Cape Meares

Friday was a loooong day. But, a great one at that. I did a reproduction plot from 500-700, drove to Newport from 715-1000, had a lab meeting from 1000-1100. During the lab meeting, I showed Rob (our boss)  my power point presentation with the eagle disturbances from my video, and then I showed him the awesome picture of the eagle right at the front of the video shot. He loved it! Yay! The meeting went well, and next week we will be discussing another paper. Maybe this one won't be about sawflies. lol. After the meeting, Cheryl, Emma (our REU student), and I drove up to Cape Meares to change out stuff for the camera, and also give us a chance to see Cape Meares. This is the location of the other intern, Sheena. Wow, Cape Meares is beautiful. I loved it, and was immediately jealous of Sheena. She's got such a great rock, such a great spot. However, her birds can't stick to the rock long enough to lay eggs before they are attacked by eagles. While we were there, Cheryl had me take photos of the rock so that maybe they can start doing repro plots at this spot. While were there, the rock was attacked by an adult and subadult Eagle. Wow! I haven't seen a disturbance in so long (May 25), so it was exciting to watch it. The entire rock cleared, so we immediately started looking for eggs. We found 7 on one side, but within 3 minutes, the gulls came and ate every single one of them. I watched a gull swallow an egg whole....seriously? Hilarious. Usually the gulls will bash the egg on the rock, and then eat the contents. We scanned the rock one more time to see if we found anymore eggs/birds...etc. I found one Murre sitting on an egg in a little nook on the front of the rock. It was kind of in a perfect spot because the eagles probably couldn't see it. Cool beans!

After all of that, we went and visited a tree called, The Octopus Tree. I immediately started singing, Octopus' Garden by the Beatles in my head. Then, we went and visited the largest Sitka Spruce tree in Oregon. AWESOME! After our hiking, we went to the Tillamook Dairy. Pretty much everyone tells me to go here....ever since I first got this job. So, I was so excited to finally get to go. The dairy is awesome. They have so much stuff there. And they give you free samples of their curds (squeaky cheese!!), and other cheeses. My favorite was their vintage white cheddar...sooo good! Then, we got ice cream. yum yum yum! What a great day. We then drove the 2 hours back to Newport, and called it a day. I was so tired, but didn't  bring clothes to spend the night at Cheryl's, so I decided to drive home. Bad idea. It rained hard the whole way home, got dark, and it just became very difficult for me to see the road. It took me forever to get home because I drove so slow. And on top of that I was EXTREMELY tired. I made it home safe, with no problems, but I won't be doing that ever again. It was a great day! Here are some photos...

 This picture is actually from our first lab meeting day in June a few weeks ago. This is me and the other intern, Sheena at Yaquina Head. 

 Really hard to see us, but this is me, Cheryl, and Sheena in front of the Yaquina Head lighthouse earlier in June. 

 Cape Meares in Tillamook, Oregon

 The forest on top of that bluff across the way is the oldest Sitka Spruce forest on the coast of Oregon. All of the other forests have been logged and replanted. 

 Emma and Cheryl looking for the Peregrine Falcon's nest. 

 I think this picture ended up on here twice, owell...more beauty! 

 Me in front of the Octopus Tree

 You can see how it got its name. 

 Some of the forest we hiked through....sooo pretty! 

 Walking along the trail, we found these salmonberries and ate them....delicious! 

 Some kind of flower that produces a fruit. It was pretty so I took a picture of it. 

 The largest Sitka Spruce tree in Oregon, although you can see the top of it has been broken off from a storm. Cheryl said it is still the largest girth wise even if the top has been broken off. 

 I had to hug this tree! 

 I'm like this little ant on this huge tree! 

Oh yeah, this our lab door at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. I'm official now! 

First chick of the season!

Well yesterday and today, I saw and confirmed my first little murre chick of the season. Oh I wish I could get a picture of it for you, but seriously...I'm SOOO far away from my rock. I struggle to see it through the high powered Questar. O'well. I'll have to admire these babies from afar. This is the week that most, if not all, eggs should be hatching. And because of that, the birds behavior's are so bizarre and weird...making my job way more difficult. Challenge accepted! haha. I can't wait till the chicks get to be big enough to thermo-regulate themselves. How exciting! Have I told you guys how these babies fledge? Probably not. It's quite unique actually. The female leaves before the babies fledge, leaving them with the male. The father pushes their young off of the rock (whoa!) and into the ocean. He teaches them to swim and how to protect themselves as they travel farther north for the winter. They actually don't know how to fly for quite some time. Isn't that amazing? It's usually the mother that takes care of the young, but in this case, not so. During incubation, hatching, and before they fledge, the male and female take turns taking care of the young. Kind of neat. They don't call these birds seabirds for nothing. Can you imagine pushing your baby off of a high rock into the freezing ocean? LOL NO! Of course not, just saying...this is such a crazy thought to me even though I realize, it's what they are made for. I hope I get to witness it, even though, I know my stomach will probably lurch at the sight of it. No...don't fall! haha.

