Engineers and Vanity- 17 January 2009

This should actually be two separate posts, but since I don't seem to be able to blog as frequently as I'd hoped, I'm combining them into one.

At my refuge, we work with a variety of engineering staff on a regular basis. Our staff of wildlife biologists provide services to various construction projects such as environmental awareness training for the workers, biological monitoring during the project, and wildlife surveys to reduce the impacts of the project on the various wildlife and habitat at Kokopelli Wildlife Area. In so doing, we interact with everyone on the project from the security personnel to the equipment operators to the engineers who act as project managers. Most of the time this works out pretty good. There have been notable exceptions but I'm not going to discuss those today.

What brought this topic to my mind was when I was out making my rounds the other day and I noticed the aftermath of one of the projects that I was the biologist on. We have this utility line bissecting one of our large wetland cells and riparian areas and one of our jobs is to keep the trees in the area from encroaching on this corridor. A few years back, three of the poles needed replacement because they were rotten. I know this doesn't really sound like it would require the services of an engineer, but here at KWA, engineers are put in charge of all kinds of small projects. Basically, anytime you have to hire somebody to do some work, you can plan on having an engineer facilitate the process. Sometimes, even the best engineer gets a little "engineery" for lack of a better term.

I guess this guy thought that the project wasn't worthy of an engineer either, so he decided to add a little pop to the job. He decided that the row of fifty or so poles wouldn't possibly be able to function properly in the future unless each was individually numbered. It came out something like this:

You'll also notice that not only was it not good enough to merely number each pole, but also to name them "PL" which, to my knowledge, stands for pole, or maybe powerline. Brilliant. These letters are probably about 8" tall and they are possibly smelted from 98% pure sterling silver to avoid corrosion. I know what you're thinking: four symbols times fifty poles equals 200 characters. Wow. Especially at what, $7 or $8 bucks a pop? But is that really good enough? What if you're standing somewhere that you can't see the labeling? What do you do then? Circle the pole while hopelessly lost, looking for some kind of sign to tell you where you are? Which direction do you go? Clockwise? Counter?

Fortunately, this guy thought of everything:

Yes, that's right. You will only have to walk halfway around the pole to get your bearings.

On another note:

Many people assume that humans are the only animal that has the capacity for vanity. Actually, nature is full of examples of this superficial behavior. Look no further than peacocks, or even drake mallards. It's not often, however, that you see animals that are worried about their figure. I snapped this photo of a red-tailed hawk. I must have surprised him, because he didn't even bother to suck in his gut. I probably caught him in between smokes.

After he realized what was happening and saw that I had a camera, he decided to show off a little bit.

Now that's what a hawk should look like. But the take home message is this: the next time you start to worry about humanity and our superficial nature, just realize that we are fighting against something that's probably buried deep in our genetic code somewhere.

Close Ups On Gray- 7 January 2009

It's the glamorous season of report writing and I really needed to get out of the office today. I wanted to take some pictures, but we've had fog and drizzle for a few days straight. I have a hard time getting decent photos in this kind of lighting so I decided to concentrate on closeup work. This first picture is of one of the managed seasonal wetland cells at Kokopelli Wildlife Area--you can see what the weather was like. I know, not exactly a close-up, but I wanted you to feel what the weather was like. These seasonal wetland areas at Kokopelli are managed primarily for wintering waterfowl and migratory shorebird usage. We spend the summer growing up crops of desirable wetland plants, then we mow and disc areas to create open water in the winter and mudflats in the spring as the water recedes. We provide habitat for up to 20,000 ducks on any given winter day.
One of the good things about doing close ups for me is that plants and leaves don't move around nearly as much as birds or other critters. It makes it a little easier for me to get in close. Unless I happened to spend the previous night closing down the bars. I found a small grove of young cottonwood trees that we planted a few years ago and there were still some leaves hanging on.

cottonwood leaves and creeping wildrye seedhead

I took several photos of this leaf before I realized that it looked like the head of a goldeneye or bufflehead. It even has an eye.

Another of the same leaf but a little closer.


A patch of goldenrod caught my eye nearby as well.




And what would a group of photos be without the obligatory log reflected on water. I call this one: Log Reflected on Water.That's all I got for today. And, I know what you're probably thinking: Yet another blog entry padded by crummy photos with no real substance. If this guy doesn't want to write, why the hell did he start a blog and not just open up a Flickr account? Is Kraft macaroni really the cheesiest? Will I ever be able to recover these three minutes of my life?

Well, to be honest: get off my back, yes, and probably not.

GISing On A Rainy Day- 5 January 2009

This picture shows my ordinary defense mechanism for postponing tasks that I would rather not do. The art of procrastination begins and ends with the skill of maintaining a highly disorganized office. This is just a small slice of my workspace, but the astute observer will quickly realize that almost everything I will need in any given month is likely all within arms reach. And, if the wheels on my rolling chair are functioning properly, suddenly everything for a whole quarter is at my fingertips. What does all of this efficiency have to do with procrastination? Simple. Although my office organization technique makes me highly efficient, most people wonder how I can accomplish anything at all. Therefore, if I want to put something off until a later time or date (which I usually do) I simply spend three to four days cleaning my office. Disorganizing it, if you will, all under the guise of efficiency.

