Monday, March 30, 2009

Sagebrush Skiing, part two

Or, how we ski in CENTRAL Wyoming

The past week we've been getting quite a bit of snow (now that it is spring and all) so one day we decided to go sledding. The only problem - there are no big hills near our trailers, and the snow was too deep to get the ATVs to the sledding hill we had in mind. Not intending to be thwarted by such a problem as the lack of an incline, we hooked the sled onto an ATV with a tow rope and pulled sleds around an open area by the water tanks.

This ended up being much more fun than normal sledding, as walking back up the hill was never necessary. And pretty soon, I thought "what would be even more fun than sleds? Skis!"

So I got my ski gear out, and soon was making slalom turns around the field. It was an odd mix of waterskiing and snow skiing, but it is good to know skiing in Wyoming is possible even if you aren't anywhere near Jackson or Colorado.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Birding with Explosives

This past week, we went out on the leks (sage grouse breeding grounds) to trap birds so we could color band them and get measurements and blood samples. And sage grouse are not captured like songbirds, by hanging mist nets and waiting for birds to fly in. Grouse are trapped with rocket nets (yes, there are actual rockets involved). The day before we went out and set up a 100 foot long net along one side of the lek. One edge is staked to the ground, the other is attached to a number of rockets which are loaded with explosives. The next morning we head down to the lek before the birds, before dawn, and before we are fully awake. When there are birds in the capture area, the detonator is pushed, the rockets go of with loud bangs and spew out fire as they hurl the net through the air and over the birds.

We all run frantically down to the net, where we throw towels over the birds to keep them calm, then extract them from the net and put them in cardboard boxes. Our boxes were big moving boxes from Uhaul, and I think they recommended using them for blankets, rather than birds. First we drew blood from the birds, which will be used later to look at genetics and fitness. During this process, some of the blood ended up on us instead of in the capillary tubes, so I now know that cold water washing machine cycles are the most effective for getting blood off your clothes.


After the blood had been taken, each bird got color bands so we can identify individuals later when we do our morning observations.

We aged the birds by looking at their primary flight feathers (juveniles are pointy, adults rounded), took a few measurements, and put the birds into pillowcases to weigh them.


Sage grouse males are quite bizarre and interesting, and when displaying can look a bit more like alien creatures than birds. The yellow patch on this bird is an air sac which is part of his esophagus. When doing their breeding displays, the can inflate these air pouches as the strut, fan their tails, and make odd noises (they sound a bit like pigs). The white feathers around the yellow patches are stiff, and the birds rub their wing feathers against them to produce sounds too, just like a grasshopper or cricket.

And we released them, and they took off flying or strutting into the sagebrush.


And now, we have some sage grouse blood samples in our fridge alongside the milk and eggs and vegetables.

Friday, March 13, 2009

New Hampshire to Wyoming, part two

Just as I did two years ago, I loaded up my car and drove west for 4 days or so, making several stops along the way. The first day involved navigating tolls and traffic to get to Baltimore and visit Karen. Upon arrival, I had the misfortune to park under a tree that was home to a pair of robins, who proceeded to make a mess upon my car. The rest of the weekend was good though, I saw several art shows, sewed things with Karen, and we drove through this somewhat sketchy neighborhood (where scenes from crime show "the Wire" are often shot) to reach an amazing asian supermarket, full of wonderful things like barley tea, seaweed snacks, and whole fish.

I headed west, crossed the applalachians through Maryland and West Virginia, and visited a cousin in Cincinnati. But next came the long, long drive across the plains.... Here totoro poses in front of a Kansas wheat field.
Finally, the Rocky Mountains came into view, and I went up to steamboat springs to go skiing with Kirsten. Skiing, I got to flounder around in the relatively deep snow, ski a chute steep enough that when I fell it wasn't very far to the ground, and experience a ski town so resorty and ritzy that you end up next to a woman wearing a mink coat on the shuttle bus. My car also had some issues while in steamboat, and we had to push it down the street to get it into an overnight lot so it wouldn't get mauled by a snowplow overnight.
Now I am at a field camp in Wyoming, watching the sage grouse lek, driving ATVs around, and hoping our heater at camp doesn't break again. Below, Chugwater Lek with a few grouse tracks after fresh snow.And some ARTR in the snow. Actually, I'm not sure if it is tridentata or a different species of sagebrush. AR??