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So I've been here a week, and I'm on my first day off.
Here's what I've done so far:
Monday morning meeting. It's about an hour where everyone goes over their goals for the week and accomplishments for the previous week. Some orientation, driving test, tour of property. Nothing too exciting.
It was raining, so that made it difficult for me to really do anything. My main function is to help the biologists and technicians in the field. They weren't going in the field. :P
Soooo I asked the refuge manager if there was anything that I should do. He's very vague. Apparently that is one of his flaws. He's vague and moody. When I was talking to the other people they said that he was a great guy and he really cares about his employees. BUT apparently he's had anger management issues and can be moody. Once you've been around him long enough you'll know when to leave him alone.
He gave me an assignment though to get together fact sheets for new employees about what we do here. :P Soooo I was reading all the material I could and started to interview the people. Which was kind of good, it got me talking to the techs and biologists, and did give me a good idea of what was going on. I haven't finished yet because there are people I need to talk to that weren't there until this coming week. Hopefully I can get a good set of fact sheets. :P
Anyway, so that's what filled the time I had when I wasn't out helping the techs that were out in the rain anyway. I helped Shoni, the piping plover tech, set up a mock plover predator exclosure. She found the first plover nest that day, so the next day when it wasn't raining we were going to set it up. If the weather is bad you can't set up exclosures because the added stress of weather can cause them to abandon the nest.
How you set up an exclosure is you take this fencing that is made of something like chicken wire with 5 stakes attached. Two people roll the thing up so each person has half, then you go to the nest. You then start setting it in place and ideally you have a third person to pound in the stakes with a mallet. You can do it with two people apparently but it's hard. When we were doing it there was me, Shoni, Elizabeth (Americorp) and Liz (Americorp), so there were two people to put in stakes. Then after you have the fencing up (it's about 15 sq feet inside I think) you overlap the edges by about a foot and zip tie them together. Then you take a shovel and dig a trench around the edge of the fencing and pound the fence down further. Then you bury the fencing again, this helps keep predators from burrowing into the exclosure. Then you take blueberry netting and put that over the exclosure to keep out birds of prey with zip ties. Plovers don't really fly, they usually walk everywhere so it doesn't bother them. Then you clean up and leave. You need to be done in at least 15 minutes or the birds may be too stressed to return to the nest.
The first half of my day was taken up helping Kate (New England Cottontail tech) and David (invasive plant/everything tech) find points in a plot that we are working on to restore alder thickets and remove invasives. The thickets are important because this cottontail needs the thicket habitat and is very endangered. So we were out in a couple of plots. One of the plots had it's points determined during the summer when there was a lot more vegetation. Because of this the points weren't perfect, and neither of the techs had done that plot last year (Kate is new, David has been here for ~10 yrs) it wasn't easy to find the points. It was raining, but it did let up a bit after a while.
So I woke up early and went to work at 7:30 instead of 8. Ward was there already, and he said he had a job for me. Apparently a tree had fallen in the trail and he wanted me to clear it out. The trail is a mile long, he said that it's one way so I could go around the whole thing if I wanted but I didn't have to. The tree was about a 1/4 into the trail. I got a bowsaw and cut it in half. It wasn't a HUGE tree, it was tall but not too thick yet. I couldn't fit my hands around it, but it wasn't TOO much wider around than that. So I cut that and tossed one side off. The other side though was too long to toss to the side because of trees around it. So I started to saw at it again. Ya'know, it's not huge, but that tree didn't want to cut so it was tiring. I decided that there had to be a better way so I picked it up and walked under it to stand it and tossed it to the side that way. Then I went back the way I came because I wanted to make sure if Shoni did the exclosure early I'd be back in time. While I was putting the saw back Shoni and the Elizabeths drove by and said they were doing the exclosure, did I want to help? I said of course!
So I headed out and we got to the beach. We did an exclosure for the plover, then we did a survey to see if there were any other nests. Plovers are tiny birds. Their nests are called scrapes, which are literally a scrap in the sand. Perhaps there is shell or something in them but usually not. Once you're experienced you can spot the nests pretty easily, but when you're first starting out it's hard to tell! You need to make sure you aren't looking at a footprint or just a depression in the sand. Oh, and the plovers themselves do a great impression of a rock. As do the eggs. lol Fun to find! We found 3 more adults but no nests. By this time it was about 11 am. We got back to the refuge and David was looking for someone to help him in the vernal pools.
