Hello! Well, things have been going very well here in New Mexico. The weather is starting to warm up, although it’s still cool at night. The wind is constantly making out jobs difficult. When it’s windy, we’re not allowed to call or search for owls. The reason for this is that if we’re calling and a predator (i.e. Great Horned Owl) responds to our calls or comes into the area and we don’t hear him, we’re endangering the Mexican Spotted Owls that we’re here to protect. So the wind has been cutting short several attempts of surveying. We have been productive though, despite the wind. We have found (so far) seven MSO nests!! Pretty exciting considering we only found one last year that was abandoned and only a few the years before. I guess the owls finally decided to cooperate with us. :) I was part of the group that found the first nest of the season during our training. It was the first time I’d seen mousing actually work. Basically, we find the male (he’s usually the most vocal) and then offer him mice. In theory, he takes the mice to his nesting female and gives some/most of them to her to eat while she’s on the nest. Our training group got spoiled because on their first morning outing the mousing worked to the letter. Amazing.
Aside from training, I’ve only been out in the field a handful of times. I’ve been spending most of my time in the office out here setting up a big, crazy database so that everyone can enter data instead of me doing it all myself. It’s been working fine for about 2 weeks now (knock on wood) without any major problems. I’ve also been training the behavior team how to use equipment (cameras, scopes, PDAs, etc.) and exactly how the behavior visits are supposed to go. Usually, Ann and I tag-team teach that stuff, but since she’s in San Diego still, it was all me. :) The PDA stuff is new this year, so I’m still a little nervous about it, but it seems to be working ok so far, even though we haven’t done actual field data collection with it (only video tape practices). It’s really great to be able to use the itty-bitty PDAs instead of lugging a full size computer and 12V battery along with all the other equipment we use into the field while chasing owls. I would like to get the entire survey system out here onto PDAs eventually, but it won’t happen this year. I’m about to start the veg survey crew on PDAs this week, so hopefully I can use that to convince Ann to go all PDA next year.
The few trips into the field that I have had were fun. A few times I went out with Chris to help him set up a sound level meter (SLM) to get readings on ambient noise in the drainage. On our second trip out there, to move the SLM, we were talking and just crunching along (on the fallen leaves) and we were discovered by a male owl. He hooted at us from down the drainage about 30 meters. There was a pair in that area last year, but no one had found them this year, so it was pretty cool. Chris and I searched the area, but only found the male. It’s always fun when they call you. I’ve heard them respond to almost anything…if they feel like it…people talking, car doors, alarm clocks.
Chris’ dad and brother are visiting right now, so we’ve taken a bit of time to show them around the forest. Yesterday we went up to the old lookout tower that we are using for our radar tower. It’s a great view from up there. We saw the Middle Fire burn area. That was the fire that almost evacuated us the first weeks of camp. I knew about where it was, but seeing it from up there…it was close, with not much between us and it but open grassland. We also went up to Bearwallow Lookout Tower, which is an active tower that watches for smoke. We got to meet Mary Ann, the lookout. She was very nice and informative, but very quiet, which I guess you have to be to live by yourself in the middle of nowhere. The view from Bearwallow is amazing! The last time Chris’ dad came to visit (about the 3rd week of the season), the three of us went to the Catwalk in Glenwood. It’s a metal walkway that runs along the old pipeline from the mine out there. Absolutely beautiful! Waterfalls and huge rocks everywhere. There were parts we had to squeeze through with packs. On the way out, it was so hot (especially since we’d been in the mountains that morning) we jumped down one of the waterfalls into freezing water…clothes and all, since we hadn’t planned on swimming. No matter though, since we are in New Mexico, we were dry by the time we reached the car.
I did get a bit of a break a while ago. Chris and I had to go to Albuquerque for a laundry/grocery shopping run. Of course, we got a flat on the way there and ended up having to run all our errands in one day since the stores were mostly closed by the time we got there. The first hotel we stayed at decided to wake us up early with construction right out our window. We tried to complain about it, but neither of us is really good at that. As we were headed home that day, Ann called and asked us to pick up some tapes. So we stopped in Socorro, as per Ann’s suggestion. Socorro had NO tapes. Plain old regular audio tapes for the tape recorders. None. So we turned around, and headed back to Belen, which is about 45 minutes from Albuquerque (Socorro is about 2 hours from ABQ). Needless to say, we didn’t make it back up the mountain that night. We crashed for the night in Magdalena. And, of course, some wacko was outside our room at 4am taking about 20 sodas from the soda machine. plink, plink, ka-chink (quarter, quarter, soda). Not much of a break. I came back to camp looking forward to a good night’s sleep.
I did get a mental break last weekend though. GMI’s idea to keep us all safety-minded out here is to offer an “incentive” program. So, for every day during the month that is accident-free $10 goes into a pot and at the end of the month there is a drawing and 3 people get to split the money. Well, last month’s pot was $270 and with his $90, Kevin bought 2 pony kegs from a semi-local (Las Cruces, NM) brewery. Thus was born our Cinco de Mayo party. We all pitched in and had a HUGE potluck and a late-into-the-night party. Definitely a much-needed, much-deserved break…even if we didn’t leave camp.
All in all, doing good. Sometimes I have to stop and realize that I’m really lucky to be doing what I do. I love it out here. I hope you all are doing good. If you in San Diego, I’ll be home for a week in June (14th-23rd) and then back again for a while probably the end of July or beginning of August.
Love and sunshine,
Stef ;)
