July and a Party

This entry is formatted a bit different than the others but that's fine. Kind of just going to write it all out.

So far July has been a good month. As I wrote last time, I've gotten to know people in the house fairly well by now and I'm even starting to get to know the ones who I didn't before. I thinking being here on the weekend helped that out a bit.

Having visitors last weekend was great. We played at the campground and at the Sanctuary and both players and listeners seemed to enjoy it at both locations. I'm hoping it will work out that my buddies from Maine will be able to come visit too. That means you Sam, Betsy, and Cory! Make it happen!

I've started to run out of constant Osprey related things to do so recently I began working on the vegetation cover for the sanctuary. It's a fairly big project that I must admit is a bit intimidating. I've began by outlining some major areas with the GPS including the old field, the heathland, try island, and terrapin island. Basically I tell the GPS to draw a line where I walk and then I walk the outline of the area I'd like to map. Then I hook the GPS up to the computer and download the data onto a map and tweak a few things. Voila! The goal of the project is to have an electronic version of a vegetation map depicting the types of vegetation on all areas of the sanctuary.

Yesterday I went on a long voyage in the Prius along with a AAA TripTik that lead me to a bunch of nests that I needed fledge data (How many chicks have survived so far) for. I was supposed to end up in Falmouth but by the time I had done my seventh nest on the list I was in Marston Mills and it was five o'clock. It was strange journey as these usually are. The other day when I was out one guy invited me up on his roof? I was like "Uhhh."

He said "You're welcome to climb up on the roof to check for a nest."

I responded skeptically "Is it easy to get up there or something?"

"Uhhh, well no. Not really."

"Ummm, I think I'm ok."

He then brought me through his huge house and out onto his back porch which looked into a tall oak forest with no osprey nest. I had thought that there was a nest back there when I looked at the GPS but I was obviously wrong and that oak forest wasn't good Osprey habitat above all things.

Another nest led me to railroad tracks choked by thick shrubberies on each side. I trudged through it and walked on down the track. I felt pretty cool. I found my nest, got my count, and moved on.

The last nest of yesterday led me to a enormous house near a small inlet. I saw cars in the driveway and kids in the yard so I walked up to the door in my safari-like uniform and knocked to ask permission to use the scope in the backyard.

The older lady in the house was sitting at table and waved me in before I even said who I was. She led me to the back deck and I took a quick look around. I can't believe the huge places some of these people live in! Holy cow! I got my chick count and left there quickly while almost getting to the whiffle ball to the face which missed me and went on to a hit a window.

Yesterday was also my first weekend at the sanctuary in three weeks and we were all going to a house party at one of the day camp counselors summer houses. I volunteered to drive since I wouldn't be drinking and took four others with me.

I felt quite out of place at first but got used to it and even ended up playing some alcoholic party games by either just not drinking during my turn or having a partner to drink for me. I decided to document the night by sending text messages to myself in scientific observation fashion. I'll admit that they came out as if I was watching a foreign tribe perform rituals. I wished I had a time stamp on it but chronological order will have to do.

Cell phone observations of my first house party:

-Large black man flapping his arms like a bird through the living room.

-As of right now I think I am the only awkward turtle not drinking. I've spotted an 80's radio headset on the bookshelf.

-Alcohol induced saying 1: "You need money? I have money in my trunk..."

-Learning the fundamentals of beer pong.

-First beer pong round. I threw and had a friend drink for me. Throws: 20? Successes: 3

-I managed to miss out on all the hamburgers. How did this happen? I've grabbed a slice of pizza and some Doritoes. Loud noises...

-I've been advised by many drunk people to hydrate myself. I've assured them I am hydrated...

-I switched to an alcoholic Frisbee game called beer cricket. I play minus the alcohol. Advantage. ;-)

-Individuals here have become less aware of their surroundings and even louder.

-First disc game. Fail. I'm not used to having to hit the ground with the disc. Sadness.

-Big black man is dancing some dance that looks like he's washing his hair.

-This song just rapped about chicken noodle soup. I wonder which soup will inspire me to mention it in song someday.

-Intoxicated people can be very sincere. I must admit. Also, I smell pot. ;-P Time to get going.

-Alcohol induced saying 2: "Mike is so much more better of a person than us right now."

Me: " No need to rank any of us. We're all different."

"Well it's hard because these needles are sharp.." (She was holding pine needles)

Me: "Yes...."