Vernal pools are seasonal areas of water that stay to midsummer and dry up. They don't have any fish because of this. They are complete ecosystems with obligate species and others that depend on them for part of their life cycle. We were looking for wood frog, spotted salamander, and blue spotted salamander egg masses. We went to five pools. Once there we documented water and sky conditions, water temp, pH, and conductivity. We took a picture and measured the depth. Then we went into the water. I had waders and David wore his wetsuit (great idea! If I had wetsuit that's totally the way I'd go!). I had put on my waders at the car and then walked in. Of course there aren't ever things small enough for me, so I was waddling and clopping along after him. I'm sure I looked funny. :P I'm not sure how far the first pool was in, but probably 15 minutes into the trail or so. We went into the first pool and this one was kind of small. On a previous visit there had only been one egg mass in it. The egg masses are balls of jelly that are about the size of a golf ball or the size of your fist. Inside there are bunches of eggs that kind of look like cells. If you see a mass you need to figure out about how many masses are there, rarely is one mass only one egg mass actually. They generally are attached to submerged branches but they might be attached to submerged ferns or other plants. But the first pool we didn't find anything. We would start at the same point and go in opposite directions around the pool because you might see something that you didn't see in a different direction. You also need UV sunglasses to see in the pools easier as they tend to be murky. It took a bit to get used to the waders. At first I felt like my feet were going to float away after every step, and it felt like the muck wanted to eat me. Which it did, but once you got used to it it was easier to move around. I also had to be careful because the centers were often really deep (David said he went to the middle of one and he was floating, and I'm a lot shorter!) and I didn't want to go in over my waders. It would have sucked because the water and the air were really cold for one thing! You also had to be careful because a lot of the time where things looked shallow it was just floating vegetative mat and I would have ended up floating. :P The most egg masses I counted was 142 with 8 uncountable egg masses. Some were uncountable because they had hatched and had tons of tadpoles swimming around.
We finished at about 3:30. Then we went and checked some wetlands for purple loosestrife, an invasive. We wanted to pick it so that we could pot it and raise it under controlled conditions to feed our Galarosa (sp?) beetles. The beetles will breed, lay their eggs, and then provide us with a much larger population to release. They only eat purple loosestrife and leave the native loosestrife alone. They are so specific if they eat all the purple loosestrife they will starve. So they are effective.
After this we got back to the refuge at 4:30, the end of my day. I spent the entire day outside at work! It was awesome. Then after I made dinner (pasties), I walked the trail and went to bed after talking to Scottie.
Ward got a hold of me and told me that I was to go with Kate (main biologist) and Kelly (bunny tech) to a meeting. The meeting was at 10. I did some reading and then got some clearer orientation from Karrie. Karrie works Tuesday and Thursday part days. She has a new baby and is working on getting back to work. She takes Johnny to work atm and will be putting him into daycare soon. She's really nice, and seems to be really important in keeping things moving smoothly. She cleared some things for me, and got my orientation going. There are more training things that I needed to do but nobody told me about them yet. :P Like I needed to do a computer program so that I will be certified to use computers at the refuge. I think it's a security thing. Anyway, she couldn't go thru everything with me before I had to leave.
So we went to this meeting and for the first hour we were inside. Most of the meeting though we were outside walking thru sites of restoration of various types. One of the sites was from a partner of ours. They were regrowing a native apple tree and dealing with invasive plants. Most of it was with us and our alder regrowing and bunny stuff. I was to be there taking notes. So that was most of the meeting. Then we got back to the building where we were talking (which was in an old hay barn btw) and started to figure out a management plan. After this we went to talk to a landowner that had 10 acres that she had in a conservation easement that she wanted to restore with us. She had a valuable place, but has a problem with invasives. So we met with her and then we came back to the refuge at 4. I started typing up the notes and such for them for my last half hour.
After work I took a 2 mile hike.
I really like my job. For the first time, when I was told that I should take a day off, I was like 'But, but, what if I miss something? Can't I just work 7 days a week?' :P I'm sure that weekends will be good so that I don't get exhausted... but still. I don't want to take days off! Also when I'm working I don't have time to be sad.
One thing that sucks is that deer ticks are really bad here. Karrie was saying that she's had Lyme disease 3 times so far. I don't want to get Lyme disease! The ticks are frikkin small and I don't have a good way to check for them. If I get one attached where I can't reach (and I actually SEE it) I have no idea what I will do! If they attach but haven't been attached for very long they probably won't transmit. But if I don't see it/can't get to it then that doesn't help. Apparently it is also common for them to hang out in your hair. I can't see the back of my head. :P The one downside of being here I guess. One of the more practical reasons for me to want Scottie here. He could check me for ticks when I got home! :P For now I am standing on a chair to check my back in the mirror over the bathroom sink (it's the only mirror I have) and hoping that there aren't any there. :P
lj-cut to save your f-lists. :P
Here's what I've done so far:
Monday morning meeting. It's about an hour where everyone goes over their goals for the week and accomplishments for the previous week. Some orientation, driving test, tour of property. Nothing too exciting.
