Quick update

14 July 2008

Just a quick update about our most recent activities. We had a pretty uneventful couple of days. We were trapping at a higher elevation site (Hirz Mountain) and all we caught were some Peromyscus mice. This was our last trapline for a while, so we'll switch to excavation and sieving for the next few weeks, with perhaps a little bit of targeted trapping- there's a chipmunk I want to catch around the cabin!

What is more eventful than trapping, actually, is the Redding library. The library is a wonderful resource- free wireless, air conditioning, lots of plugs, and Ariel and I spend a lot of our time in Redding here. It's also a great way to observe the local citizens. We are now among the regulars, it seems- every time we come here, we observe the same folks, with slight variations, and I'm sure they notice us. Today, however, the local Redding library dwellers are providing particular amusement. There's the normal guy who sits in a chair near our regular table and appears to stare at us the whole time we are here, with occasional cigarette breaks. There's a new guy sitting behind us with headphones blaring. He did turn them off to call his parole officer to check in, though. There's also the woman wandering around the library talking on her cell phone about her very stressful weekend, and the guy at the elevator door who is impatient at having to wait 2 seconds for the doors to open (the elevator went downstairs just moments before he walked up), and is now punching the button repeatedly and muttering about the wait (it's only one short floor to the main doors). Oh wait, now he's leaving to walk down, and the doors just opened behind him... Lest you get the idea that we think the town of Redding is full of nutjobs, there are of course many entirely normal people in the library, they're just not as fun to observe!

Heat, squirrels, and swimming holes

What a week it’s been! We finished up the two traplines near Samwel Cave on Friday and were joined on Sunday by Targe Lindsay, a local Palo Alto teacher and Jasper Ridge docent who has been in the Hadly lab over the past several months researching raptor diet using pellets. Targe arrived just in time for a major heat wave to hit the area, with temps between 109-114 deg F during the day (cooling off to 104 deg in our bedroom at night-we switched to a tent!). Luckily, we managed to situate our third trapline right next to a great wading hole in the McCloud River and have been wallowing in the cold water each afternoon before setting our traps for the evening! Fieldwork’s tough, huh?

This trapline was uneventful in terms of the species we caught- the normal overabundance of Peromyscus, with some shrews and squirrels. It was pretty cool to actually capture squirrels in our normal trapline, but man, are they big! Most of the individuals we caught were juveniles, but they were still difficult to handle. Here’s a cute little guy biting my glove! And, a more typical photo of Ariel and I trying to figure out whether one of our captured animals was Peromyscus maniculatus or P. boylii (the big debate of the summer, along with whether Facebook is or is not a time sink).


So, all was fairly typical, with days spent trapping and skinning (here’s Targe starting to make a study skull out of a squirrel we unexpectedly had to euthanize—see below), and nights trying to keep cool.

However, something was disturbing the traps each night, with some of our traps being carried over a hundred feet and visible bite marks on the outside of a few Shermans. The degree of disturbance has been escalating over the past several nights, and yesterday morning we found a Tomahawk trap with a California ground squirrel whose hind right leg had been chewed off. It was horrible to see and horrible to know that our traps inadvertently caused such an injury, so we euthanized the squirrel and decided to pull the traps a day early, since whatever is getting the squirrels knows exactly where to go for a nice meal and is just going to keep hitting the animals in the traps.

So, after another day spent in Redding, on to the next trapline! We will be heading up to (higher) elevation- the top of Hirz Mountain, where there is some Douglas-fir forest. This trapline should finish Monday morning, just in time to be joined by three more people next week- Liz, Uma, and Becca!

Field Work Makes Me Glow!

5 July 2008

Well, we've finished our 2nd trapline and had quite a pleasant week. The temperatures dropped about 10 degrees into the low 90's, the smokey skies cleared a bit, and the trapline itself was much easier than the first. So, it was a great week!

Overall, we didn't catch quite as much as on the first trapline- lots of Peromyscus again, and some voles, but no other species. I think we are generally checking our traps too early to catch the squirrels, since they are late risers and like the warmer daytime conditions. So, we did an afternoon of trapping on Thursday to target squirrels, and ended up catching 3 California ground squirrels. They are such beautiful animals! They are also much bigger than everything else we have caught, but after one escapee, Ariel and I managed to perfect our methods and we ended up collecting two squirrels. Skinning them was quite a chore- their tails are very difficult to remove and we both struggled with skinning for a number of hours, but managed to finish just in time to head into Redding for the Fourth of July!


The Redding fireworks celebration was canceled due to the fires, but my labmate Brenna was in town visiting her parents, who live in Redding. So, we went over to their house and had a very nice dinner and were able to sleep in this morning (and tomorrow too!). There has been a lot of car/boat traffic at Hirz Bay as people arrive for the holiday weekend, but overall it's relatively quiet, probably because the lake is so low. Both Ariel and I have been envying the boaters their nice water though. Anyone want to bring up a boat so I can waterski and Ariel can wakeboard? We can provide lots of entertainment as you watch us try to skin mice and squirrels!

