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!