Greetings!
July passed by quite fast and I am so happy it did because it was really hot. It’s definitely the warmest summer I’ve experience thus far in life. Unfortunately, curiosity got the best of me and I found myself looking up the individual daily peak temperatures for July. I calculated the average temperature for the month down here at ≈100°F!! Woah! It’s alright, it was overall a fantastic month.
Finally, after two months of trapping for the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus) we hit the jackpot for four out of seven our sites. Don’t worry I have pictures!
Captured female S. arenicolus
We changed our strategy a bit with the placement for our most recent traps. Instead of placing our traps in completely new areas, we decided to just fill in the gaps around areas where there was a positive presence for the lizard in the past.
Captured male S. arenicolus in mating colors
I found it to be pretty awesome to experience handling this species as they were previously up for being listed as an endangered species.
Captured juvenile S. arenicolus
Anyway, for the most part our lizard-trapping season is done with. We’re moving on to bigger and better things – OK, not “better” just different. Last week we got up early (4 something o’clock) to visit a few heronry (heron nests) sites off in the distant corners of the Carlsbad Field Office. My mentor just wanted to check out how a few of the reported Great Blue Heron (Ardea Herodias) nests were doing. Our first site was seemingly pretty deserted but after a long look up into the canopy of the soapberry trees we spotted one juvenile GBH. We checked on the site a few days afterwards and were able to spot the juvenile again with its parents from a distant. They seem to be doing well overall but they are the only GBH nest at the site where previously, years before, there has been a colony of the species. We scouted out a few more active nests at another location where a colony did persist, despite there being a fairly large dieback of trees due to an industrial spill last year.
My most recent project focuses on monitoring some old Yellow-Billed Cuckoo (Cooccyzus americanus) sites along the Delaware River near the New Mexico-Texas boarder. I’ve yet to find any, but it has only been one day. I’ll update you all on how that goes in the future.
Yellow-billed cuckoo survey site on the Delaware River
Outside of work I ventured into the Carlsbad Caverns again for an extended scheduled tour of the Lower Caves. It was pretty amazing! Saw a bat encased in a stalagmite and even got to crawl through a few small tunnels throughout the tour. Definitely worth the month wait. I have no pictures unfortunately as I lack the equipment to take pictures in low light areas. Also went to visit the White Sands National Monument up and over the western side of the Sacramento mountain range. I never knew that such a place existed until recently, but it had a very “spacey” feeling to it along with being a unique and beautiful landmark – another recommendation.
White Sands National Monument
Take care for now!
Armand Cann
Carlsbad Field Office, Bureau of Land Management