Round 3 and 1 Pasture of Veg, DONE

Yesterday I (finally) finished Round 3 of point counts, after being stalled for six days due to bad weather in the mornings. I have to admit that I was glad to be back out counting birds, and that the mornings were both beautiful. I finally took my DSLR with me on Friday morning and think I managed some decent shots of bobolinks. I can't really tell though, since this computer (TNC's) doesn't have any good photo software, so I can only look at the sub-MB size JPEGs. (Sorry this post is getting full of acronyms!) Also, I got to hear tons of dickcissels in a couple pastures I surveyed, hopefully they will stick around! Dickcissels tend to be irruptive, and you can't predict where they will be one year from the next.

Marbled Godwits are nice to photograph because they
swoop at you (and get really close).

The cows were really loving my vehicle Friday morning.
It got very slobbery.

While I wasn't doing morning bird surveys, I did manage to get a couple of good days of vegetation surveys in. I finished the pasture with the most plots in it, Gregor, at 32 plots. One pasture has 28, another 22, and the last two each have 17. These veg surveys are better than the habitat structure surveys I was doing in Saskatchewan, but they make my neck hurt because I'm always looking at the ground. And, I think I identified one of the thistles wrong, calling it a non-native kind when it was actually the native (the two small photos below are the native kind). Woops! I'll rectify that in my future surveys, but I don't intend to go back to each plot and check it out.

Wood Lilly, one of the very pretty natives I get to see.

Prairie Larkspur, another nice native.

Last week we (Alli, Brittany, Eric, and Molly) went on a nice hike to an old fire tower, which is at the top of a "tall" hill. It was a really nice hike, and the view from the hill was really beautiful. I think I was hearing lark sparrows and vesper sparrows too, I don't hear them in my actual surveys at all so that was pleasant for my ears.

View from the top of the hill. Pretty nice lookout spot for fires, that's for sure.

Today Alli and Brittany left for their next preserve, Davis Ranch, where they will stay for two weeks to do vegetation surveys. It sure was nice having them here. On Thursday night we had a picnic of sorts and shot guns to celebrate their finished surveys and their last couple days at the ranch. I shot one of the guns twice, but didn't really enjoy it. Katie, Eric's assistant, is here now, but we do completely different types of work so probably won't have as much to talk about. But, she is really nice and will be good company. And there is always my new Nook Color that my parents got me for my birthday to keep me company, haha! It's awesome!

Alli, shooting one of the guns, she hit the targets!

Katie and Eric shooting clays. Katie hit most, Eric hit none.

I can't believe it is almost July already. I'm hoping the weather is good this next week so I can get lots of work done. I haven't actually made it to 40 hours of work in a week yet, but maybe this week I will!

Asters, Poas, and Thistles, OH MY!

This week a lot of time has been spent on learning plant identification. Part of my job here is to do "rapid assessment" vegetation surveys, in which I determine the cover of native and invasive plants, and also have to determine which species on a list of about 60 are present in the transect. I did work similar to this in Grasslands National Park, where we had to know how to ID over 200 plant species, but we had two highly trained botanists teaching us all how to ID the plants, and we spent a couple weeks each summer learning the plants. Here, the story has not been similar.

Alli looking at some unknown grass species.

One difference is that we only have to know how to ID the 60 species on the list, which is far less than what we had to know in Saskatchewan. But, we also have to know whether every other species we encounter is native or invasive, so really we have to know all the species in my opinion. Last week on Thursday and Friday, Marissa came to show us how to run the transects and use the "classification tree" to fill out the codes on the datasheet. She showed us a few plants that we had to know, but no nearly all of them (plus, she had Lexi in tow, so it was hard to really move around a lot looking for different plants). We were then set loose for a few days to try doing transects on our own.