Eventually I was ready to get going and one of the older interns here needed to go home as she'd had way too much to drink. She was out of it and upset at herself so I set her up in the Subaru with my orange bongo bucket upside-down so she could use it if the time came and gave her some paper towels that I also had. We were almost on route 6 and I thought she dozed off. She woke up, groaned, and ralphed in the bucket multiple times. I kept driving and gave her some paper towels. She felt bad, but I told her I gave it to her for that reason and I could always wash the bucket and I had extras. She ralped again in bucket in the dorm parking lot.

I was glad I went. I learned a lot and I was glad to be there for people who needed it.

End post.

;)

WBWS Day 25

Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

Day: 25

Date: 6/26/09

I know it’s been longer than it should have. My bad. Time really seems to fly here. Before I know it I wake up and it’s Friday morning and I’m heading home that afternoon. It’s nuts!
In the past few weeks I’ve done a combination of osprey computer work, observation, ground thruthing, as well as some day camp training to prepare me for the work I’ll be doing at the end of August. I spent most of Monday doing day camp training because the weather was so crappy and that was a fun mix up and it helped to get to know some of the new staff who are living in the dorms as well.
Tuesday was mostly computer work inside. I’ve been emailing volunteers with new nests that they can monitor as well as encouraging them and thanking them for their work as they report observations to be a few times a week. While sometimes they can be frustrating, as we are on two very different levels of understanding technology, they have been patient with me in getting everything organized and everything put into the computer.
Wednesday morning was some GIS mapping and research on how to get the software I need to do some great stuff. Wednesday afternoon I went out and observed the nest on Gross Hill Road. I couldn’t see any chicks but after the male brought a fish back, possibly a scup, I saw the female tearing up the meat and slowly lowering her head into the middle of the nest, so she must have at least one chick. Wednesday night was trivia night and that was fun as usual. Not that stipend debit card is activated and has money on it I was able to get dinner on the SCA.
Yesterday morning I worked on some maps in the morning and managed some 13 new sites that a volunteer sent into me earlier in the week. I went out in the huge van at 12 to meet one of my volunteers in Yarmouth for 12:30. Once we met up she accompanied me to the 5 or 6 sites I was monitoring in her area and she was a big help in navigating and spotting the nests, not to mention she was very enthusiastic!
Today I’ll be in the office this morning and I’m headed north to Truro to a fancier GIS lab to try and do some work on my model. After that I’m headed home for the weekend!
Off to write an inquiry email to a guy Tora tipped me onto about some sort term remote sensing work in Micronesia!

Day 8 and CD " The Way Life Should Be"

Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

Day: Day 8

Date: 06/09/09

I know I’ve skipped a lot of dates in between but many of the things done last week are similar to this week so I’ll recount more of this week. Ok? Ok.

Both on Friday and today, I went out on a barge into Wellfleet Harbor to help put different concrete blocks and bags of shells out into the bay. The material is part of an experiment being done by the sanctuary to determine which material the oysters will grow on best. The work is definitely wet but most certainly fun. We load a bunch of the material onto the barge, drive out to the site at high tide, and then dump everything overboard. The dumping part is my favorite. Haha! Then at low tide some of the people go out and rearrange the block properly on each quadrant. The work really reminds me of Machias and a certain Marine Biology woman who has my heart. I think thats why I am so eager to volunteer to do it. I had some good conversations with the boat’s Captain, Bob, and his first mate, Cliff. They both have heard of Machias or been close to it and we talked about many things including Alaska, the fishing industry, and school. They seemed a bit gruff at first and I was surprised that they opened up on me on this trip. I thought “ Well, this is what Meg would be doing if she were here... Gotta pick their brains ;) ). At the end of the trip I was wet and cold and I came back to the dorms and curled up in my sleeping bag with my new ipod nano. Yay for comfort music.

The osprey project is going well too. I went out again the other to get some coordinates. I ended up marching/sinking across a salt marsh and eventually filled one of my hip waders with some awesome smelling water. :/ It was hot that day and I, for some reason, was in a long sleeve t-shirt. Bad news bears.

I went home this weekend and did a lot in just three days! I went to the movies Friday night and saw UP with Dan, Brent, and Kristie. Saturday I went to West Hill to visit, lunch with my Dad in Johnston, helped move some furniture for my aunt, and then went to an intense practice at Dan’s that left me with huge calluses on two of my fingers.

