Eggshells of a nest depredated 6-7 weeks ago, most likely by a fish crow.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
photos 1
I finally took my new camera out to the island where I work, in hopes of photographing a few of the last nests of the season. Alas, I found no nests yesterday or today, and so can't show you any photographs of them; however, this does mean that nesting season is almost over and that I can stop looking at the ground and scratching at every area of disturbed dirt I see. Here are some of the more artsy photos of the island from today:
Eggshells of a nest depredated 6-7 weeks ago, most likely by a fish crow.
Eggshells of a nest depredated 6-7 weeks ago, most likely by a fish crow.
photos 2
And here are photos of what the island's like, and what I actually do.
This is what a typical nest looks like after we've found it: we put 4 labeled flags around it and cover it with rat wire (squares within wire = 1/2", for scale) to protect against depredation. Although most of the beaches I walk are open, like this one, the most nests are found in densely vegetated areas, not like a typical "walk on the beach".
This is my half/corner of the shed, where I measure & tag turtles that I catch, plus do whatever other work needs to be done; the stuff on the floor is my current project of mending bags for the hatchlings and putting things in order for putting rings around the nests, which we do to catch the babies. Oh, and you can see my cool hat!
This is what most of the island looks like - some spots barren, some spots with low scrubby plants, some spots filled with fairly dirty water, and lots of large equipment everywhere.
This is what a typical nest looks like after we've found it: we put 4 labeled flags around it and cover it with rat wire (squares within wire = 1/2", for scale) to protect against depredation. Although most of the beaches I walk are open, like this one, the most nests are found in densely vegetated areas, not like a typical "walk on the beach".
This is my half/corner of the shed, where I measure & tag turtles that I catch, plus do whatever other work needs to be done; the stuff on the floor is my current project of mending bags for the hatchlings and putting things in order for putting rings around the nests, which we do to catch the babies. Oh, and you can see my cool hat!
This is what most of the island looks like - some spots barren, some spots with low scrubby plants, some spots filled with fairly dirty water, and lots of large equipment everywhere.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Workin' 9 to 5 (or 7 to 3:30)
Nesting season is nearly over, so I figured it was time for an update on how work's going.
Nesting is trailing off and will probably cease in the next week or two. We've found 3 nests this week, bringing the yearly total to 183. We had a few really big weeks (one day we had 29 nests, plus a mother turtle!). With so many nests, it's clear I've been able to form a search image for the nests. I'm still not perfect at it, and I imagine I'll find at least 50-100 more nests once the turtles start hatching, which is determined by either seeing a turtle crawling out of the ground (yeah, I know, "duh") or seeing an empty nest full of eggshells. It's been very dry here lately, however, which means the sand is soft, retains footprints, and easily moved, all of which make it hard to find nests.
INTERRUPTION: As I was writing that last sentence, a spiffy, tiny little insect crawled across my laptop. Mottled brown, 4mm long x 1.5mm wide, rounded abdomen, all three body segments are equal in length, getting progressively wider posteriorly. 2 antennae that terminate in what appear to be clubs, but have a kink midway down the antenna. Small black eyes. Does not appear to have wings and makes no attempt to fly. Beautiful creature!
Back to work...the babies should start hatching in about 1-2 weeks, which I'm excited for. Actually, I'm most excited for not having to stare quite so hard at the ground for the next 3 months, although I'll have to monitor for new nests emerging. We put rings/cages around the nests starting this week in order to capture the hatchlings. We then insert a tag under the skin & notch the hatchlings' shells before we release them.
I've been asked a number of times if it bothers me to "torture" the turtles in this way; honestly, the answer is usually "no." Most of you know me and my near-medical fascination for things and how I'd probably dissect nearly everything if it wouldn't kill it. Plus, I just don't think about it. Last week, however, I did have 2 problem turtles. One was a yearling that we tried to tag with the large tag & needle (as we would tag an adult), which merely put a hole in his leg and caused him to bleed a lot. As we were drilling the hole in the edge of the shell of an adult turtle later that day, I guess we hit a blood vessel and she started bleeding all over my hands, just in time for the mechanic whose power drill we were using to walk into the mechanics' shed (actually, that latter part was somewhat amusing). I felt bad about those. With potentially 1500-2000 hatchlings to tag this fall, though, I can't really think about it too much.
Unfortunately, I don't think the side project we were going to set up involving terrapin predation on marsh periwinkles is going to work out. I'm a bit disappointed in that, but also relieved that I won't have to frantically rush to do that work or begin a project I couldn't feasibly or professionally finish in 3 months.
Once I get the heavy-duty case for my camera, I'll take it out to the island and photograph the babies. I took some pics of the eggs on my film camera and will post those once they're developed.
