On the Lek

Each morning, we watch sage grouse on several leks in the area. Males gather at these sites to display in hopes of attracting females to mate with. They faceoff and fight for territory, and strut around inflating air sacs(part of their esophagus), holding up their tails, and making all kinds of noises, many of which make them sound rather like pigs.



The females, for their part, show up much less frequently, and wander around the lek, sometimes showing as much interest in eating sage as the strutting males. Often times, the show up, mate, and leave before seven a.m., leaving the males to strut pointlessly for several hours more. On most leks, one male gets the majority of the females (he is referred to as the master cock), and the other birds sometimes resort to copulating with cow pies instead, which is rather amusing to see.

Males sometimes fight for territory, as these two are doing. Through a scope, these fights just look like a frenzy of flapping wings, but in slow motion its possible to see that they are really delivering some powerful blows with their wings.

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.

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.

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??

Real Eastern Skiing

January 27th was roll back the clock day at Mad River Glen, so tickets were $3.50, the same as the day they opened in 1939. I've wanted to ski this mountain for a long time, so Dad and I headed up to northern Vermont, finding some excellent coffee and doughnuts at a village store along the way. Mad River is an old fashioned ski area that doesn't believe in things like high speed lifts, wide trails, or snowboarding. It also happens to be owned by a co-op (oh, Vermont). Several skiers had got into the spirit of roll back the clock day by showing up in leather ski boots and wool jackets.

We rode up the legendary single chairlift (that's right, one skiier per chair). And at the top: Many steep, twisty, mogul covered black diamonds, with one lone blue trail. It was brilliant.


To get to a few trails, I had to sidestep up a hill and traverse along a ridge, where you could see up to Mt. Mansfield and over Lake Champlain to New York and the Adirondacks. Mad River's slogan is "ski it if you can, " and a day spent navigating moguls and dodging trees and exposed rocks, and landing face first in the snow several times, proved this a fitting motto. Altogether a excellent mountain, although true to New England conditions there were some icy and bare patches.
Typically, the next day we got a foot of snow that would have covered up the bare patches. Since I wasn't at a ski mountain, I decided to hike up a logging road on a hill near home. I'd skied it before, and thought the foot of snow would have improved things. This turned out to be a mistake - the foot of snow was not fluffy powder but heavy wet stuff, and I kept getting stuck. On the roads numerous flat spots, I had to walk with my skis still on, which is just not an efficient way of getting anywhere quickly. It is a lovely ski run when the snowmobiles have packed the snow down though....

Ice Storm

Friday, a big ice storm knocked down power lines all over the area, and word is some areas won't get power back for another week. Hopefully not us. Today is the third day we've been without power, and living in my house is starting to feel like living in Badger or Quartz cabins. The perishable food is sitting in a cooler on the deck so it won't spoil, and candles and headlamps have been dug out of the closets. It's funny how not having power isn't a big deal when in a cabin where its expected, but can really mess things up elsewhere. Besides the food in danger of spoiling in the fridge, the tropical fish in our fishtank are in danger of dying from cold, and the tank is now wrapped in foam and duct tape in an attempt to keep them warm.

It's just like badger cabin! Except that the food in the cooler actually stays cold...

I see why most early settlements were near lakes and rivers... we can't pump water from the well anymore and are melting ice on the woodstove to get water.

Extreme Fisheries Biology

This week fall weather set in up at Quartz Lake. The wind started blowing, whipping up canoe capsizing waves on the lake. So for several days we huddled in the cabin around Bruce (our woodstove). Finally, we had a day we were able to get out. The wind had (sort-of not really) died down but we needed to get out of the cabin and get our gear out of the stream. So we started paddling, and got sketched out by the waves about a third of the way up the lake. We beached the canoe and started bushwhacking along shore, which proved to be quite slow and ineffective. So we got back in the canoe, ignoring the possibility of worsening weather, and made it to the head of the lake and Quartz Creek. The creek was 5 degrees Celsius and all the overhanging branches were covered with icicles. And it snowed on us too. On October 11th.


