Recreation UK: the returnz

UK returns, and, for those interested enough, here, in excruciating(ly painful) detail, is exactly what I was doing for those weeks out in the bush.

It all started innocently one day some time before finals. I was looking for work for the summer, and my Dad (an Ornithology professor) called up and told me there might be a job for me if I could get familiar with 40+ birds and their calls in about a weeks time. Well, I wasnft keen on the idea right off, but it turned out to be the best offer I could get this summer, so I took it, and then promptly found out that the majority of my work would not be with birds, but on habitat. Let me go into a little detail about it.

First, by using a map, township/range/section numbers and a little judgment, we chose sites with about average looking sage brush for the area, go to the middle, mark the point with a GPS unit (yes, we got some toys for this job, more on that later), then put a spike down in the ground to hold one end of a 100m long measuring tape. We ran the tapes out 50m in each cardinal direction and started measuring whatever sage brush happened to intersect a tape for more than 3cm. Oh, and if a tape happened to cross a bush in two or more places (this happened a lot), if there was 3cm of empty space between, we had to make note of it. For any given shrub that crossed the tape, we recorded where it started crossing, where it stopped crossing, starts and stops of any other crossings of that shrub, the maximum length, width, and height of the shrub. No one bush took very long, unless the wind was blowing, then things took a little longer. Lucky for us, the wind is *always* blowing in the plains! We also recorded what type of shrub it was, and whether it was living or not (a difficult task sometimes). Repeat this behavior for the 10-200 shrubs that cross the tape and voila! The first part is done!

The second part was a lot more regular, it was exactly the same amount of work every time, quite a relief sometimes. This part actually had a name, eDaubenmire plots,f fun name, ne? Anyhow, this part used these little PVC pipe rectangles 20cm wide by 50cm long, and another one, half the size, but without one end to close the rectangle and a small handle to facilitate sticking it under shrubs easier. Every 5 meters, you plop the big one down on ground near the tape that has no shrubs on it and record how much of the ground is covered by grass, forbs, bare ground, and eotherf.

[And now, a new section of UK postings and rants, a little something Ifll call: gWhatfs that, Sempai?h (Inspired by Matt) for all those little things you might have questions about that I can predict. This segment is all about the term eforbsf. eForbsf are a type of plant; flowers, ferns, and lots of other things fall under this category, in fact, it covers all plants except grasses, woody plants, and fungal growth.]

Anyhow, as I was saying, depending on how much of any particular thing is there, we wrote down numbers coordinating to approximate percentages. Herefs the system:
Coverage numbers:
1: 0% - 5%
2: 6% - 25%
3: 26% - 50%
4: 51% - 75%
5: 76% - 95%
6: 96% - 100%
Easy to use, simple, and it allows for pretty quick work. And as for the eotherf category, thatfs where stuff like dead, uprooted plants, cow turds, rabbit droppings, ants (yes, therefve been enough of them in a single rectangle to be considered over 5% of the rectangle), and pretty much anything else wefd run across out there that didnft count as grass, a forb or bare ground. I had a power cable in one of mine. (Hey, that type of thing is interesting when youfre doing this kind of work for 11-15 hours a day) Well, the other one, as I said, is for sticking under shrubs, and, in addition to the one on the ground where there werenft shrubs, we did one under a shrub every 5 meters as well. Beyond estimating ground coverage we measured the tallest thing in the plot and recorded its height.

Third, we break out a mallet and a pole with three plastic balls on it. For fun with mallets, refer to below. But now, that thing which shall forever be known as the ePlunger contraption,f well, thatfs what the Grad Student at the head of the project called it anyways. Itfs a pole made of wood about as thick around as a toilet plunger (thus the name) thatfs about, ohhc a little under a yard tall. The point of the thing is this, you pound it into the ground at 4 different spots 10 meters away from the center point, then walk 3 meters away from it (with the aid of a 3 meter long string attached to the pole) and kneel down to look at the tops of the balls, you look at all three balls at 10 points evenly spaced around the thing, eventually coming up with a percentage of how visible the pole is there. From thus comes the name eVisual Obscurity testf for some reason I always wanted to call it the eOcular Obfuscation testf well, call me weird, ecause I am!