Brittany and Meredith discussing plant ID

The crew looking at various plants

 On Wednesday, Rhett from the TNC Bluestem office, came for a day of intensive training. In the morning, we learned about different terms for plants, like opposite and alternate, palmate, pinnate, raceme, etc. We learned how to tell different families apart, like the asters from the peas. A lot was, however, focused on flowers, while many of the flowers in the prairie aren't out just yet. Even the protocol for the "rapid assessment" states that the surveys don't start until July! So why we're doing them in mid-June is beyond my understanding.

Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum), a native

After the morning of powerpoints, which were actually really useful and interesting, we went into the prairie looking for various plants species. Rhett is a big grass and sedge guy, so unfortunately we focused a lot on those for the first few hours, even though we don't need to know how to ID sedges because they're pretty much all native. We did get some really good tips on grass ID, which is important because it can be hard to tell grasses apart, and some are native while others are invasive. So, Wednesday was a pretty good day for learning new plant species, but I still don't know all of the ones on our "indicator" list. There are four different blazing stars, four different thistles, and probably a hundred asters (although not all the asters are on the list). We didn't really see many of those.

Some kind of wild sunflower.

Another annoying thing is that the protocol we're using is a little bit odd. It talks about native and invasives, but unfortunately these two terms are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You can have a native plant that starts to take over, making it an invasive, and you can have a non-native plant that doesn't take over, which means it is not invasive. So that confounds the protocol. Second, we're doing cover, which is always hard, but we're also supposed to ignore woody cover up to a certain point. Yeesh. I've done about 5 transects on my own now, each taking about an hour to complete, and running into these various problems has been annoying.

Dame's Rocket (Hespersis matronalis), an invasive

Somehow these veg transects are going to get done, they may not be exactly right but I think that is ok since they're supposed to be "rapid assessment" anyway. I'm also still working through the point counts, I'm half way done now. Still have two days left for round 3, and the there are rounds 4 and 5 to go. Field work is never perfect, even with the point counts I realized I may have been missing Upland Sandpipers because they make a noise I hadn't recognized before round 3. It just goes with the territory I suppose!

Lady's slipper, a very nice native that probably won't be in any of our plots.

I'm thinking of visiting Winnipeg next weekend, hopefully between rounds of counts, as a sort of vacation. I might need it after a week of early morning point counts and afternoon veg transects!

Tall cinquefoil, a native species on the indicator list.

That's my shadow at about 7am, after I'd been out since 5am!
Don't worry, I didn't have to walk through that water.

Second Round Finished!

This week I was able to plow through the second round of point counts in just five days. The weather cooperated for me, even though a few days were supposed to be too windy to do the counts. I did work on Saturday to get them done, but I'm very glad to have the second round finished. Three left!

On Tuesday night, Marissa got here with Lexi, her baby, and on Wednesday afternoon Brittany and Alli got here. Brittany and Alli are two TNC interns doing vegetation surveys at a bunch of different spots across North Dakota and South Dakota this summer. It's really good to have them around! We were trained how to do the surveys on Thursday and Friday (because I am doing the veg surveys, too!), but we're all feeling a little concerned about actually doing the surveys correctly. We have to know a list of about 50 plant species, which isn't hard (although, we haven't seen most of them yet so can't readily ID them in the field). Beyond that, we have to know which species are native and which are not native, so we really need to know ALL the species, even though Marissa insists that we don't. I'm sure we'll get the hang of it, and I hope Brittany and Alli get the hang of it quickly, since whatever they don't finish I will have to do!

Although I am still partial to mixed-grass prairies, I have seen some pretty cool things so far here in the tallgrass. Because there is more precipitation here, there are different plants and birds to see, but there are no mule deer or pronghorn antelope, and no bison. There probably were in the past, but now that farming and ranching have taken over those large species have been pushed out.