I began working on my soundtrack concept CD last night. I’d like to make a CD that contains theme songs for people at Machias as well as some songs encompassing things like fires at the pit, adventure, and the ocean. I’m thinking of calling it “The Way Life Should Be”. Each song is purely instrumental and the people who are part of the story in the song are represented by an instrument. For example, in the song I started last night called “ The Islander”, Jordan was the clarinet, Duce the trombone, Meg the irish fiddle, Bets the french horn, and I was the cello. The instruments behave as these people would and I’ trying to capture personalities musically. Duce gave me some good track listing names for potential songs such as “King Kuester’s Castle” I’d like this song to start with Kuester himself, a sax, and progressively add odd instruments in until it blows up with rage and volume. This will happen a few times in the song as it did in our experiences. Others may include a Duce song called “ Where’s My Hammer, I’ll Fix It...”, a Meg song called “Sun is Warm, Grass is Green” and a McD song called “ Bob Saget!” I’d like to get everyone into in some way if they each don’t have their own song. Send me any “ideers” if you have them. Thanks for thinking about me! Until next time!

Wellfleet Bay Day 5

Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

 

Day: 5

Date: 6/2/09

Day one was quite fun. I started by doing some office work and emailing volunteers in the database. I familiarized myself with the various drives and files on the computer and after maybe an hour and a half, my boss (Mark) and I went out in the Prius to check out some local nests in the area. We drove North on Route 6 and hit up the local general store which is actually really old. There’s a sweet summer deli in the back and he treated me to lunch. I got the roadhouse which was a roast beef bbq type sandwich. It was very good. We then looked behind the general store in a marsh where we could see a nest with an osprey incubating eggs. We ended up visiting two or three other sites all which had active osprey either defending the area or incubating the eggs. We even saw a juvenile Bald Eagle flying around one of the nests. The osprey didn’t seem to like this very much.

Day two, today, was spent in the office making contacts with the volunteers and working on coordinates. Most of the volunteers were kind of both the phone and both in email. But notice how I said most... Haha, one guy seemed to be upset that we were organizing. He said “ Damn, sometime good is going on and someone has to go and try to organize it”. Strange... He ended the email with “Thanks, don’t call me.” Hahaha, oh well. Not everyone still wants to participate as monitors I suppose. I’m hoping to be able to go home this weekend but I’m not sure if there is anything for me to do work wise so we’ll see.

I’ve heard from Meg and she is in Seattle doing training now. She’s going to try to get a cell phone so hopefully we’ll all hear more of her voice! :) I sure miss my lady right about now. Until another time!

Mike

Wellfleet Bay Day 3

Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

Day: 3

Date: 5/31/09

Well this is day three here at the sanctuary for me. I just graduated and moved here within a day of leaving good ole’ Machias. I do miss it so. Since I’ve moved in on Friday afternoon I’ve been hanging around the house and walking the trails so that I am familiar with the place.

My room right now is in the new dorm and will change to the older dorm across the screened in porch sometime next week. I have my computer all setup in our dining room and I usually get anywhere from one to three bars on the wireless, which sadly means I don’t have a reliable enough internet to play WoW this summer (sorry Cory).

So far I’ve met a handful of other interns, some who work here and some who don’t. The two girls living here in the new dorm are Emily and Jolie and are working on turtle nesting and kids programs respectively as well as horseshoe crab and salt marsh dieback. The guy living in the new dorm is Dan and he is one of the naturalists for the sanctuary as well as the adult program guide.

I’ve spent my free time mostly hanging around the house reading, surfing the net, and finding comfort in watching shows like Firefly and The Office. I really haven’t settled in yet and I’m still missing my homes, both Uxbridge and Machias. Part of me longs to go back to the apartment on the river in Machias and spend a lazy summer that way but I know that I must trudge on into the unknown until it becomes known.

Apparently I’ll start my actual work with the osprey sometime Monday or Tuesday although no one seems to be in a big hurry yet. I’d just like to have purpose so I feel like I belong a bit more. I’ve been told that most of my work will probably be independent which will be nice. Hopefully I will be scheduling my own time so I can drive home and visit and maybe even take a hike up to Maine. Who knows.

Today I hiked the second half of the trails as I hiked the first half yesterday. I identified some birds along the way so that I may start to familiarize myself with some of the local flora and fauna. In terms of vegetation I’ve seen mostly oaks and some sort of pine although I need to identify it further because it isn’t something that I’ve seen before.  I become very familiar with the Red-winged Blackbird in the past few days due to hearing it’s “conk-a-reeeeee” call both on the trails and at the housing.

I walked out to the shoreline today along a boardwalk meandering through the salt marsh and saw some of the interns measuring and tagging horseshoe crabs and others wading so far out into the water with nets that I had to use my binocs to see them. There are a ton of mini crabs wandering around this place. They hide in holes as you walk by, but there are so many that it sounds like foam crackling when they all start moving.