Nesting is trailing off and will probably cease in the next week or two. We've found 3 nests this week, bringing the yearly total to 183. We had a few really big weeks (one day we had 29 nests, plus a mother turtle!). With so many nests, it's clear I've been able to form a search image for the nests. I'm still not perfect at it, and I imagine I'll find at least 50-100 more nests once the turtles start hatching, which is determined by either seeing a turtle crawling out of the ground (yeah, I know, "duh") or seeing an empty nest full of eggshells. It's been very dry here lately, however, which means the sand is soft, retains footprints, and easily moved, all of which make it hard to find nests.
INTERRUPTION: As I was writing that last sentence, a spiffy, tiny little insect crawled across my laptop. Mottled brown, 4mm long x 1.5mm wide, rounded abdomen, all three body segments are equal in length, getting progressively wider posteriorly. 2 antennae that terminate in what appear to be clubs, but have a kink midway down the antenna. Small black eyes. Does not appear to have wings and makes no attempt to fly. Beautiful creature!
Back to work...the babies should start hatching in about 1-2 weeks, which I'm excited for. Actually, I'm most excited for not having to stare quite so hard at the ground for the next 3 months, although I'll have to monitor for new nests emerging. We put rings/cages around the nests starting this week in order to capture the hatchlings. We then insert a tag under the skin & notch the hatchlings' shells before we release them.
I've been asked a number of times if it bothers me to "torture" the turtles in this way; honestly, the answer is usually "no." Most of you know me and my near-medical fascination for things and how I'd probably dissect nearly everything if it wouldn't kill it. Plus, I just don't think about it. Last week, however, I did have 2 problem turtles. One was a yearling that we tried to tag with the large tag & needle (as we would tag an adult), which merely put a hole in his leg and caused him to bleed a lot. As we were drilling the hole in the edge of the shell of an adult turtle later that day, I guess we hit a blood vessel and she started bleeding all over my hands, just in time for the mechanic whose power drill we were using to walk into the mechanics' shed (actually, that latter part was somewhat amusing). I felt bad about those. With potentially 1500-2000 hatchlings to tag this fall, though, I can't really think about it too much.
Unfortunately, I don't think the side project we were going to set up involving terrapin predation on marsh periwinkles is going to work out. I'm a bit disappointed in that, but also relieved that I won't have to frantically rush to do that work or begin a project I couldn't feasibly or professionally finish in 3 months.
Once I get the heavy-duty case for my camera, I'll take it out to the island and photograph the babies. I took some pics of the eggs on my film camera and will post those once they're developed.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Oddities and ends
I'm in a goofy mood tonight; I'm not sure why, because it was a long, hot day at work again. Maybe it's because there were no nests which, though bad, meant that I was able to catch an early boat off the island and therefore leave work early. I might be happy because I got a letter from a friend this afternoon. Possibly, my delight comes from making english muffin pizzas for dinner. I may even be joyful because of pigtails.
No matter. I think it's time for another edition of cool things I've seen/learned/thought this week. Here, therefore, we go.
*Someone else loves commas as much as I do. See Robert J. Samuelson's article this week in Newsweek. Oh, how I have always enjoyed putting commas everywhere. To my chagrin, I was often encouraged to remove them. Having this fellow comarade-in-commas, I shall leave them in, for pause.
*The terns have begun divebombing us in a terrifying new way. Over the past few weeks, they have gotten closer and closer to our heads, swooping within a foot while chattering and screeching in our ears. This week, however, they have adopted a new tactic: they dive 20 feet in front of me, level off below eye-level, then fly straight at my face. The sight of a bird aiming full-throttle for your eye is quite unsettling, even after they suddenly veer upward just before they get to your face, just close enough to plant a menacing screech in your ear.
*I saw an eastern kingsnake and a rough greensnake over the past few weeks, plus some banded watersnakes. All of them are quite beautiful creatures.
*Asian tiger mosquitoes are fierce, tenacious creatures. Their bite is worse than their buzz and they hurt like crazy. Apparently it hurts like none other when a mosquito bites you on your funny bone, too. They're resourceful, avoiding where I've applied bugspray or biting through it; this leads them, usually, to my face for their source of nutrition. But, as my assistant pointed out this week, it's not like in the tropics where they carry malaria and dengue fever (I think those are the 2 she mentioned).
*I need to listen far more than I do. My research assistant this week is a few years my senior. She is a wildlife veterinarian and turtle researcher in Brazil. While she doesn't speak English well, she has amazing stories to tell about her life & work there. Her stories make the work I do seem, although arduous, tame.
