For a career that is ostensibly about looking at or for animals, most wildlife jobs involve a stunning amount of driving. That makes it even more devastating when there is an interloper. Over the years, I’ve had a lot of trouble with animals getting into field vehicles. There was the rancher’s bloodhound that jumped into …
In the far northwest corner of Colorado, in the canyons above the Yampa River, is a survey whose reputation precedes it. Not just for the terrain of survey itself, but also because getting there is not for the faint of heart. The survey is known as NC3 and referred to with a mixture of awe …
Last time, I wrote about my worst day of field work. The next natural step would be to write about the best day of field work, but it was much harder than I anticipated. Being outside and doing field work is generally great and it’s difficult to pick the best day of all. It’s like …
Field biology isn’t all sunshine and profound experiences that fundamentally rearrange the fibers of your being. Some days are objectively, irredeemably, shitty. Over the years the competition for the title “Worst Day of Field Work ever” has been tight. Honorable mentions include: After the events of this past summer, I am thrilled to announce that …
I spent a lot of my career driving Jeeps, Toyotas, and Forerunners on rough roads. Normally everything goes fine. Sometimes, through absolutely no fault of my own, I get myself into trouble on these roads. A resident biologist warned me not to drive the two-track roads of the area he managed after a rainstorm, but …
Much like my elaborate scheme to get paid to go birding in Central America by joining the Peace Corps, my decision to join a bird crew in the southern great plains was really a ploy to go birding in Big Bend National Park and add species to my life list. Similar to my time in …
There is an anthropological phenomenon that happens when people go camping. A transformation that occurs, independent of who they are in the outside world. A Jekyll and Hyde response triggered by a Jetboil. There are two clearly defined camps when it comes backcountry cooking: the gourmands and the garbage goblins. The gourmands make pizza on …
Big Bend is too big to see in a day, or even in a weekend. The park is so large and varied that by the time you finish seeing the whole thing you would have to start all over again at the beginning to remember. That said, even a few days of birding there are …
Tortoises and turtles are not to be trusted. For all that they carry the weight of the world (plus four elephants) on their backs, at their core they are heartless reptiles who use their shells to hide from their own sins. Cold blooded by nature, cold-hearted by choice. First, let me introduce Shelly, a …
This seems like a good opportunity to go through some of the bird songs you might hear in a pinyon-juniper vegetation community, with the mnemonic devices I use to identify them. To put it mildly, I was fussy and in need of a snack long before it was light enough to start looking for birds. …
Complicated Menmonics for Pinyon-Juniper Landscapes Read More »