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.)

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.

Yeah, I know, week three is nearly over, but for what’s it worth, I’ve put up pictures from my second week. They’re meager, but for the few interested, they’ll have to hold you over. I’ve already got more pictures this week, and I should have more time with the camera in the coming weeks.

My I’ve been busy. I finally got around to putting up pictures. They’re not much, but I haven’t been carrying my camera with me yet.

For now, I’m staying in the McIvor Center. It’s a spacious building that’s got nice facilities including a kitchen and an adequate bedroom. It’s also got a wireless internet network via a satellite connection. It’s also a got a nice view. From the center, one can see Mount Livermore in the distance.

And last but not least, I traded cars with my professor to get a vehicle with a little more ground clearance (an absolute necessity on the back roads). The car comes with a colorful bumper sticker.

The thing that’s keeping me so busy is trying to setup my transects. Each point has to be 250 meters apart, and I’m finding that very difficult at times when trying to deal with the terrain. Once those transects are setup, I’ll try to run 20 points each morning in four hours. After that I’m done for the day and will get to enjoy myself a little more. Go birding, take pictures, do all that reading I have planned for this summer, etc. I’m sure blogging will be a little more frequent then too.

I am excited to announce something I’ve known about for a while but have yet to announce as I worked out the particulars. I’m leaving tomorrow to begin my thesis on avian community ecology in the Davis Mountains. I will spend two field seasons of approximately six to eight weeks focusing on quantitatively describing the bird communities and how they are defined in major habitat types. Also, this type of work has previously been done in many of the other southwest mountain ranges, so I should be able to make comparisons with the Davis Mountains to see if any differences show up.

Most exciting is the place I get to work. I’ll be doing this study on The Nature Conservancy’s Davis Mountains Preserve. This location is an amazing place. It includes Mount Livermore, the fifth highest peak in Texas at 8,378 feet. It also contains habitats (and species associated with them) that are either Rocky Mountain species which barely make it this far south or Mexican species which barely make it this far north. The state’s first record of Buff-breasted Flycatcher was found here, sitting on a nest. The Mexican subspecies of Spotted Owl occurs here. Ten species of hummingbird have been recorded, like Magnificent Hummingbird. It’s also a great place for rare Mexican warblers like Slate-throated Redstart, Red-faced Warbler, and Olive Warbler. It is a place that any biologist would love to work in.

At first, I’ll be extremely busy working on the details of the study and marking my transects. But after things settle down and my surveys begin, I may have time to blog. You can also bet that I’ll be taking pictures, as time allows. We’ll just have to see how things work out. I’m also excited by all the time I’ll have this summer to read. I’m bringing a bunch of books.

One of my biggest goals in my time off however is to make a date with a Flammulated Owl. Of the birds that regularly occur in Texas, I can count the ones I’ve not seen on one hand. Somehow I’ve missed these tiny owls in all my prior birding trips, probably because I’ve not looked for them specifically.

It’s going to be a great summer, but one with its own challenges being away from my wife. I’ve got to give a big shout out for her support and willingness to take care of the homefront while I’m gone.