*Walking 8 miles per day in 90-degree weather cultivates quite an appetite. My predecessor for this job says it's 11 miles if you walk everything twice; I estimate about 8 for what I have to walk. I'll have to put an odometer on my bike when I cease having research assistants and am collecting hatchlings rather than looking for nests. Anyway, man am I hungry! All the time! I have never eaten so much food in my life.
*Walking all day on an island is great for day dreaming, thinking, and praying. Walking all day on an island in circles all day promotes thinking in mushy circles. In regards to the last post, my thoughts have become murkier rather than clearer over the past few days.
*From henceforth, actually last-May-forth, I can't hear Gen. 2:7-8 (about God forming man from dust and placing him in the garden) without seeing a little orange playdough man being taken from a smear of orange playdough and being placed in a playdough garden with bizarre trees, animals, and a plesiosaur. Formless and void? Tohu bohu!
*I cherish my fond memories of college, camp, and environmental ed. I often used to feel cursed by my memory that functions more as a steel trap than a permeable sponge, as it frequently retained more bad memories better than good ones. Now, however, I feel blessed by it. More than those memories, however, I realize that I cherish the folks with whom those memories were formed.
That's all for now. I think that I mellowed as I wrote that, so it wasn't as silly as I anticipated. That's alright, it's probably less frightening that way.
No matter. I think it's time for another edition of cool things I've seen/learned/thought this week. Here, therefore, we go.
*Someone else loves commas as much as I do. See Robert J. Samuelson's article this week in Newsweek. Oh, how I have always enjoyed putting commas everywhere. To my chagrin, I was often encouraged to remove them. Having this fellow comarade-in-commas, I shall leave them in, for pause.
*The terns have begun divebombing us in a terrifying new way. Over the past few weeks, they have gotten closer and closer to our heads, swooping within a foot while chattering and screeching in our ears. This week, however, they have adopted a new tactic: they dive 20 feet in front of me, level off below eye-level, then fly straight at my face. The sight of a bird aiming full-throttle for your eye is quite unsettling, even after they suddenly veer upward just before they get to your face, just close enough to plant a menacing screech in your ear.
*I saw an eastern kingsnake and a rough greensnake over the past few weeks, plus some banded watersnakes. All of them are quite beautiful creatures.
*Asian tiger mosquitoes are fierce, tenacious creatures. Their bite is worse than their buzz and they hurt like crazy. Apparently it hurts like none other when a mosquito bites you on your funny bone, too. They're resourceful, avoiding where I've applied bugspray or biting through it; this leads them, usually, to my face for their source of nutrition. But, as my assistant pointed out this week, it's not like in the tropics where they carry malaria and dengue fever (I think those are the 2 she mentioned).
*I need to listen far more than I do. My research assistant this week is a few years my senior. She is a wildlife veterinarian and turtle researcher in Brazil. While she doesn't speak English well, she has amazing stories to tell about her life & work there. Her stories make the work I do seem, although arduous, tame.
*Walking 8 miles per day in 90-degree weather cultivates quite an appetite. My predecessor for this job says it's 11 miles if you walk everything twice; I estimate about 8 for what I have to walk. I'll have to put an odometer on my bike when I cease having research assistants and am collecting hatchlings rather than looking for nests. Anyway, man am I hungry! All the time! I have never eaten so much food in my life.
*Walking all day on an island is great for day dreaming, thinking, and praying. Walking all day on an island in circles all day promotes thinking in mushy circles. In regards to the last post, my thoughts have become murkier rather than clearer over the past few days.
*From henceforth, actually last-May-forth, I can't hear Gen. 2:7-8 (about God forming man from dust and placing him in the garden) without seeing a little orange playdough man being taken from a smear of orange playdough and being placed in a playdough garden with bizarre trees, animals, and a plesiosaur. Formless and void? Tohu bohu!
*I cherish my fond memories of college, camp, and environmental ed. I often used to feel cursed by my memory that functions more as a steel trap than a permeable sponge, as it frequently retained more bad memories better than good ones. Now, however, I feel blessed by it. More than those memories, however, I realize that I cherish the folks with whom those memories were formed.
That's all for now. I think that I mellowed as I wrote that, so it wasn't as silly as I anticipated. That's alright, it's probably less frightening that way.
Friday, July 13, 2007
L'avenir and good cheer
Most of you know I chose/God chose for me not to go to grad school after my senior year of college, and that since then I've been job- and home-hopping. I told myself that I would try teaching and research for 2 years, then choose between the two and what I want to go to grad school for. If I want to go to grad school after said 2 years, I would need to apply this fall.
Hence a deluge of thinking the past few months. Not quite brooding, at least not most days; however, it is indeed heavy thinking. It's quite easy to do when I have 20-30 minute stretches of walking between nest sites at work while being attentive to little more than making sure I don't fall off the road.