It was raining, so that made it difficult for me to really do anything. My main function is to help the biologists and technicians in the field. They weren't going in the field. :P
Soooo I asked the refuge manager if there was anything that I should do. He's very vague. Apparently that is one of his flaws. He's vague and moody. When I was talking to the other people they said that he was a great guy and he really cares about his employees. BUT apparently he's had anger management issues and can be moody. Once you've been around him long enough you'll know when to leave him alone.
He gave me an assignment though to get together fact sheets for new employees about what we do here. :P Soooo I was reading all the material I could and started to interview the people. Which was kind of good, it got me talking to the techs and biologists, and did give me a good idea of what was going on. I haven't finished yet because there are people I need to talk to that weren't there until this coming week. Hopefully I can get a good set of fact sheets. :P
Anyway, so that's what filled the time I had when I wasn't out helping the techs that were out in the rain anyway. I helped Shoni, the piping plover tech, set up a mock plover predator exclosure. She found the first plover nest that day, so the next day when it wasn't raining we were going to set it up. If the weather is bad you can't set up exclosures because the added stress of weather can cause them to abandon the nest.
How you set up an exclosure is you take this fencing that is made of something like chicken wire with 5 stakes attached. Two people roll the thing up so each person has half, then you go to the nest. You then start setting it in place and ideally you have a third person to pound in the stakes with a mallet. You can do it with two people apparently but it's hard. When we were doing it there was me, Shoni, Elizabeth (Americorp) and Liz (Americorp), so there were two people to put in stakes. Then after you have the fencing up (it's about 15 sq feet inside I think) you overlap the edges by about a foot and zip tie them together. Then you take a shovel and dig a trench around the edge of the fencing and pound the fence down further. Then you bury the fencing again, this helps keep predators from burrowing into the exclosure. Then you take blueberry netting and put that over the exclosure to keep out birds of prey with zip ties. Plovers don't really fly, they usually walk everywhere so it doesn't bother them. Then you clean up and leave. You need to be done in at least 15 minutes or the birds may be too stressed to return to the nest.
The first half of my day was taken up helping Kate (New England Cottontail tech) and David (invasive plant/everything tech) find points in a plot that we are working on to restore alder thickets and remove invasives. The thickets are important because this cottontail needs the thicket habitat and is very endangered. So we were out in a couple of plots. One of the plots had it's points determined during the summer when there was a lot more vegetation. Because of this the points weren't perfect, and neither of the techs had done that plot last year (Kate is new, David has been here for ~10 yrs) it wasn't easy to find the points. It was raining, but it did let up a bit after a while.
So I woke up early and went to work at 7:30 instead of 8. Ward was there already, and he said he had a job for me. Apparently a tree had fallen in the trail and he wanted me to clear it out. The trail is a mile long, he said that it's one way so I could go around the whole thing if I wanted but I didn't have to. The tree was about a 1/4 into the trail. I got a bowsaw and cut it in half. It wasn't a HUGE tree, it was tall but not too thick yet. I couldn't fit my hands around it, but it wasn't TOO much wider around than that. So I cut that and tossed one side off. The other side though was too long to toss to the side because of trees around it. So I started to saw at it again. Ya'know, it's not huge, but that tree didn't want to cut so it was tiring. I decided that there had to be a better way so I picked it up and walked under it to stand it and tossed it to the side that way. Then I went back the way I came because I wanted to make sure if Shoni did the exclosure early I'd be back in time. While I was putting the saw back Shoni and the Elizabeths drove by and said they were doing the exclosure, did I want to help? I said of course!
So I headed out and we got to the beach. We did an exclosure for the plover, then we did a survey to see if there were any other nests. Plovers are tiny birds. Their nests are called scrapes, which are literally a scrap in the sand. Perhaps there is shell or something in them but usually not. Once you're experienced you can spot the nests pretty easily, but when you're first starting out it's hard to tell! You need to make sure you aren't looking at a footprint or just a depression in the sand. Oh, and the plovers themselves do a great impression of a rock. As do the eggs. lol Fun to find! We found 3 more adults but no nests. By this time it was about 11 am. We got back to the refuge and David was looking for someone to help him in the vernal pools.