Today, I didn't have that luxury. I have a mapping assignment that's been on my plate for awhile now that was unofficially due on Wednesday. Last Wednesday. So, I decided to start on it today. I've been working on a GIS project that basically divides Kokopelli Wildlife Area into several (140, to be exact) different areas and stores a set of attributes for each parcel all in one spot. Things like acreage, current habitat type, infrastructure, soil type, and photos. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems--it is basically a system that allows you to store all kinds of data and have it referenced to a place on a map. After you get all the information you need into a program such as ArcGIS, you can spit out a map that looks something like this:

The different labels and lines and colors all mean different things. In this example, the large yellow numbers correspond to soil types and the small, green numbers are the numbers of the parcels that I carved out of Kokopelli WA. When a parcel is clicked, a magical spreadsheet opens up that tells you everything you need to know about that specific piece of ground. I know this all sounds really cool, but just imagine how much more fun it is to actually do it. But before you get to do all this fun stuff, some poor stooge has to actually enter in the data and draw the boundaries, and all that other exciting stuff. Enter Pikeminnow, the wildlife biologist.

Basically my day was spent typing in attribute information for all 140 of the parcels of Kokopelli WA, so that people can play around with it later and create pretty maps. And steal all the glory.

I know, I know, now all of you are probably jealous and wondering how you, too, can live the glamorous life of a wildlife biologist. Oh, well, at least it was raining out today...

Christmas Bird Count 2008- 3 January 2009

I don't know if this photo captures how my eyeball feels right now, but if it looks raw, fiery, and a little bit tired, then it almost captures the moment. Today was the 2008 installment of the annual Christmas Bird Count at Kokopelli Wildlife Area. No, that's not a typo. This year the 2008 count actually took place in 2009. Don't ask.

Today, a team of biologists and volunteers scoured the several thousand acres of Kokopelli Wildlife Area trying to count and identify every single bird on or above the property. The tradition of the Christmas Bird Count began in 1900 as a sort of protest to annual Christmas "side hunts" when North Americans everywhere celebrated the birth of the baby Jesus by killing as many birds as they could in one day. From its modest beginnings of about 27 individuals in 25 locations, the bird count now draws more than 50,000 participants in more than 1500 locations.

I realize that the knowledge of this type of volunteer event probably really freaks out around 85% of the population, but it's actually a lot of fun. And, to be perfectly honest, no one invited me on a Christmas side hunt this year. So I left my shotgun at home and, armed with only binoculars and a camera, made the drive in to Kokopelli to do some birdwatching.

We met at the headquarters at 0600 and split into teams to more efficiently cover the farthest reaches of KWA. Ten hours and several liters of Mountain Dew later, we all converged once again on the headquarters to tally up the numbers. For the day, we notched just shy of 120 species and somewhere around 200,000 individuals.

I took a few photos.

Here's one of a relatively common bird at KWA in an uncommon pose. Makes my neck sore.

killdeer

This little one has a feather out of place.

yellow-rumped warbler

Good birders usually hear and identify a bird before they ever see it. Once a bird is identified by it's call, a little bit of patience is often rewarded with an actual sighting. It takes a lot of practice to become really good at this, but after you learn even a few calls, a whole new world opens up around you. To me, the eyes on these birds look fake.

spotted towhee

Sometimes the smallest birds seem to be trying to compensate by wearing something shiny. My daughter would love this outfit.

Anna's hummingbird

And this last bird is my wife's favorite. A tiny falcon that often hovers in mid-air while looking for a meal.

American kestrel

I have one more photo to share, but it's not a bird. This is just a lowly fungus, but it reminds me of a whale.

magic???

See, even lazy government biologists even have to work on weekends sometimes. And sometimes they don't even get paid for it. I hope this inspires some of you to go find your own Christmas Bird Count to participate in next year. For the rest of you, you can wake up now.

Where I'm From- 1 Jaunary 2009

My wife rolls her eyes way up into the back of her head every time I start talking about where I spent my formative years. After 13.5 years of marriage, she doesn't even try to hide this anymore. You can imagine my pain.

Undoubtedly one of the best things that ever happened to me as a kid was when my parents relocated to a small community tucked between the morning shadows of this giant:



And the evening shadows of this pile of rocks:



Bisecting the middle of the valley between these mountain ranges is what I think is the most scenic highway in California.

As a kid, I pretty much had free roam over these hills--hunting snakes and lizards, fishing and climbing huge piles of rocks for no discernible reason. As long as I was back before it got dark and I accomplished (this term was often applied loosely) a minimal amount of work around the yard for my parents, I would be turned loose again the next day.

Growing up under these circumstances, it was hard for me to imagine becoming anything other than a wildlife biologist. Except for maybe a professional baseball player.

Happy New Year to my loyal reader. Hopefully the next post will actually be about Kokopelli Wildlife Area.