I'm not done thinking yet. God, however, has been culturing this decision in me for a while. Previous grad school interviews, being among the women at Grace church this year, teaching, recent words from friends experiencing similar things, seeing the life of a non-believing researcher, conducting research myself, and of course Him speaking to me in the Word and myriad other ways are all combining to make this decision.
Of late, John 16:25-33:
"I have said this to you in figures; the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures but tell you plainly of the Father. In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I cam efrom the Father. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father."
His disciples said, "Ah, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure! Now we know that you know all things, and need none to question you; by this we believe that you came from God." Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
I read this last night and can't really explain how or why, but it was more comforting than months of telling myself that, no matter what my decision, God will love me and care for me. Somehow this passage drove it heart-home. And in Him I have peace.
Then today, after some serious all-day pondering that started at about 6:51AM as I was walking to the boat to work, I was making dinner and resonated with
Please take from me my life
When I don't have the strength
to give it away to You Jesus Third Day, "Take my life".
It's a simple, sincere song, that I need to sing in my heart every day but particularly now. Maybe this rambling & vagueness would all make more sense if I said just exactly what's going through my mind at the moment, however, I'd prefer to wait on that. Pride, gifts, talents, wounds, growth, dreams, vessels, glory, beauty, peace, and desire are some of the larger factors bouncing around in my heart and mind. Let's just say it's not a decision I would have seen coming even a few months ago, but I'd prefer to dialogue about it personally while the thinking & deciding is still in progress.
Yeah, that's a lot of rambling and a lot of words, but it's all pretty important to me and, although it's very much an amorphous lump of dirt right now, I feel God is shaping and giving life to something amazing & different for me. Ok, that does sound vauge & weird. Anyway, what you can do is talk to me about it and pray for me about it - pray for peace in thinking (since most of you know that thinking isn't usually a light matter for me) & no brooding; for God's guidance and me to listen fully and attentively; and for me to do what He says & go where He leads; and for me to let go of pride that holds to self-glorifying dreams and instead to joyfully reach for & cling to what gives Him the most glory.
Hence a deluge of thinking the past few months. Not quite brooding, at least not most days; however, it is indeed heavy thinking. It's quite easy to do when I have 20-30 minute stretches of walking between nest sites at work while being attentive to little more than making sure I don't fall off the road.
I'm not done thinking yet. God, however, has been culturing this decision in me for a while. Previous grad school interviews, being among the women at Grace church this year, teaching, recent words from friends experiencing similar things, seeing the life of a non-believing researcher, conducting research myself, and of course Him speaking to me in the Word and myriad other ways are all combining to make this decision.
Of late, John 16:25-33:
"I have said this to you in figures; the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures but tell you plainly of the Father. In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I cam efrom the Father. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father."
His disciples said, "Ah, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure! Now we know that you know all things, and need none to question you; by this we believe that you came from God." Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
I read this last night and can't really explain how or why, but it was more comforting than months of telling myself that, no matter what my decision, God will love me and care for me. Somehow this passage drove it heart-home. And in Him I have peace.
Then today, after some serious all-day pondering that started at about 6:51AM as I was walking to the boat to work, I was making dinner and resonated with
Please take from me my life
When I don't have the strength
to give it away to You Jesus Third Day, "Take my life".
It's a simple, sincere song, that I need to sing in my heart every day but particularly now. Maybe this rambling & vagueness would all make more sense if I said just exactly what's going through my mind at the moment, however, I'd prefer to wait on that. Pride, gifts, talents, wounds, growth, dreams, vessels, glory, beauty, peace, and desire are some of the larger factors bouncing around in my heart and mind. Let's just say it's not a decision I would have seen coming even a few months ago, but I'd prefer to dialogue about it personally while the thinking & deciding is still in progress.
Yeah, that's a lot of rambling and a lot of words, but it's all pretty important to me and, although it's very much an amorphous lump of dirt right now, I feel God is shaping and giving life to something amazing & different for me. Ok, that does sound vauge & weird. Anyway, what you can do is talk to me about it and pray for me about it - pray for peace in thinking (since most of you know that thinking isn't usually a light matter for me) & no brooding; for God's guidance and me to listen fully and attentively; and for me to do what He says & go where He leads; and for me to let go of pride that holds to self-glorifying dreams and instead to joyfully reach for & cling to what gives Him the most glory.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Caterpillar!
This past weekend I finally bought my first digital camera. When I went out to water my landlords' vegetable garden tonight, I just happened to find this big guy on the tomatoes, so he just happened to be the first picture on my camera. I think Jesus might just be a smidge fond of me to do that, don't you?
Now that I look at the pictures, I realize he was eating the tomato plant, but we'll let him stay there and maybe he'll pupate and then maybe I'll get to see a pretty moth.
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