So we completed our redd surveys, pulled gear, and didn't see any fish in the creek. Unlike us, the fish were smart enough to get out of that creek once the it got so cold...
We made it up to Cerulean Lake, where all the waterfalls were lovely and frozen, and bushwhacked down the game trail one last time.


The next day we packed out our gear, and my pack was stuffed to the gills (see, it's taller than me!) and had all sorts of stuff that wouldn't fit inside strapped to the sides. Normal people carry tents and sleeping bags when they go hiking... field studies always seem to involve carrying absurd things like rebar, plastic pants, car batteries, metal stakes...

And now we are done with the bull trout. I'll be travelling a bit, to Oregon and then New Hampshire, and hopefully finding another job at some point.

Baby Bull Trout!

The bull trout are moving up the creek and spawning (there are two trout in each picture). Pairs use their tails to push around gravel and make redds, small pits that they lay their eggs in. In the pictures, you can see the cleaner gravel that the fish have just moved. And next spring small baby bull trout fry will come out of the gravel.

Backpack Trip

I had a chance to backpack in glacier finally (not counting packing food into Quartz Lake each week). The trip started out with me not getting on the trail till 6pm, on account of needing to bike 20 miles on dirt roads to drop my car at one trailhead and my bike at another. So by the time I hiked the 7 miles to my first campground, it was dark, and raining. Starting hikes at 6 is clearly a bad idea. Then, my stove didn't work, and I had to (sort of) cook my dinner on the coals of another camper's dying fire.

The next day, I was hiking alone when I see a party below me at Brown Pass waving. So I waved back. And then realized that they weren't getting my attention to say "hello", but to say "can you see the big grizzly bear on the trail ahead of you?"
But these interesting situations aside, it was a lovely trip, I got to camp in an amazing hanging glacial valley with views of this mountain, thunderbird peak, and met some nice hikers with a backpacking oven that made blueberry muffins on trail.

And I carried my sweater vest almost 30 miles so that I could wear it on sweater vest friday, while crossing Boulder Pass.

And of course, on the way out I stopped at Polebridge to get cookies. Just look at this sign they have... "slow down, people breathing?" it might as well say "notice: hippie commune ahead"

Polebridge has many stray dogs running around that try to steal your sandwiches. This sad one has three legs.

Ancient Seas

The rock in Glacier is old. Over a billion years old. It was laid down on the floor of oceans far before life existed on land and later lifted up into mountains. Along the trails you can still see signs of the former ocean. Wave created ripples on rocks, cracks in rock that was once mud drying in the sun. And, above, stromatolites, mats left by blue-green algae, some of the oldest evidence of life on earth.

Touching thousands? millions? of years of sediment laid down on an ocean bottom.

Butterfly on top of stromatolites.

Don't fall off the logjams!

We work in the creeks draining into Quartz Lake, mapping habitat and electroshocking to catch study juvenile bull trout. The streams are swift and forested, which makes them very beautiful and also very difficult to bushwhack through carry nets and electrofishers and depth sticks. Crawling over slippery logjams is the most treacherous part. I managed to fall off a log onto a pointy stick and puncture my waders, my long underwear, and my leg, and Lora got stuck in a hole when a logjam she was crossing crumbled into the creek.

Our endpoint is Cerulean Lake, 5 kilometers or so up rainbow creek. The waterfalls on the cliff come down from two glaciers above the ridge. There are no (human) trails in the upper drainage. To get back to our canoe from here, we follow a game trail created by elk who have a poor sense of routefinding and often lead us into massive tree blowdowns that we have to crawl over. Back at our cabin, we often get visits from campers who have seen Cerulean Lake on their maps and ask if you can get up there. We tell them you can... if you're willing to bushwhack for miles, have a good pair of waders, and a canoe. Most of them haven't packed a canoe in so they lose interest.

After we pulled our flagging marking electrofishing sites Lora pulled all this out of her waders, stating "It's like a party in my pants - a party with flagging and pine needles!"


Our field truck is an enormous '89 suburban named Betsy. It has three gears, and frequently pops out of gear on bumpy roads.