Foggy Day

Today I went back to work. My boss wanted me to take the rest of the week off to recover, but I would go crazy. Plus, I'm already better. I bounced back fast on this one. So, I serviced the camera in record timing (30 minutes). I will spare you from what all we have to do with it because it's slightly boring and technical. But, I've got a system down that works really well. Afterwards, I went to do my predator watch at 1:00. 30 minutes in after doing my cormorant count, I couldn't see the rocks anymore. And it stayed that way for the next 3 1/2 hours. Yeah, I literally had to sit in my car and wait for the fog to leave, but it never did. So, I got a good amount of reading done. I started reading, The Magic Kingdom: Sold by Terry Brooks. It's good so far. Anyways, the crews that were here this week left today. As much as I welcomed company, I'm glad they are gone. It feels very cliquish when these crews come in. They don't know me, I don't know them. They are only here for a couple of days. It's so weird. But, I'm getting more and more used to it. Although the group of girls that were here last weekend took my laundry out of the dryer, didn't tell me, and put their stuff in instead, left my wet clothes out. Seriously? Ugh, 20 year old girls can be so rude. LOL. Any who....pics for you!

Sunset Tuesday night

 This is the fog coming in...you can still see my rock a little bit. 

Yeah, um....where's my rock? haha

Sick day

Around 1:00 yesterday my stomach started hurting. And it dragged on all day like that. Barely got through my evening shift. Got home, and didn't eat much for dinner. Went to bed. Woke up around 2:30 or so, yep, I had a stomach bug. Seriously. I've had more stomach bugs than I care to admit in the past 6 months. I've never gotten sick on a field job, so I was frustrated. My boss was great about it, and wanted to drive 3 hours to get me anything I needed. Crazy talk. I wasn't gonna let her do that. So, today was a sick day for me. No worries, I have gatorade and crackers and everything else I need. I'm already feeling better, just recovering. Hope everyone is having a good week!

First egg of the season!

I got my first egg of the season today. What I mean by that is, I was able to see that one of my birds had an egg, and its a bird that I can resight, so Bird #1 is official! Yay! I was so worried I would never be able to do it, to be able to see the birds on eggs. My view is so far away, its not without difficulty, but alas its possible. It's all thanks to the special highly powered scope called, Questar. I have no idea why this thing is so special. I can't figure out why it costs $10,000. Can you believe they are letting me use that expensive of equipment for the entire season? Wow...they have so much faith in me. Nice! So, it dawned on me today that I don't think I have really explained to you guys what I do from day to day...well here ya go:

There are 2 different types of watches I do:
1.Predator Watch
2.Reproduction Plot

Predator Watch-4 hour shifts (usually), and we try to cover an entire day within a week. So everyday I do a different time block. For the 4 hours, I take down the weather conditions every hour (with an anemometer), and constantly keep a watch on the birds on my rock to be able to see if there is a disturbance. Yes, this gets tiring (mainly my eyes), squinting in scopes and binoculars strains my eye muscles, but I'm getting used to it. Plus I have a handy dandy quick fix for that, picture of what that is later this week! If there is a disturbance, be it a helicopter, boat, eagle, vulture, etc, I record it.

Reproduction Plot-For 3 hours (max), I have plots I have to go through each one at a time, looking for birds that are in the incubating posture and can be resighted. If they can, I draw them on a map/picture of the rock so I know where to look for them next time. Once I see an egg, I put that bird's number in my field notebook, and we track that bird/egg until the end of the season.

Hope that helps...if you have any questions or comments, feel free! I promise I will try to do something more exciting this next weekend. This past weekend I was very productive on Saturday, Sunday I was lame. Although I did manage to catch the movie, Avengers...Greatest super hero movie EVER! My opinion of course. Also, I've been listening to ALL of John Mayer's music this past week or so. He is genius. How does anyone manage not to like him is beyond me. I just love his music. Okay, enough rambling. :-)

Danielle's Pictures

My newly made friend, Danielle, took some great pics of our project while we worked together in Hermiston. I promised you guys I would share them with you, or at least a decent amount of them.These are all from my first week in Hermiston, so around April 25 or so. Please enjoy :)

 Danielle....if you look closely, she got pooped on from this one. 

 We found a lone cold egg. 

 Pronghorn...aka...antelope

 Box trap

 Showing the brood patch on a female...its funny because it makes her look "pregnant"

 I'm in love!

 A picture of a picture. :-)

 Red tail Hawk

 burrow maintenance

 This is all "decoration", yes that includes the coyote scat...apparently this impresses the female...poop impresses the female...lol

 Me pushing the "plunger" in, and DJ reaching into the nest chamber. 

 Taking her home

 "Back to the Burrow"

 I'm ready for my close up

 Precious, just precious

 Taking it out of the trap

 Love that this one has it's tongue sticking out. 

 This girl was feisty and bit DJ

 hmm...she caught me! I think this was me taking a picture of owls inside the trap. 

 I don't remember what was funny, but ended up being a good pic. 

 Long-billed Curlew.....these birds are rare! 

California Quail.....first of all..they are beautiful birds, second, they make cute noises. 

Bandon pics

So, I went to Bullards Beach State Park yesterday, and then went walking on the beach. I was there for hours. It's amazing how lost you can get just walking on the beach, discovering things, thinking, etc. The beaches here, as I'm sure most of you already know, are not like east coast beaches. People aren't swimming in the water, there is driftwood everywhere, and there are huge rock islands along the coast. I love this coast. People do surf here, but they have to wear wet suits because it's so cold. Anyway, while I was walking the beach yesterday, I was busy trying to take an up close picture of something, big wave came in and got my legs soaked. LOL. Should've known not to turn my back on the water. Here are some pics from my day...

 Public trail down to the beach

 Driftwood

 Western Gulls

 Found a driftwood fort, this is the back side of it. 

 Front of driftwood fort.....cool huh?

 This rock is called Elephant Rock....look in the middle and you will see why, but if you can't, the next pic is an upclose shot.

 See the elephant face?

 Seals! 

 Practicing my macro setting of my camera

 arr...them be barnacles! 

 It's really hard to see, but there are bird feet prints on the sand

View from the top of the trail