So my computer has a virus

It's been a slow week and my computer has a virus so that's why you haven't heard from me, I do have a couple of posts 1 about Frances Hamerstorm (who is dead but still fallowing me) and the other about Peninusla State park and a Porcupine.

I have been analyzing game camera photos, I decided Herring Gulls are evil. I want my computer back :-(

The Cormorant Marathon

So it's been a few crazy days... actually it's been a lot of crazy days I can't believe it is Thursday! I don't know how to split up entries so we will see what this comes to.

Sunday- Call me Ishmael

So it wasn't the ocean or a whale but it was an adventure. In the morning we met up with John who is a wildlife law inforcement officer and Ken. We got the boat ready and we went to Hog Island for nest destruction. It was basicly a giant easter egg hunt that included getting pooped on! I was in a super good mood for the most part but it was alittle upsetting in my soul when we had to destroy nests with eggs in them. So this is how the day went. We arrived at the island and Ken went and counted all the nests there were over 500 Cormorant nests on the island. After the nests were counted Ken went to find Mute Swan nests while John, Crissa, and I destroyed the nests. I had two 5 gallon buckets which I collected the eggs from the nests while they went around with pitchforks and broke the nests up. I went through 25 gallons of eggs with the buckets. There were also other birds nesting on the island that we didn't want to disturb including 2 great blue herons and a nest of egrets. When we got close to those nest we just destroyed as fast as we could without collecting eggs. It felt all wrong but it is what it is I guess.



Monday- Tech by day mad scientist by night

We broke a part of the trailer Sunday so we went and tried to get it fixed but we needed to be home to make up necropsy sacks because we were picking up the birds from the USDA guys later that day. We drove up there around 5 pm and we were planning on processing 30 birds that day... We had no good location to do it so we did it somewhere outside, I'm not going to tell you where it was but it got dark before we were done! So here we are cutting up cormorants in a place we might not have been supposed to be in the dark. :-) It was fun but it got late and cold and I was covered in blood. The Mississippi crew showed up right as we were finishing. After we finished we docked the boat so it would be ready for the next morning ... at 2 am.

Tuesday/Weds- The Honey Bucket

Both days were a pretty much alike. We woke up and were on the islands by about 4am. The first day was spider the 2nd was pilot. On the first it was just Crissa and I, while the second was Katie, Crissa, and I. Tuesday we were on the island till 7, Wednesday we left at 4:30. We set up the blind, which isn't that hard once you do it once. You bungy the blind to the scaffolding and it looks like this.

Yes, those are all cormorants, okay well all the black ones are, the white ones are Herring Gulls... those are the ones that poop on you.

You put everything in your blind and you zip it up. The hardest part is getting it all done fast because the whole time you're moving around the gulls are ripping the young cormorants to pieces and eatting the eggs, it's brutal. It's funny because they're so cute when they're young.

Anyways, after we get in the blind we have till 6am to sit around, set up our stuff, read a book, freeze our tails off, all of the above. At 6 we start observing we're looking for birds with red bands on their legs, we then try to figure out what the bands say.

It's not that hard, the worst part is when there are no birds with bands to look at. By the way, yes I did take that picture through my spotting scope, that's why a lot of my pictures have a black circle around them. I had fairly slow blinds so I didn't see a whole lot of bands but it was still nice. It was just very, very long.

So a few things I have learned include;
Baby cormorants look like the alien that pops out of the guys stomach in the movie Alien, Herring Gulls are mean, White Pelicans are AWESOME, I don't mind sitting in a blind all day, and I don't want to pee in my "Honey bucket."

 

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Wind was too bad to go to the island yesterday soooo here lies hours of field cam analyzation

Dirty Jobs

The last few days have been less nutty. Sunday was another day off so we went hiking. The first place we went was a little park nearby; we spent awhile playing with the spotting scope while looking at a Common Merganser. After the Merganser left we went on a hike and there were about a million Lady Slippers it was beautiful. When we got through our hike we went to ‘The Clearing’ folk school. There was a guided tour of the area that was beautiful.

The Clearing is an art school type of thing. It was created by Jens Jensen who was born in Denmark and he wanted to create a place where people could come and relax and learn while being out in nature. Jensen was a landscape architect and the place is BEAUTIFUL.

Monday we sorted and labeled everything for the necropsies which was actually more fun than you’d think sorting and labeling could be then we left and made the drive back to Waupun.

Yesterday we went to the USDA office to do Necropsies on 23 dead Cormorants. Chip had set them out the day before so they were not frozen solid when we got there. We set out ten at a time so they would thaw a little more. The first bird Crissa processed pretty well by herself meanwhile informing me what she was doing so I could repeat the process.

On Monday we had put little necropsy packs together. Each contained 2 blood strips, 2 coin bags, and a baggy for eyes, patagium, and breast. Once we started to figure out how we were going to process the birds Crissa would bring over a bird, while I sorted out the baggies. I clipped the blood strips and sorted out the bags. When the bird was flopped on the table Crissa opened the bird to check gender. I took blood samples for both our research and the research being done in Mississippi, we also took samples for Mississippi from the mouth and the cloacae then put them in a little vile that we then froze. When we had those samples we’d rotate the bird Crissa would work on the eyes while I took skin samples. When we process live birds we will be taking 6mmx6mm samples from the Patagium skin. The patagium is an area between the shoulder and elbow that is above the bone. The area is almost clear and you can see the veins through the skin, it’s useful because you can avoid veins when you do the skin punch. With the dead birds we can take the whole skin piece. I would cut the flap of skin off both wings and a little bit of breast skin. One we had these samples we moved on to the next bird.



Laid to dry



Blood Samples

The eyeball!



 I had expected it to smell worse, and while the employees complained from time to time, I never smelt anything at all. Crissa was doing well in making sure she didn’t hit the stomach and I never hit the gizzard. The only time I really got a little grossed out was when I was taking samples from the mouth and for some reason the tongue had gotten detached from the mouth and it fell right out. We worked until it we had done all the birds we have this week. They’re doing more shooting next Monday and Tuesday so we’ll have 60 more then.

                 Today we messed around with the bow net we will be catching birds with later this season. I’ve used bow nets before on Hawks but compared to the one we’re using now is WAY small, maybe 3-4 feet instead of our 10ft. Either way I’d never set one up. We got a DVD from Northwood Falconry that showed us how to set it up but really it’s pretty simple. We also got 2 different remote triggers, one came with it even though I don’t think it was supposed to, and the other Crissa had brought. The one Crissa bought has an odd trigger but after messing around with it I think I got it stabilized. It has a tiny keychain remote trigger which will be great for field work while the other has a big remote but didn’t need any tweaking. We tried both remotes from different distances and came to the conclusion that they both were fine and that we should probably bring both remotes.

The one we have now

The one I've used before

Tomorrow a local guy who owns a charter boat company is taking me and Crissa out to Jack Island around 10am for observations. YAY! I'm so ready!... I think.