Algonquin
(map)

After getting a taste of winter in Michigan, I decided that I wanted to do a "real" winter job with snowshoeing, snowmobiles and sketchy ice crossings.  Coincidentally of all the jobs I applied for, this was my priority and I was pretty happy to get in.  The project was a joint objective by two master's students; one was focusing mainly on the wolves, and the other focusing on moose.  Strangely, both were named Karen!  The study site was in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, one of the largest protected areas in the lower part of the continent (it's slightly smaller than Yellowstone).

 Most of our work involved the wolves.  Several packs had wolves that were fitted with GPS collars.  These differed from a traditonal radio-collar in that they recorded a precise position every hour and a half.  After this information was downloaded onto a handheld unit, we could use the data to identify the spots where the packs spent the most time.  Anywhere where they spent more than a few hours was considered worth investigating.  Usually these turned out to be bed sites (identified by icy depressions in the snow), sometimes nothing, and sometimes kill sites.  Recording the frequency and nature of the kills was important in determining the kill rate of each pack.  For that reason much of our time was spent  tracking the wolves by tracks and traditional radio-collars to get estimates on the size of each pack.  

Aside from our daily wolf duties, there were odd-jobs involving the moose too.  These days were interesting, since we had to triangulate the moose's position (they also had GPS/radio collars) and try to walk in a get a visual.  Having convinced ourselves that we were on the fresh tracks of the moose we wanted, we collected any scat we found to be tested for pregnancy.  Overall this constitued a very small part of our season, so it was always a treat!  




Pigeon River
(map)

The Pigeon River area is in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan and is state-owned land.  Aside from a few regular campgrounds, the primary users of the land are hunters and anglers (of which there are many!)  But there also seemed to be many folks on ATV's and I think once or twice I saw people hiking!  But all in all, it's a pretty quiet spot and you don't usually see or hear many people in the day.  I found the habitat really interesting.  It ranged from your typical hardwood forest with maples, beech, and such on higher spots to spruce bogs just a hundred meters away in a low area.  In a single day, you might go through several major habitat types.  One of the most interesting was open "savannas" with low Jack Pines and scrubby ground cover.  These spots, apparently, serve as the only breeding grounds for the rare Kirtland Warblers (though, I didn't see any)

The project itself was mainly a genetic study of Bobcats.  We set up 100 "hair snare" stations around the forest, in various habitat types.  Despite the high-tech procedures used for identifying an individual's genetic profile, our methods of obtaining the hair were pretty modest.  Carpet patches with nails stuck through them would snag Bobcat hair as they passed.  To increase the chance of an encounter, the sites were baited with all sorts of things Bobcats like.  Urine, catnip, a very smelly long-distance lure, and several visual attractants (like a pie tin dangling to catch its attention) were placed near the site.  After the DNA had been extracted from the hair, it could be compared to samples collected from "harvested" Bobcats (Bobcats are hunted in the Pigeon River).  This could give an estimate on how many individual animals might be present in the area.  Checking the snares was basically the most time-consuming activity, since most of them were located 250m off the road, and the roads themselves sometimes took over an hour to get to.  It was a lot of driving on some of the worst roads I have had to contend with!  And other than a broken belt, 2 broken wheel bearings (one of which included a tire that worked itself to a 30 degree angle while driving!), 4 broken U-joints, and front shocks that were completely shot, nothing bad happened.

Since we only had one short field season and weren't too sure how much success we'd have with hair snares, a second objective of Jen's Master's project was to compare this more traditional method of sampling, with the more novel practice of using trained dogs to find scat samples.  So both Jen and I got to fly to Seattle to be officially trained as Dog Handlers!  That was quite an experience, seeing the west coast and learning the tricks of a new trade.   During our two weeks out there we got to do a bit of sightseeing and did a day-trip around Olympic National Park.  That was an incredibly awesome place, being able to go from snow-covered mountains to the Pacific Ocean to the rainiest spot in North America all in one day!  True, by the time we got to the rainforest it was nearly dark, but it was still pretty neat.  

