The Klamath Basin is a unique area of fascinating volcanic landscape features, endemic plants and animals, and a bird’s paradise (or birder’s, in the case of my co-workers). It has been such a breath of fresh air getting out of the city and into this high desert, where bald eagles can be seen casually flying overhead and river otters play in the irrigation canals. While the flora, fauna and human inhabitants of this sleepy town stir from their winter dormancy, we are spending our days looking to see which nests the bald eagles are returning to raise their young in, surveying frog habitat for the presence of the Oregon Spotted Frog, and collecting mycorrhizal funghi of the highly endemic Applegate’s milkvetch to raise seedlings.

I am extremely excited to have this opportunity to work with so many biologists of different backgrounds and specialties, and to work with such a wide variety of threatened and endangered species. Many days we come to the office uncertain what the day will bring; whether we will be surveying eagles’ nests (weather permitting), collecting soil, recording lake depth, netting fish, or in the office photo-documenting fish samples. Currently my favourite days are eagle surveys. Thanks to nest fidelity (those nests are pretty large and personally I would not be too keen to build a new one each year either), the department keeps their eye on known nests from season to season. In early spring, we drive to a vantage point some distance from the base of the tree and look for the presence of adult eagles either in the nest or flying nearby. If we don’t see any activity, we wait a little while but the nest will be checked again later in the season.  In several months’ time, the nests will be checked again for chicks.

Show us your nest!

Next week promises to bring more frog surveys and I can’t wait to get out in the region’s various rivers and wetlands and find frogs’ eggs.