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