Using the dogs as a tool for finding scat proved (as far as our own qualitative observations would suggest) very successful.  And running a 6km transect through unknown habitat with a dog is actually quite fun.  It's a shame we only had a month to do it, as we were really starting to find our rhythm by the end.  Danielle came and helped out a few times, both with the hair snares and the dog transects.  It was nice to have the company in the bush for a change!  We fought the clock almost all the way until Christmas, squeezing in a couple controlled experimental transects in the hopes of attaining some sort of detection rate for the dogs.  At the very end it felt like we got alot done, despite the briefness of the season...


Virgin River
(map)

Mesquite is a small but rapidly "growing" town of about 20,000 people.  The entire town consists of golf courses and casinos.  It was on one of these golf courses that we lived for the summer of 2006.  

The job itself was concerned with the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, an endangered subspecies of a common North American bird.  We were employed by SWCA Environmental Consultants, who had been awarded the contract of researching the conditions of the bird and the threats to it.  There were stations in Mesquite, Nevada and in Lake Havasu City and Yuma, both in Arizona.  As it turns out, our site in Nevada was the most productive in terms of number of birds and nesting success.

The job itself consisted of several stages.  First was to survey for the presence of Willow Flycatchers (WIFLs).  We did this by running transects through our habitat areas (determined both by suitability as seen from aerial flights and by the historic presence of breeding WIFLs) and broadcasting territorial songs in the hopes of getting a response.  If we heard one, we would temporarily stop our survey and try to find the center of that bird's territory, GPS the location and flag a trail to it.  Then we would return on a schedule until we confirmed that the male had a mate (sometimes they never did) and until we found a nest.  Once we found a nest we would continue to monitor it at specific intervals to determine how many eggs, presence of brown-headed cowbird eggs (they would often lay their eggs in the WIFL nests) and whether or not the eggs hatched and the young fledged.  All in all, if often required many visits to a particular territory through some of the most dense vegetation I have ever encountered.  Much of it consisted of the invasive exotic tree/shrub Tamarisk which would completely choke an area of all other life.  Sometimes we would have to wade through standing water and mud all day long.  Not a job for everyone, but we loved it!

We had four main study areas where we worked.  One was in Mesquite, about a ten-minute drive away and behind a golf course.  One was north in the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, and two were south of Mesquite: Mormon Mesa and Overton.  Both the southern sites required nearly an hour of commuting time, much of that on ATV for Mormon Mesa.  The habitat also differed between the sites.  Pahranagat and Mesquite consisted mainly of native vegetation, Coyote Willow (Mesquite) and Gooding Willow/Fremont Cottonwood (Pahranagat).  Of all our sites, Pahranagat was the funnest to work in.  Its trees were huge, the undergrowth sparse and we got to wear chest waders while we strolled through the water.  All three other sites demanded crouching and sometimes crawling to get through the trails.  Whether we were working in Tamarisk or Coyote Willow, we were always in dense habitat and usually wet!

Over the duration of the season we also were involved with various measures of the habitat and micro-climate in an attempt to determine what factors might influence WIFLs to select a particular nest site or what might lead to an increased chance of predation on that nest.  By the time we got to the end of the season, we hit the "veg" hardcore with vegetation mapping of over 100 sites.  As is usually the case, "veg" was a welcome change but soon grew tedious!  By the middle of August things were wrapping down and people started trickling out.

One of the major perks to this job is that we worked 10 days on, then had 4 days off.  On our holidays we had plenty of time to explore all the wonders of the Southwest.  The hardest problem was deciding which of the nearly 1300 pictures I took should be on this webpage!



Long Point Bird Observatory
(map)
LPBO home page

LPBO is located in Southern Ontario, on the largest freshwater sandspit in the world.   LPBO consists of three banding stations along a 30 km peninsula.  The Tip is the oldest, having been started in 1960.  It was followed by Breakwater, in the middle of the peninsula, and then Old Cut, which acts as LPBO headquarters!  Because of its location on a major migration route and the fact that it is on the northern fringes of many southern birds' ranges, just about anything can happen at Long Point.   It is probably one of the only places in North America where White Throated Sparrows and White-eyed Vireos have bred within earshot of each other.  As far as quantities go, banding days can see anything from a handful to several hundred birds depending on many factors.  During my time there, a surplus of 400 birds was banded at one station on several occasions (one or twice around 550).   This past fall, nearly 17,000 birds were banded!

