we worked so much last week we’re sort of taking it slow right now. Saturday we went to the Fyr Bal (Fire Ball) festival and went on a lovely little hike around a small park and talked to a couple ladies who are working to designate Fish Creek (it’s a town) as a ‘Bird City’. Because we did extremely well we were given bracelets. Mine is pink and says Bird Buddy… I love it! Today we went to Peninsula State Park. We climbed to the top of Eagle Tower where you can overlook the bay and see a lot of little islands, it’s cool for everybody but it’s even cooler when you know the islands because they’re part of your work. We drove all over the park and took little birding hikes but the best part was after we left the park. We had heard from the bird city ladies that there was an osprey nest in town so we drove over and took a look. The Osprey was even sitting there just chilling! I was pretty excited, I know they’re not uncommon or anything but I love osprey they pick on Bald Eagles, anything with enough guts to pick on an eagle is cool by me. But actually, I still haven’t gotten to the cool part. We were driving home from the park and I saw my very first….. PORCUPINE!! Yup… it was that cool. J

Mysteries

Today is Friday, I can't believe that it's been a week since I really did much with Cormorants, my computer has had a virus, the weathers been poopy, and I've spent a lot of time reading. I've also been listening to some Books on Tape (Are they still called that even though everything is in MP3 format now?). I listened to a book called "Spider Bones" by Kathy Reichs. She's the author that inspired the TV show Bones. They books are mysteries the whole time you sort of have an idea what is going on, but not really. While listening to these books I have been analyzing photos from the game Cameras. The first one was kind of depressing because I was watching 10 or so nests from April until July and not a single chick fledged out of all of those nests. They'd be living and then there would be a disturbance (which was last summers field crew coming on to the islands to observe which they did at 3 seperate times) and ALL the nests were destroyed by Herring Gulls.  They'd lay again and two weeks later it happened again! Since it was the first camera I'd watched my heart was like "OH NO! Every time you step foot on the island you kill all the babies"

Well thankfully the second camera isn't so horrible, they got their nests started earlier so by the time the first crew came out many of the birds already had chicks that were big enough to defend themselves. So they're surviving! 4 nests lived through the first observation which means hopefully they'll live! It's funny I'm rooting for them like it hasn't already happened and like the dead ones might have a chance of making it... when they don't, this all took place last summer. I notice things about the birds, like they change the way they sit from when they're on eggs to when the chicks are born. Before the cameras were up (the photos I'm looking at are the first set) nobody knew quite what our effect on them was, it's really interesting from that standpoint to look at the cameras. It can be dull, but I actually like it!

Oop we're headed to meet up with Ken to look at bird bands for when we sample! Got to go, I'll add pictures to this post later!