Preparing for Fall

I suppose it won’t surprise you that there was no reprieve from the summer heat of August as opposed to the inferno that was July? Yeah, I wasn’t very surprised either… It’s OK, my body handled the intensity much better this go around.

This past month my tasks fell very heavily towards seed collection. We had a lot of our local flora ready to drop their seeds, and had to take the opportunity while it was there to collect as much as we could. I think we completed at least 6 seed collections during that month, on top of other wildlife duties all the interns and myself had. There are several species, such as an Andropogon spp. and other sand-dune country grasses, that have continually held onto their seeds despite how hot it’s been. Fortunately for the region, we’ve been receiving quite a bit of rain, but unfortunately that has delayed the maturing of some of the species that should have already been ready. We’ll continue checking up on them as the season winds down. Since this is the first year for SOS in the Carlsbad field office district, we don’t have reliable data to go on for when seed maturity is generally reached for most species here. We’re doing it as we go, which can be challenging but rewarding since we are the forerunners of the program for this office: writing protocols and recording collection schedules for future interns.

One of our collections sights while El Capitan in the Guadalupe Mountains looks down on us.

As September has come and Fall quickly approaching, I’ve written a surveying protocol for Scaled Quail (Callipepla squamata), which is a common game species in states such as Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and of course, New Mexico. We just want to get a good idea of how their populations are so we can make appropriate management decisions regarding quail harvesting. As I’ve said, it’s been a “wet-ish” year, so we suspect their populations to not be of concern as there should be more resources for the quails to take advantage of. I’ve also written the protocol setup in the form a pilot study for a potentially longer observational study. My mentor and I want to look at the effects of sprayed areas on quail populations. Will there be a significant difference in the number of quail observed along roads that have been sprayed with herbicide versus non-sprayed? Simple, but hasn’t been looked at too much. I should say–the herbicide is used to reduce the cover impact of shrubs such as mesquite (Prosopis spp.) and shinnery oak (Quercus havardii) as they compete with grasses and other forbs that cattle eat. We’ll see how it all goes. I run my first test run next week!

These next several weeks are also going to be focused on the goal of bat monitoring within our field office. We want to conduct a few bat counts of some local roosts we know of that contain colonies of Mexican free-tailed (Tadarida brasiliensis) and the cave myotis (Myotis velifer) bats. We also had the idea to take a video of the exodus of these bats for future reference and for the potential ability to get a more accurate estimate of their population’s numbers. I’ve read papers on the estimation of some bat colonies varying from millions of individuals to only a few hundred thousand. A big difference, and from what I’ve read, it’s mostly due to the complications of quantifying a (sometimes) blur of objects circling yet gradually leaving their caves in large numbers. If time allows and if we are able to capture a good video of an exodus, I may try looking up some strategies for estimating myself.

As for recreation, I’ve been busy (perhaps a bit lazy as well). The busiest was when I drove the 9 and half hours up to Leadville, CO to visit a couple friends. We camped out and successfully summited the second tallest peak in the contiguous, Mt. Elbert – a devious one. It had a deceptive peak that tricked pretty much all of the hikers we saw that day, though, we all endured. Very worthwhile and beautiful vistas! On another solo trip I went up to Ruidoso, NM to hike a trail in the Sacramento mountains – lots of burned trees, but, yet again, all so beautiful nonetheless…