Now onto the mildly entertaining portion of this madly long post!

Well, it all started on a mildish Monday morning in May. Wellc actually, thatfs just where they explained the job to usc we didnft actually leave until the next day. And that was just a barrel of fun. Yfknow, I really hate driving. Anyhow, Tuesday morning we all packed up into these sweet State-owned trucks. We had gotten a look at them the other day, and because me and my partner had shown up first, we got our pick, a brand new v8 Chevy Silverado with an extended cab and full sized bed.. oh yeah, that thing had a turning radius of three small countries, but it was actually kinda cool, except for the lack of tape or cd deckc all proceeded safely anyhow, despite the presence of 50 billion country stations. Welcome to the heartland! A short 11 hour day and we were there! A little town south of the Black Hills called Edgemont, it wasnft too small.. I mean it had a diner and a eKar washf 8-]

The next morn we rolled out of bed around 4:30am, an exercise that would be the rule and not the exception for the following weeks and weeks. Bleary eyed and blinking, we all piled in the vehicles and headed out to try it all out for real. About a half hour later we stood miles away from any paved road, smack dab in the middle of wilderness. Itfs really something to behold, unspoiled land, I mean sure, there was a two-track out to the place we were, but by the time we were done walking, we couldnft even see that. Rolling fields of golden brown grasses, small sage bushes, birds, rabbits, snakes.. everything! And me with no camerac Thatfs right, my camera wasnft operational for the whole experience. Blargc donft you think? But wait! Therefs more! Not long into the day, Amy (my boss) almost steps on a snake carelessly! Turns out it was a bull snake, but it was fun to stare at for a little while, nonetheless. Next place we went to, she almost stepped on a little cottontail rabbit too! Poor lifl fella was scared half to death. That site was particularly interesting for something else there. While doing the first part, another guy on the job found a Lark Bunting nest under a shrub with three hatched out and one egg remaining. Some other time during the day we also came across some Sage Grouse, 3 males, doing their mating dance thingc months too late.

The next day Troy (my work partner for this experience) and I headed off to our counties, up in the southwest corner of North Dakota, before we got there, Amy took us on a tour of the sites in the county to the south of us, where another group would be working, cool thing for that day? Driving a long a little dirt road, we stopped to take a look at the nice Swainsonfs Hawk that was sitting on a fencepost not 3 yards away. Funny thing for the day, one headlight went out on another vehicle, so we stopped at a Wal-Mart in Spearfish to take care of it, went in, got the right part quick, headed back out and this other guy in the vehicle with the busted light started working on it, removed a headlight, handed it over to Troy, who immediately heads toward the dumpster across the parking lot. Lucky for all of us it was that far away, because once they got the new light in, they found out theyfd replaced the wrong headlight!

The following weeks were packed with some rather breathtaking sceneryc huge buttes, meandering streams slowly eroding away the landscape, making wide open river bottoms to explore and survey, and letfs not forget the wind! Itfs *always* windy on the plains! There were a few days that it was just impossible to work for all the wind.

Too big for a single post, you see... continued below!

 

Letfs see, Ifll try to describe some of the more notable areas I was in and events that happened.

Hmmc One area was on top of a little plateau that ran right up next to a riverbed, there were swallows all over the area, and a very nice view of the cliff on the other side of the bed, it housed a Great horned Owl, pretty cool. Another was inside the river bottom, we actually had to cross the river sometimes to do the survey, it looked really nice. One place we got off on took us on a wild goose chase over a bunch of two tracks, through a few fence gates, by several oil rigs, and lots of grass and a little dirt scraping the bottom of the truck. Quite the experience, no doubt, we didnft see pavement for at least an hour. Another day we were out early to count birds, and there was a big bad bull across the fence, that was one to put off to another day, he didnft look happy at all. Later that day we saw a natural gas pump/mine thing just spewing it out into the air, there was a huge cloud of it filling the land dent we were in (not sure what to call it, I hope the description is sufficient, it was like a valley, but with hills instead of mountains), one thing was for sure, I was praying that no sparks happened to fly while we were there, the thing was loud!