So it's no surprise that people come from all over the world to take part.  Eleven countries were represented during the last fall (Hungary, Switzerland, France, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, England, Spain, Germany, United States, and Canada). 

I was fortunate enough to be part of the fall migration program as a volunteer bander and observer (including dish washing, sweeping, dock repair, among other mundane jobs!)  Generally banding would run from just before dawn, till 6 hours later.  Weather factors such as rain, excessive wind, or sometimes cold would sometimes cause the closure of the nets.  Beginning in October, we also use ground-traps and J-traps (which are both baited with corn) and Heligoland traps (which are essentially a giant funnels). 

During the last half of the season, owl banding begins.  About an hour after sunset, a recording of a Saw-whet Owl's "song" is played continuously, for the standard banding period of 4 hours.  Amazingly, these smalls owls are drawn to the sound in sometimes astonishing numbers.  On a good night, there may be scores of them in the area.  In fact, they are often so numerous and approachable, they can almost be caught by hand.  This past fall, due to poor weather and a lack of personnel at the crucial time, not as many were banded as the year before.  92 Saw-whets were banded on the only all-night session of the season; last season's high (and the standing record) was 138.  However, we did reach double-digits with Long-eared Owls.  For the first several nights, we were nearly guaranteed to find at least one in the nets, which is quite impressive.  At Old Cut, an Eastern Screech Owl was also banded, but I missed that one.

All in all, it was a great time, and an awesome experience.  I got to see some really nice birds, and meet some even nicer people.  




Ear Falls
(map)

Ear Falls is a community in northern Ontario, farther north than either of us had ever been, but still not hardly even close to Ontario's northern border!  Basically, Ear Falls is a logging town, with a large tourist industry (fishing and hunting lodges, etc).  We often think of Ontario's north as being unspoiled wilderness, but an aerial view of the landscape would tell a different story.  Although logging practices have improved dramatically in the past few years, there is still far to go in finding a more sustainable process that best replicates the natural system we've replaced.

The marten project was in its fifth year when Danielle was hired for the summer field season.  It's main objective is to determine whether the American Marten (Martes americana) is a good indicator for the condition of boreal forests.  The American Marten (Martes americana) is a small member of the weasel family.  It is carnivorous, but in season supplements a diet of small mammals and birds with fruit, berries, and probably many other food sources. 

Based out of the same field house and under the same advisor was a project to assess the microhabitat selection of Red-Backed Voles (one of the marten's key prey).  Danielle participated in both of these projects, mainly doing things like small mammal trapping and radio-telemetry of collared martens in the early part of the season, and moving to vegetation work near the end..  When I joined in the end of the season we were able to work together doing veg and then, finally, live-trapping and collaring martens!

The process was to lay out a line on traps, about 500m apart.  A trap was usually placed on a fallen log, about waist-height.  Then branches from nearby trees were placed over the trap to insulate it (to protect any trapped animal from heat and cold) and to disguise it (sometimes animals were wary of unnatural objects; usually not the martens, though).  Some logs were then propped up against the trap from either side to secure it in place.  After that was done, the bait (jam and lard) and a tin of water were placed in the trap.  Several spots of bait were sometimes placed in the vicinity of the trap to entice the martens to enter.  The trap was set, and we moved on to the next one. 

The next day, each trap on the line was checked.  Usually the trap would be untouched, but sometimes there were squirrels inside, or the trap had been closed somehow, and often they would get hit by bears and have to be completely rearranged.  Sometimes, though, there were martens inside.  A special "handling cone" was fixed to the entrance of the trap.  It consisted of a canvas funnel that was attached at the small end to a sort of cylindrical wire cage.  The door of the trap was propped open with a stick and the marten was flushed into the handling cone by tapping the back of the trap.  Basically, the marten would rush into the canvas sack and see the light through the hole in the end.  It would keep running and end up inside the wire piece, that was just big enough for the  marten to fit.  Once inside, a tranquilizer could be administered and the next step began.