Skunked! (and not playing cribbage...)

29 June 2008

Well, we had quite a morning today! After setting up our first trap line and trapping a bunch of Peromyscus mice (a cute, trap-happy, nuisance species), we were excited to see one of our larger traps closed and occupied this morning. Unfortunately, there was not one, but two skunks in the trap!! It was a small female, plus a baby skunk that was outside the trap, but had stayed next to mom. Well, I was a bit flummoxed about how to get the skunks out of the traps without getting sprayed, but I remembered a conversation with another grad student about getting skunks out of traps. Fortunately, it was a cooler morning, so I had a fleece jacket with me, which I threw over the trap to block any spray. The minute I did that the skunk started to release her odor, so I waited until she had calmed down again, then very carefully approached the trap and propped it open. I removed the fleece and Ariel and I left the skunk to find it's way out of the trap while we checked the other traps. Close call, but not a disaster, though that trap needs to be cleaned and I threw out my fleece jacket!

The excitement didn't end there (at least for us, though some of you reading this might not find the rest so exciting!) We added to our species list today! Besides the usual complement of Peromyscus, we also caught a vole (probably Microtus californicus), a shrew (Sorex trowbridgii) and a woodrat (Neotoma fuscipes). Here are a couple of photos of my field assistant, Ariel, in action: setting traps and weighing specimens!




So, we're pooped from all the early mornings, heat, and hiking, and are back in Redding for the afternoon resupplying our groceries and making contact with the world (via blogging, skype, and other means...aren't we technologically savvy!?). The fires in northern California aren't affecting us too much, though there has been a lot of haze in the sky for the past two days. Air quality in Redding is much worse than out at the cabin, which is lucky for us.

Field Season 2008

Well, it's a new year and a new field season. I'm leaving today to head back up to Lake Shasta. This summer, I will be trapping small mammals to get an idea about the composition of the modern mammalian community to compare with my fossil data from last year. I have a great field assistant again this year, Ariel Marcy, who is an undergrad at Stanford, and my advisor Liz and a collaborator from India (Uma) will be coming up in July. So, it should be an interesting summer and I'll try to keep this blog up-to-date so you can follow my progress!

Finished!

22 July 2007

Well, we finished excavating and sieving and closed up the pit (at least temporarily)! We had quite an interesting last week. We got some visitors to our sieving site last week from a houseboat that was docked nearby. There were quite a few kids and they were very interested in the bones and the sieving process. It was very fun to show them what we do and they even helped us find bones on the sieves. We also had some visits (to our neck of the woods, not to use personally) from DEA agents looking for marijuana plantations. It's not every day you can follow humvees full of men in camoflauge holding machine guns on your way to work! In the middle of this, we also saw a wakeboarding video being filmed right in front of us. It was great to see some top wakeboarders, but after a while the boat wakes and the helicopter noise from the camera crews got to be tiresome.

Luckily, the middle and end of the week was quiet and fun. We got a lot of rain, with lightening and thunder, on Wednesday, so Ronny, Xue and I drove up to the town of McCloud to see the upriver portion of the McCloud arm of Lake Shasta. We stopped at Castle Crags State Park on our way back and did a quick hike. It would be great to go back to CCSP for a full day because it seems like a great park! On Thursday, an intern with the Forest Service Public Affairs Office joined us for the day- he is planning on writing an article about what we are doing. Finally, on Friday we closed up the pit and finished sieving! (Here's a photo of me coming out of the cave for the final time this season) It was quite a long and momentous day.


And now, I'm back home. It was quite a feat to pack everything into the truck. All of our stuff barely fit, but luckily we were able to close all the doors and made our way home safely. Now it's time for the identification to start!

Our last week

14 July 2007

Well, now it really is the home stretch! I got to the bottom of the pit on Thursday (pictured at left), so all we need to do is map the stratigraphy of the pit and shore up the walls so we can close it up for the winter. I'm not going to fill it in completely, in case we need to get additional samples, but I am going to put a top on it and disguise the location so people can walk all over it and never know! Not that many people will be walking around in that part of the cave!! So, we're in Redding today buying wood and groceries. We also have some sieving left, and tomorrow we are going to explore the inner part of the cave!


I am getting anxious to get back to Palo Alto and start looking through the matrix. Luckily Xue and Ronny will still be with me for 4 or 5 more weeks, so we can charge through it together. They have been busy mapping out the floor plan of the cave, which will be a great visual to have for conferences and papers. We also have all been trying to learn the trees and shrubs of the area (a maddening experience for non-botany types!!). Luckily, my friend Andrea came up to visit recently and showed us a couple of plants before she had to get back to her real botany job!