Today I leave for the Davis Mountains to continue my second (and last) field season of thesis research. Last year my adviser was gracious and allowed me the use of his vehicle. This year however, he wasn’t feeling so altruistic. And who can blame him? I had a whole year to arrange for another vehicle.

The problem of course is that I drive a Corolla. She’s light and nimble on her feet and gets a near miraculous amount of miles to the gallon, but she aint exactly renowned for her off road abilities. Her name is Betsy.

I needed more of a bastion of transportation to handle the mountainous terrain. I needed Bertha.

Bertha has a long and storied history. A 1988 GMC suburban that belongs to my parents, she’s like that relative that everyone respects for all they’ve seen and been through, yet no one wants to sit next to at the dinner table because of the smell…

A few years ago in what was expected to be her last hurrah, Bertha embarked with five young gents on a trip deep in the southern bowels of Mexico. She made it all the way to Oaxaca and back. True, she got her gas cap stolen and there were four flat tires in the first six days, but Bertha can hardly be faulted for Mexico’s hooligan youth, shoddy road conditions, and below standard spare tires.

No, Bertha will do quite well for me this summer. She’d better. I just spent $250 to get one of her four windows working (she has no air conditioner) and glue the fabric ceiling back on. She’s just got the right constitution for field work.

I’m really looking forward to these next few weeks. In addition to the research, I’m going to be pulling out the camera in my spare time, catching up on processing all my pictures, and reading lots of books. If my internet connection cooperates, you can expect to see plenty of pictures.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re in the market for a 1988 GMC Suburban with one working window and a glued on ceiling lots of character, I’ll have one for sale in about five weeks.

My wife and ventured to southern Colorado for spring break. I’ve finally gotten around to throwing up the pictures from the trip. They’re heavy on Sandhill Cranes in flight. Why? Because literally tens of thousands of these birds migrate through the San Luis Valley and use it as a staging area on their way back north, and the birds are just about impossible to sneak up on when they’re in the fields feeding. So it’s much easier to take pictures as they fly by.

It was really a magical experience. Most cranes in the world are endangered. These ancient birds haven’t coped well to the changes people have brought. And while it wouldn’t take much too see Sandhill Cranes get in trouble, their populations are currently large and stable. Like all cranes, they’re quite vocal and frequently display towards one another by jumping in the air and flapping their wings. In short, they’re sexy.

Other highlights of the trip included a couple of Burrowing Owls sitting in the rain on the drive up to Colorado, my first Snowshoe Hare (I now understand why they’re in the same genus as our jackrabbits), and an amazing place named the Great Sand Dunes National Park.

I’ll leave you with a selected few pictures. (Click on them to see slightly larger versions in the gallery).

Week seven, the final week’s pictures, have just been put up in the gallery. While not as impressive as last week, there are at least a couple of highlights.

Following an afternoon rainstorm, I experienced a gorgeous sunset. Not for it’s color — it was all white and blue! — but rather for it’s texture.

I also caught a wonderful shot of a Sleepy Orange.

Enjoy!

All the hard work as finally gotten the job done. I’ve returned from paradise (the Davis Mountains) to the real world.

This real world is going to take some time to get used to. I’m trading Mount Livermore for the balcony of the apartment out my window. Instead of censusing birds each morning, I’ll focus on things like my proposal (best pronounced with the same inflection as the word manure).

I’m returning to a beautiful wife that’s worked her butt off this summer at two jobs. I am so deeply humbled by her sacrifice. While I hardly have the right to feel sorry for myself, part of me already misses the mountains. Life was simple, there was a job to do, and no interruptions to get in the way. On the other hand, it feels great to be home.

My time away has also had its effect on my blogging. The research was consuming, and I found myself completely unable to write about things that interested me around the net. That will hopefully be changing, depending on my time constraints now that I’m home. (Having a fast, reliable internet connection doesn’t hurt either.)

I’ve got some good things coming up though, including a review of Finding Darwin’s God by Ken Miller.

Not long after the start of this summer field season, keiths asked if I could explain what I was doing for my thesis in a little more detail. I said I would, I meant to, but somehow I got lazy when it came around to actually doing it. Well, I aim to be a man of my word, and with this summer’s field season coming to a close, I figured I’d better elaborate soon. In terms of humor, interesting writing, and insightful commentary, I promise nothing. This is simply a brief description of what my thesis involves and what my days are like out here in the Davis Mountains. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just put up pictures from week six. To make up for the paucity of pictures last week, I’ve gone above and beyond, with a little something for everyone. For the entomology lovers amoung us, there’s lots of butterflies and as always another Esenbeckia. If botany’s your thing, then you’ll enjoy the beautiful aspen trees (yes, you read that right — aspen in the middle of west Texas) or the Jackson Pollock oak trees. For the mammalogists there’s a dead pocket gopher and an almost dead bat. For the herpatologists, a couple of lizards coooperated. And for the birders, I even have two shots of birds. There’s a lot more too, including some nice scenic shots.

And finally, nobody miss the 360 degree rainbow. I’d never seen anything like it before.

I finally got enough of an internet connection to put up pictures from week five. They’re really not much, but they include some nice scenic shots from one morning, and a cool head on pic of an Esenbeckia fly.

Next week’s pictures should be better, as my wife is coming out this weekend, I’m taking a few days off from thesis work, and I’ll be using the camera to see what cool things I can come across.

For the three or four people that like my pictures, week four is now up in the gallery.

This is by far the best group of pictures I’ve taken since arriving, and I’m quite proud of it. Highlights include such morsels as a very prehistoric looking Short Horned Lizard, a species which gives birth to live young (sorry, no pictures of that yet), a gorgeous snake, mountain vistas, and ladybugs having sex at extreme altitudes.

Enjoy.

Pictures from week three are up. I’m a little prouder of these pictures. They offer a little more eye candy than the previous two weeks. Enjoy.

This morning turned out to have several unexpected surprises, not the least of which was the weather. Normally it warms up pretty fast. Not today.

Two hours into my four hour transect, the winds picked up and the clouds came barreling in. The temperature plummeted. It steadily began to drizzle.

Since one cannot collect data on birds very well in the rain and wind (they stop singing and tend to hunker down), I had to give up and start walking back. Of course I was about as far as I could be from shelter, wearing a T-shirt and without a jacket. My arms and hands got completely numb by the time I reached shelter, an hour later. It was a winter storm, with temperatures in the low 50s.

The morning wasn’t completely without it’s splendor though. Right before the storm hit, I heard a most peculiar noise. I would describe it as having the general quality of a donkey, but without the unmistakable hee-haw they’re famous for. Donkeys don’t inhabitat mountains either.

The only other large mammal I knew to be up here is feral hogs. (That’s another story, one coming later). It didn’t sound piggish, but I’d run out of guesses. Hogs are as nasty as they are smart. Coming between a mother and her piglet is a mistake sure to result in a trip to the emergency room and lots of stitches to the legs. Accordingly, I proceeded with great caution, since the noise was coming towards me, and I was headed toward the noise.

Through the trees I caught sight of a brown horse sized creature. The light-bulb went off in my head. Cervus elaphus, of course. An elk. No sooner had our lines of sight aligned than it took off, heading uphill. Humble folk like myself from the lowlands of west Texas simply cannot appreciate the size of elk. We think of them as big deer. Yeah, and asteroids are big rocks.

As I was coming down a slippery trail as quickly as I could, I flushed a couple of Montezuma Quail, perhaps the most beautiful of U.S. quail species. I stood in the freezing drizzle for ten minutes hoping they would come back into view, but alas they did not.

Hear’s hoping tomorrow’s a little warmer. It is June after all.