The marten would then be weighed and measured, and a hair sample was taken for DNA analysis.  If the animal was new, it would be fitted with a radio-transmitting collar; if it was a recapture, the tightness of the existing collar would be checked and adjusted if necessary.  All this would have to take place within a few minutes, before the marten came to.  They are quite ferocious little animals and would be quite willing to take a chunk of any "attacker's" flesh if given the chance!  After all this was done, it would be put back into the trap to recuperate from the drugs.  Releasing a doped up marten immediately would leave it very susceptible to attack from a larger predator.  Two hours later, we'd return and prop the door of the trap open and let the marten leave.




Cumberland Mountains, Tennessee
(map)

This was a University of Tennessee project to determine the Cerulean Warbler's (Dendroica cerulea) response to logging and mining practices in the Cumberland mountains.  Leading the field season was Tiffany Beachy, working towards a Masters degree.   I and 7 others (including Tiff) lived in two adjacent townhouses in the small town of Jacksboro (presumably a nice town before becoming overrun by Wal-Mart culture!)  Our plots were in two main study sites:  Royal Blue and Sundquist Wildlife Management Areas.   There were four 40 acre plots in each site.  The beginning of the season was spent setting up these plots using GPS and compass.  Danielle stuck around for the first few days and helped us do this.  It was a great learning experience, as we ran into nearly every obstacle possible in the process!

After this was all done, our job was to search for Cerulean nests.  It took quite a while for us to finally find some nests.  Cerulean nests have been called by many to be the hardest to find in eastern forests.  We began to joke that  it wasn't a biology project at all, but rather a psychological experiment to discover people's tolerance for failure!  After locating an active nest, we would return each day to observe it and record any activity (ie. how often does the incubating female leave to forage; how often do the parents feed the young; does the male's singing frequency change as this takes place...)  When the terrain allowed it, we'd also set up video cameras to record activity at the nests.  Watching these later revealed some very interested behaviour.

We were also conducting early morning surveys of all other forest birds.  While we were setting up plots was also laid out parallel transects through each plot.   We used these transects as reference points for our surveys.  Two people would walk a plot, one from the top and one from the bottom, and they would record every bird they heard or saw as a dot on a rough diagram of the plot.  After several visits, dense areas of dots on the spot maps would reveal the territories of the various birds.

The last half of the season was spent doing veg.  A point was selected at each Cerulean nest and territory site, combined with random points throughout the plots.  A standard set of measurements was taken at each point including canopy cover, dominant species, slope, ground cover, etc...  In contrary fashion to the rest of the season, we finished our veg early, giving us a leisurely job of clearing out the houses.  I was the last one to leave, other than Tiff, and we spent a day in the Smokies before I caught my bus home. 




Oil Springs
(map)

The small town of Oil Springs was where Danielle's family had moved to from Toronto.  I moved into an apartment across the street from her family soon after we got together.  That one-bedroom apartment was to be my home for four years - longer than I had lived anywhere before in my life!  We both have some very good memories from there.  Since her family still lives there, we still spend quite a bit of time there...  Oil Springs, with all 800 people living in it, actually has a claim to fame: it was the site of the first commercial oil well in North American, location of the Oil Museum of Canada, and home to the world's oldest continuous family of oil producers (four generations of Fairbanks, whose kids Danielle babysat).  But really it's a quiet town.

For the first couple years, Danielle was in high school, and I was working at a roof-truss plant.  In the afternoons, we'd go walking or  I'd jam with the band (Tim, Adam, or Keil).  In 2003 Danielle started her bachelor program at the University of Guelph.  About a year later I quit my job as a labourer and enrolled in a field assistant training program.  By the spring of 2005, both of us had summer jobs and it was time for me to move out of my place.  So far, there's been no looking back!...


Most of the pictures were taken with my first camera, a cheap point-and-shoot;  some were taken with a Canon Elan 7ne that I have since sold.  There are pictures here from the general Oil Springs region, as well as trips we made to Tobermory and Killarney.  The Guelph section is composed mainly of the numerous weekend trips I made to visit Danielle in school.