I’ve been lucky enough to have internet and to be able to keep up with all of you so far. This really has been one of my first journeys out on my own and I can tell you the adventures are a lot more exciting with a group of ruffians along with you. It’s a bit lonely but having long chats with my dearest Meg and all my friends keeps me from getting too down. You gotta roll with the punches and I’m sure things will look up as they become routine and familiar. However, I find myself doing things a certain way because they remind me of people. For instance, at Stop & Shop the other day, when given the vast variety of soaps to choose from I chose Irish Spring because it reminds me of a certain hairy english roommate who used it. ;) I can’t believe the college years are behind us already. I’ve realized in these past few days that even though it’s over I still need everyone, so keep in touch. 

I’m going to try and get into the habit of logging a journal on the mac every few days or so and publishing it to my blog online. As always, keep in touch.

Mike

Friends sing together, lalalalaaaaaa

Good week. Very full. Worked on some sick new songs with the boys that will be on the next album which is turning out to be very eerie and gloomy. Then I took a diverted path up to NH to visit the lady and Machias friends. We went skiing and watched movies. I was a good time and nice to actually see Meg in between being home. It has never happened before and it was good to have that balance. Came back and found out my TB test was negative, yessss. Played some sick COD4 with the boys and Kristie, who got very excited and yelled a lot but made all that more fun. My favorite quote (from Dan): "Okay, everyone just get Mike with the knife. Just stab him..." Hahaha. Mr. Sneaky strikes again. Spent a full day at the Newms with a feast at the end and I wouldn't have it any other way. Yay for a good break that really lacked boredom. Time for school again, but I'm ready. 

Friends:  This video sums up my week :)

Where Science and Music Meet

So yea. It's been a long time but I'm finally updating this so I'll try to make it thorough and interesting!

Let's see. Started classes for my final semester here at UMM. Here is a list of my classes and my opinion/work of them so far.

Population and Community Ecology: Good so far. Lewis has really upped the anti this semester. He's got quite the pep too. Apparently someone told him to be more approachable so now he comes into class and looks out the window and says things like "It's cold today. Don't go outside naked." No lie. :) But yea, lotsa animal examples for stuff and so far it's mostly evolutionary stuff.

Remote Sensing: This is my independent GIS study with Tora and it's really picking up now. I'm starting a project where I'm using satellite imaging to look at the differences in forested habitat for a species using things like infrared imaging. Right now I'm looking at Orangutan habitat in Tanjung Putang National Park in Borneo because it is an area of heavy illegal logging and I'd like to see how much the logging has affected the area even it has become a national park. Go conservation!

Winter Bird Ecology: This class is going alright. A bit slow sometimes, I don't do good with once a week two hour classes. Labs are on Saturday and have been cold most days. This past Saturday we saw over 120 Bald Eagles. No lie. In the air, in the trees, and the mudflats around the Eastport area. Go America!

Geography: This is an online class that is pretty easy so far. Lots of discussions online and there other students there really lack ambition. We had to pick an area (5 actually) in the world we wanted to visit, make a video of them in Google Earth and share why we chose them. Many of the video were girls saying they wanted to visit a place because their Church did a mission there. :\    I was like, what do I write back to that? It's noble sure, but where's your sense of adventure?

Folk Group: Sweet class that's now going on two days a week. Learning a lot of new and old songs. The first song we did as a group was "The Captain" by Guster that I brought in and we did great. We have like 8 guitarists, 2 bassists, two drummers, 2 banjos, a mandolin, like 4 singers, and a washboard. Yay washboard!

Pop Band: Awesome, I'm not taking it for credit but I'm most excited for this. We tried Come Together the other night and I apparently blew everyone away. The quiet science guy belted the rock. Thats right. ;) It's great playing with good musicians compared to the older Pop Band classes I took. I'm singing a duet with one girl who is awesome. It's called Good Time by Lady Antebellum and I volunteered on a whim to do it and I'm psyched now. Might do some Flight of the Conchords too!

So that's it for classes. I've been doing a lot of internship research too. Narrowed it down to 5 SCA internships in conservation and 3 in Texas dealing with animal husbandry. Getting ready to package everything and I need to get a TB test. :P

Weekends have been busy because of my Saturday lab but we managed to travel to up to Thomas' house last weekend and go icefishing/snowmobiling and that was fun. Never ridden one before and we each got our own. Sat in the camp house later and had a great view of the lake to watch the traps. We sat back and played poker until we saw a flag, then jumped on the snowsled and gunned it across the lake to the traps.

I have break coming up soon which I'll be coming home for but I still have lab that Sat from 9-1 so I'll be home late Sat or early Sun. Not sure yet.

Hope this helps everyone catch up.

I wish I had some pictures of stuff. I think there are some kicking around. I'll try to see what I can do.

Mike