Vernal pools are seasonal areas of water that stay to midsummer and dry up. They don't have any fish because of this. They are complete ecosystems with obligate species and others that depend on them for part of their life cycle. We were looking for wood frog, spotted salamander, and blue spotted salamander egg masses. We went to five pools. Once there we documented water and sky conditions, water temp, pH, and conductivity. We took a picture and measured the depth. Then we went into the water. I had waders and David wore his wetsuit (great idea! If I had wetsuit that's totally the way I'd go!). I had put on my waders at the car and then walked in. Of course there aren't ever things small enough for me, so I was waddling and clopping along after him. I'm sure I looked funny. :P I'm not sure how far the first pool was in, but probably 15 minutes into the trail or so. We went into the first pool and this one was kind of small. On a previous visit there had only been one egg mass in it. The egg masses are balls of jelly that are about the size of a golf ball or the size of your fist. Inside there are bunches of eggs that kind of look like cells. If you see a mass you need to figure out about how many masses are there, rarely is one mass only one egg mass actually. They generally are attached to submerged branches but they might be attached to submerged ferns or other plants. But the first pool we didn't find anything. We would start at the same point and go in opposite directions around the pool because you might see something that you didn't see in a different direction. You also need UV sunglasses to see in the pools easier as they tend to be murky. It took a bit to get used to the waders. At first I felt like my feet were going to float away after every step, and it felt like the muck wanted to eat me. Which it did, but once you got used to it it was easier to move around. I also had to be careful because the centers were often really deep (David said he went to the middle of one and he was floating, and I'm a lot shorter!) and I didn't want to go in over my waders. It would have sucked because the water and the air were really cold for one thing! You also had to be careful because a lot of the time where things looked shallow it was just floating vegetative mat and I would have ended up floating. :P The most egg masses I counted was 142 with 8 uncountable egg masses. Some were uncountable because they had hatched and had tons of tadpoles swimming around.
We finished at about 3:30. Then we went and checked some wetlands for purple loosestrife, an invasive. We wanted to pick it so that we could pot it and raise it under controlled conditions to feed our Galarosa (sp?) beetles. The beetles will breed, lay their eggs, and then provide us with a much larger population to release. They only eat purple loosestrife and leave the native loosestrife alone. They are so specific if they eat all the purple loosestrife they will starve. So they are effective.
After this we got back to the refuge at 4:30, the end of my day. I spent the entire day outside at work! It was awesome. Then after I made dinner (pasties), I walked the trail and went to bed after talking to Scottie.
Ward got a hold of me and told me that I was to go with Kate (main biologist) and Kelly (bunny tech) to a meeting. The meeting was at 10. I did some reading and then got some clearer orientation from Karrie. Karrie works Tuesday and Thursday part days. She has a new baby and is working on getting back to work. She takes Johnny to work atm and will be putting him into daycare soon. She's really nice, and seems to be really important in keeping things moving smoothly. She cleared some things for me, and got my orientation going. There are more training things that I needed to do but nobody told me about them yet. :P Like I needed to do a computer program so that I will be certified to use computers at the refuge. I think it's a security thing. Anyway, she couldn't go thru everything with me before I had to leave.
So we went to this meeting and for the first hour we were inside. Most of the meeting though we were outside walking thru sites of restoration of various types. One of the sites was from a partner of ours. They were regrowing a native apple tree and dealing with invasive plants. Most of it was with us and our alder regrowing and bunny stuff. I was to be there taking notes. So that was most of the meeting. Then we got back to the building where we were talking (which was in an old hay barn btw) and started to figure out a management plan. After this we went to talk to a landowner that had 10 acres that she had in a conservation easement that she wanted to restore with us. She had a valuable place, but has a problem with invasives. So we met with her and then we came back to the refuge at 4. I started typing up the notes and such for them for my last half hour.
After work I took a 2 mile hike.
I really like my job. For the first time, when I was told that I should take a day off, I was like 'But, but, what if I miss something? Can't I just work 7 days a week?' :P I'm sure that weekends will be good so that I don't get exhausted... but still. I don't want to take days off! Also when I'm working I don't have time to be sad.
One thing that sucks is that deer ticks are really bad here. Karrie was saying that she's had Lyme disease 3 times so far. I don't want to get Lyme disease! The ticks are frikkin small and I don't have a good way to check for them. If I get one attached where I can't reach (and I actually SEE it) I have no idea what I will do! If they attach but haven't been attached for very long they probably won't transmit. But if I don't see it/can't get to it then that doesn't help. Apparently it is also common for them to hang out in your hair. I can't see the back of my head. :P The one downside of being here I guess. One of the more practical reasons for me to want Scottie here. He could check me for ticks when I got home! :P For now I am standing on a chair to check my back in the mirror over the bathroom sink (it's the only mirror I have) and hoping that there aren't any there. :P
lj-cut to save your f-lists. :P
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Date: 2008-05-03 03:55 pm (UTC)From:So I guess I'm still of the mind that Scottie being here to help prevent me from getting Lyme disease would be good. heh :P