So, as a part of all of this, we collected plant samples, I forget if I typed that earlier, but bear with me here.. we put them in a press to preserve them well for the research. As we were driving away from a site, wefd left the press on the tail gate, which was down. Neither Troy nor myself noticed this, so off we drove, forded a river, and kept going for miles and miles before we realized it had fallen off somewhere. The obvious place of suspicion being the river crossingc So we headed back, and about a mile from the river, we started seeing little pieces of paper, cardstock and cardboard that looked all too much like out press. Tr?s suck, mes amis. Fortunately, almost all the parts of the press were there, excepting a few layers.. so itfs a bit on the thin side. Unfortunately, we had to go collect all those plant samples again. I should mention that, despite that setback, Troy and I did about ? more work than anyone else..

Lots of interesting little things happen walking out therec for instance, while walking along, Ifve had a Meadowlark thwack my calf muscle. She was trying to get away when I stepped too close to her nest, so as to make me think it was elsewhere. Another time (while I was out in Wyoming) I came within a foot of a rattlesnake without knowing it. Now that was fun! He was a welcome distraction, we played with him (picking him up a bit too) for quite some time. Rattlesnakes are very mild mannered, but Ifm certainly not completely sane to be picking one upc Riling impressions of Steve Irwin were circulating the whole time.

Speaking of Wyoming, the last night I was there I ended up in a motel in the same town as MO, so, I decided to pay a little surprise visit, in case he was still living there.. (he moved a bit ago) Lucky me, I caught him the last day he was in townc We all had a grand olf time on the town.

Driving off from one place, we got a real close look at a hawk carrying off a snake in itfs claws, so close it almost hit the windshield!

That job was really getting me worried about myself sometimes. During the Visual Obscurity tests, we end up kneeling a lot. So, naturally, we have to watch out for cactus a lot. It came to be that near the end of the job, I stopped watching outc after I accidentally kneeled my full weight on a cactus, took the measurements, and stood up before I realized Ifd done it, the cactus was stuck to me.

Wellc such ends this epic rantc or was it really a rant? Maybe it wasnft, but itfs quite a way to welcome myself back to the forums, wouldnft you say?

-UK
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eats 76 pound multilingual legal dictionaries for breakfast.

 

too much tekst

 

sorry, I had to. lol

Welcome back. The only part I don't understand is how all that flora and fauna could be more interesting than us

So, welcome back to the real world, away from nature and fresh air. And it was cool to see you in Lander before I moved. Too bad your job is over and won't carry you out here.
______________
And good job eating that dictionary, it's a pain to haul around

 

*Random tekst*

Ocular Obfuscation!!!

Bull snakes are good. Out at my place, we try to encourage the bull snake population. 1) they eat mice 2)they eat rats 3)given the opportunity, they'll kill rattlesnakes. They don't like the competition, I guess. I mean, normally I wouldn't mind the rattlers as long as they stay well away from me because I hate rodents more, but we occasionally have little kids running around out here.

So are you actually, like, done done? Well, since you normally only had a couple days off every two weeks, then yeah, I guess you must be because it would take only about THREE DAYS to type up those posts.

But you're on a dial-up connection, and I've got to make fun of you for that, even if you can probably log on more often than I do now.

_______________
My dictionaries could beat up your dictionaries.

 

Yes indeed, I'm back, I'm working around town now, which means I've got dialup access.

Bloodberry, there is pretty scenery over on the west end of Bowman and Slope counties, just enjoy the dirt roads for a bit, and you're there!

Many congratulations you elite few who actually *read* that monster.

Glad you enjoyed the tekst!

-UK
~~~~~~~~~
at work, so I'll have to cut it short

 

Too much Tekst.
Maybe read it laTer.

<everyone is doing the S-0 impression >

Hi UK .. welcome back!!

 

Wow UK, that must have been some job!
it sounds like a lot of ground to cover, b/c isnt a meter 3 feet?
Thats a lot of feet.
I enjoyed the text!
Glad to see that you're back!
WELCOME BACK!

PS Eating Dictionaries is a good way to absorb knowledge i hear