One more week at Sheldon

The birds are silent, the vegetation analysis and data entry are almost done, and I will be leaving Sheldon in a week. Next I am headed to Glacier, Montana, to live in another cabin without electricity and work on a bull trout study. Here are a few more sheldon pictures. My nighthawk eggs hatched, and the baby nighthawks look absurd, just little balls of fluff with no discernable heads or wings.
Last day off, Michelle and I hiked up to a backcountry lake in the Warner Mountains. The Warners are beautiful, but their distance from major cities and lack of excessively craggy peaks makes them virtually unknown, and we had the trail to ourselves.


The Mule's Ears that grow in the mountains have enormous leaves.

Evening on Badger Mountain, with Great Basin wild rye (ELCI) in the foreground.

Trees and rivers?! Climbing!

For our two days off, Michelle and I headed up to Bend, Oregon, for some climbing. As we got closer, the sagebrush steppe turned to ponderosa pine forest, and we started to see lakes and rivers. Although I have loved living in the desert, I do miss trees. The first night we camped off a forest service road in the ponderosas, and could see the sillouettes of tall pines against the darkening sky and smell the soil and trees and growing things. The desert smells like dust and sagebrush.
We met up with a few local climbers, who showed us volcanic cliffs to toprope along the Deschutes River. They also showed me how to set nuts and hexes in the rock and I practiced setting trad protection on a climb (but while still on a toprope). The friendliness of complete strangers is one of the excellent things about the climbing community. We had called random gear shops the night before asking about where to climb, and found someone who offered to take us climbing.

The next day we bouldered down by the river - here is Michelle on a traverse.

After climbing on the sun-baked basalt, we jumped in some bouldery pools along a rapid on the river, and had fun with the waterproof feature of my camera. It was tricky to swim against the current - below are my arms frantically grabbing onto a rock so I don't get swept away.


Upper Klamath Lake, seen on the way up.





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For our two day break, Michelle and I headed to Bend, O

coolest birds ever

Loggerhead shrikes are predatory passerines, which have a habit of stashing their kills on thorns or barbed wire fences for later (like a jaguar would). For such a small bird, they are pretty vicious and awesome.

Shrike nestlings. When I climb their tree to check the nest, the parents flap around the tree screeching at me.


Common nighthawks are odd looking birds. And very well camoflaged. Once, when checking this nest I thought the bird had abandoned the nest because I couldn't see it. Then I realized that I was staring right at it. They are also lazy birds. Why build a nest when you can just lay eggs on the ground?