Even though I don't like that native species are getting pushed out, I know that farming and ranching are important both for our economy and for feeding ourselves. Without farming, there would be no food after all (or, we'd all have to grow our own food). I also really like the culture that tends to surround these farming and ranching communities. The three of us went out to the McLeod bar last night. I had a delicious steak and a couple beers, and there was a live band playing as well. Locals were just sitting around, talking, and enjoying the music. One couple even got up a two-stepped for a song! People like learning about where "foreigners" come from and why we're here. Although many locals probably don't much like TNC, they're still friendly to us. I also think part of the reason is that we're female and maybe more approachable. Men doing field work out here probably have a totally different experience than women.

I've been taking my Dad's waterproof camera with me when I do my point counts in the mornings, which is really handy to have in the field. I have also gone for a couple walks with my DSLR. So, enjoy some photos of plants and animals in tallgrass prairies!

Wilson's snipe nest. I almost ran it over with my ATV.

Baby robin that I shooed off the road.

Hognosed snake that lives under our porch.

Yellow-headed blackbird with dragonfly. Too bad they
eat the insects that eat the mosquitoes!

Prairie rose, one of many natives.

A butterfly, not sure which kind, but it was pretty!

Bracted spiderwort, another beautiful native flower.

One of a few nice sunrises I've seen. I see the
sunrise but am in bed before sunset.

I think this is a northern leopard frog.

Black tern, not a bird I'd expect to find in the prairies, but
they feed in the open wetlands where there are small fish.

A nice dragonfly.

Allison looking at grasses we have to learn.

Blue-eyed grass, not actually a grass.

Tree swallow at her nest.

I've been dog-sitting for a few days now, this is Molly!
Don't tell Cora!

First Round Finished!

This morning I finished the first round of point counts (61 counts)! I did pastures 3 and 4 this morning, which are the wettest pastures according to everyone. They were pretty wet, but Eric came with me to 4 so he sort of had an idea where to go, and 3 was not deep anywhere I went. Pasture 5, the very first pasture I did, was probably  more soppy than 4, and maybe more so than 3. I think now that I have waders, some of the pastures I did without them will be (hopefully) a bit easier. I was really glad to get pastures 3 and 4 done finally, because I have been worrying over them for a week and a half now! It sure is a weight off my shoulders. As a bonus, we saw the partial lunar eclipse this morning at 5:15, probably most of the country didn't see it because they were still in bed!

I took Saturday and Sunday off, I was completely exhausted. I did wake up at 5am Saturday though, and it would have been a beautiful morning for the birds. But I couldn't drag myself out of my comfy sheets. I didn't do a whole lot on Saturday, I was supposed to work on some papers for publications, but I just rested for the most part. It takes a while to get back into field work. Saturday evening I called home, and it sure was nice to talk to my parents. I miss home like crazy right now, and each time I go home and then have to leave again it's worse. Dad put Addi on the phone, and she just started giggling when I said hello, I am not sure whether she gets the concept of the phone yet, she's 3. But hopefully soon I'll be able to talk to both Addi and Eli on the phone!

This afternoon I went out to Pigeon Point to help Eric put in a gate between Forest Service land and TNC land. I couldn't hit the staples on the head for my life to start, but eventually got the hang of it. It was hot, too, hit at least 85 while we were out there. But we had been out there last Friday and it started to rain pretty good, and we didn't have the right size posts, so we gave up. I think I'd rather work in the hot than in the wet. Guess I'll have to get used to both of them this summer!

Tomorrow I will start round 2 of points counts. I'm hoping that they go smoothly and that I can move through them relatively quickly. Last year's technician took through August 4 to get the five rounds done, I'm assuming the weather didn't cooperate very well. I hope to be done by August 4 if possible, so I'll have to work just about every good-weather day I can.

Also tomorrow Marissa is coming back to train me and two new girls on vegetation sampling. It will be nice to have a few more people around again. Eric is leaving for some training in DC tomorrow and then headed for a short vacation, so I'll have his dog Molly until Tuesday. That will be nice, too! I'm hoping for a great summer without too many headaches.