I got a very sweet package from my friend/co-worker Debby today. Debby-Lou-Who, you are wonderful! Thank you so much! I love the stamp! I want to stamp everything I own with it! Here's a picture of the stamp she sent me..

Isn't this the cutest stamp ever??? Thank you Debby! I'm looking forward to the cookies too! ;-)

Oh yeah, yesterday morning, I got a visit on the beach from this guy....

Peregrine Falcon through the scope...this is the best picture I could get with the scope and my phone. 

Hope everyone is well! 

Video from the field

Okay, so the weather and I decided I wasn't going to Cape Blanco today. Another day then. So, today I finished up a power point presentation for my boss showing her some of the eagle disturbances I've had at my location in my video. It's hard to tell, but I did get lucky with one shot. The day the eagle flew directly over my head with a Murre was in perfect shot with the camera behind me...yeah this picture is awesome!

The eagle, as you can see, is in the forefront of the photo. You can see the feet of the Murre hanging out from behind its tail. *Note: You may have to click on this actual photo to see it bigger to actually see it in more detail. If you look at the rock in the background, you can see the gulls and murre's flying around everywhere like its a mad house. This is what happens when an eagle causes a disturbance. It's chaos. Also, this is what my video looks like when I'm analyzing. This picture isn't fair though because the view actually looks pretty good...try seeing a disturbance when your video looks like this....

Look at how bad the sun glare is....its even worse in person regarding the glare...really hurts your eyes. 

So, I didn't include the entire power point presentation, but if any of you want to see it, let me know. Hope everyone had a great weekend and Father's Day. I did! I went and saw Rock of Ages on Saturday....soo funny! Here's to another week starting tomorrow. 

Headlight Restoration

So, my headlights were looking REALLY bad, and I finally broke down and decided to get a restoration kit. And it was only 23 bucks so why not? Well, it told me to use a drill. Um...okay. Use a drill. I realize this isn't rocket science, but I've used a drill once. So, yeah. Alright so using the drill wasn't so bad. But, this kit had like way too many steps, and several different sanding/buffing steps. I hate sanding. I hate buffing. I don't like doing any kind of work on vehicles. I wish our cars just took care of themselves. Alas, they don't. Needless to say, I felt this job took way too long and was really annoying. Once it was all said it done, it looks better, but I'm not good at sanding/buffing with a drill. I think I could have done a better job doing it by hand. But, here are the pics...enjoy!

 Before...hard to see, but the headlights are foggy in the front. 

 Here ya go....before the job

 Before the job

 Taping it up so my paint doesn't get damaged. 

 After...again...kind of hard to tell

 After the job...no more fog, except towards the bottom of the headlight...couldn't get that area with the drill. 

After the job...again looks better except around the bottom. 

My Gear

Well this past week, nothing really happened. It went by fast, and without any eagle disturbances so that's why there weren't any blog updates this past week. So because I have nothing really exciting to share with you, I decided to take pictures of all of my gear for work. You know it's dull when I'm writing a post about my field gear. LOL. Owell...that's the point of my location. My spot is known to be a spot where they Murres aren't as affected by eagles as they are in the northern areas. So my spot isn't supposed to have a lot of action. So, anyways, here are pics of my field gear.

 My work laptop busy away exporting.

 My CF card reader

 One of my external harddrives

 My work tub

 Some of the stuff that goes in: baggie full of stuff, battery reader, case for laptop

 Extra binder with extra data sheets

 My other external harddrive.

 My field binder

 My reproduction plot field notebook

 Data collected for the repro plot

 My handy dandy binder, goes with me everywhere

 So, if you guys wanted to know how I draw my birds and resight them, this is how. This one is Plot 1. 

 Plot 2

 Plot 3

 Plot 4

 Plot 5

 Plot 6a

 Plot 6b

 Plot 6c

 My just in case tub....always need ducktape! 

 My stool

 My scope, tripod, and questar case (old school samsonite)...nice!

 The almighty Questar...this baby is my friend

 One of my batteries, battery charger, and tarp

The cart I use to tote around the battery.