This time of year, field work starts to become almost second nature.  Monday through Thursday start to blend together and all of the scenery starts to seem the same.  I am of course talking about the doldrums of the field and the brutal repetition of the day to day work.  However, there are always moments of beauty interspersed within the mundane elements of the job.  This could be anything from a towering Ponderosa Pine standing alone amongst the sagebrush, or a beautiful marshy pond out in the barren landscape.  These moments are what keep me going day to day, always exploring and searching out these enchanting elements.

One particular passion of mine is birding, and the landscape of junipers offers up a bountiful habitat for birds off all varieties.  Recently, I have started seeing Green-tailed towhees, a beautiful bird with vibrant greens and red.  My silence has been shattered by the nasal calls of Clark’s Nutcrackers.  Aside from these momentary asides from the typical, I have had the opportunity to expand my horizons through working briefly with a couple of different projects.

Two weekends ago, I had the opportunity to go out to do a project with bats.  I had to adjust to a different schedule with the day starting at 5pm and ending around 3am.  To prepare for this dramatic shift, I stayed up late the day before so that my sleep schedule wouldn’t be too messed up.  We arrived at 5pm and then set out to the Maury forest.  We arrived before dusk and got to our first site, only to find that the pond we were going to mist net, was dry.  Then we changed our plan and headed to a second site.  We found that the stream was running and so we decided to set up our mist net here.  At the stream we set up 3 nets and then the waiting began.  I went out with my mentor and two other colleagues from the office.  Our boss had sent us snacks in a cooler, so during the waiting we went to work on the snacks.  At the beginning we saw bats flying overhead, but the wind started to pick up, making the net move (this causes the bats to be able to pick it up on sonar).  We continued to wait and eventually the other two people had to leave around 11.  Ironically, it was soon after that they left that we caught our first and only bat, a silver-haired bat.  I got to watch my mentor remove the bat from the net (you need to have a rabies shot to handle bats, so I did not handle them).  Then my mentor showed me the different parts of the bat that help to ID them.  Eventually we took the nets down and headed home late, or early depending on how you look at it,

This bat experience was a great break from my normal schedule.  I really had a great time, and will be working more with bats in the future.  Now I have been back on my schedule for a while, but I will give you an update about other adventures later.