I'm going to be leaving on early Sunday morning for a summer practicum (field camp) for my major, as some of you already know. I will be up there for five weeks without an internet connection. So I won't see any of you for that entire time. Hope you'll be here when I get back, have a great summer, and never mind that I am out catching squirrels and dart gunning fake deer and fun stuff like that. I'm sure I'll have lots of factoids and stories when I get back!
-SL
Leaving
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Capt.Rutlinger
- dromedary keeper
- Posts: 1241
- Joined: Fri Jan 30, 2004 1:48 pm
- Location: Bruges, Belgium
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yellowrose
- zoo tour guide
- Posts: 118
- Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2004 2:32 pm
Thanks. I think I will enjoy it. I am a little stressed out about some things (having too much stuff right now to take on the plane, and not having a copy of Sand Hill Almanac to read and write a 5-page paper on by June 6th. And I am really sad to be leaving all my friends, some of whom I may never see again. So I will hopefully see you all in about 5 weeks!
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Quicksilver
- ostrich keeper
- Posts: 614
- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 4:58 pm
- Location: Omaha, NE
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jwa1107
- african elephant keeper
- Posts: 9275
- Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:49 pm
- Location: Dallas, Texas
good luck!
don't dart a friend my 'mistake'!
don't dart a friend my 'mistake'!
[img]http://sanctuary.damnserver.com/~prince ... newsig.jpg[/img]
All your base are belong to us.
All your base are belong to us.
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jwa1107
- african elephant keeper
- Posts: 9275
- Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:49 pm
- Location: Dallas, Texas
greetz upon your return!
[img]http://sanctuary.damnserver.com/~prince ... newsig.jpg[/img]
All your base are belong to us.
All your base are belong to us.
So I’ve been back almost a week and I still hadn’t written anything much about summer practicum/field camp. Well, now that I’m sick and more or less incapacitated (stomach bugs aren’t fun) I think I have the time (want to or not).
Summer practicum was a lot of fun. If I were to write everything that I did there, it’d be about book length, and I just don’t have the time to do that and I doubt you all would want to read that much. So I will just give you an outline of the weeks (assuming now that I will be able to remember it all) and tell you some stories of what happened.
The first week we did compass work, aerial photo interpretation, and that general sort of thing. That Friday we had “Find the Flag” the infamous exercise for the field camp. More on that one later.
The second week we did habitat types and site indices. We learned a whole bunch of new plants too. It’s amazing how you can key out a habitat type just looking at a few indicator plant species.
The third week was the first week wildlife, fisheries, and forestry split apart. I only know what we did with wildlife. We had a couple of field trips. One to the Nicolet Forest and one to Wildlife Services in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. In Rhinelander we learned a lot about how to set traps for various animals, observed a beaver necropsy, saw a black bear being processed (ear tags being put in, etc. so they could release it in another area), and had some talks about how and why humans and animals have conflicts. During that week we also studied ways to measure animal densities.
The fourth week we didn’t really have as much as most years because one professor is now head of the department and another’s wife got sick on the way up so they had to stay back. But one made it at least, and our TAs were able to cover a lot of the herp stuff because they were really interested in it personally. On the Tuesday (I think it was), we had our “triathlon” day, where we split into three rotating groups. In the first time we went to, we had a lecture about drugs used to put animals under in the field (mainly with dart guns), then went out and learned how to set a coyote leg-hold trap and set our own and were critiqued on our sets. The second thing we did was radiotelemetry. And then we did a lecture on darting and then we got to dart targets with the dart guns – three darts sitting with the gun propped on sandbags (for which we were ranked for precision), and one from standing to see what it was like to shoot from a standing position. Also that week we did live trapped small mammals (voles, mice, squirrels, etc), ear-tagged them, and released them. Sadly, I didn’t get to handle any because my group only caught one animal and our teachers used it to demonstrate because it was the first time we checked the traps.
The fifth week was bird week. We had to get up really early for that, but I guess it was worth it. We learned a lot of bird songs (which we were tested on that Friday) and got to mist net birds and leg band them. That was a lot of fun, despite having a week of before-breakfast (which was at 7:00) classes (Tues and Wed. 5:00, Thurs. 6:00, Fri. 5:30!). I’m not a morning person. Getting birds out of mist nets isn’t very easy. But I can now say that I managed to get a Least Flycatcher out of one of our nets. We saw some pretty cool birds when we went out birding too, like the Indigo Bunting and Evening Grosbeak. I think the coolest bird I saw though was the Piliated Woodpecker.
During the whole time I had a job driving the Purdue vans, which didn’t pay nearly enough ($5.50/hour with very few hours in a week). On the way up it wasn’t too bad, but the vans were a lot wider than anything I was used to driving and one of my passengers thought she was going to die every time we crossed the white line (huge contrast with when I come home and my brother complains that I drive too conservatively). For the first couple weeks, nobody seemed to want to ride in my van, so passengers would change a lot. Then I had a fairly steady set of passengers who seemed to like riding in my van. On the way down, there weren’t many people who wanted to ride in the vans (a lot of people had their own vehicles at camp), so I had no passengers. I didn’t have maps for most of the way either, so I followed another van. They didn’t get us lost, and I managed to stay fairly close, even in Chicago (which was quite a challenge! Though it was clear on the way up, going back to Indiana it was pretty bad. Kind of like California traffic, only gridlock. A whole bunch of people passed me on the right, and considering I was in the farthest right lane and they were in the shoulder, that’s pretty bad). We made it back and fortunately I had a place to stay in Lafayette with Lauren and her mom and sister (it was pretty close, but they were awesome hostesses).
I said I would write about the find-the-flag later, so I’ll do that now (Ruffed Grouse survey next). For the exercise, we were paired up into twos (I didn’t really know my partner beforehand, and I think the TAs planned the teams that way) and given an aerial photograph with pinholes where the trees would be. We had a topo map before we left to get a scale and north arrow from, but we didn’t get to take that into the field. They dropped each team off at different spots on both the north and south ends of the area. There were TAs at some of the trees and in between (in camouflage, and very difficult to see), so they would know if you cheated (split up to look for different trees or gave answers to other teams). It was rainy out that day, and rather cold as well. The first tree we had to find was amid a dense conifer stand. I was soaked rather quickly from that. Throughout the day, we had to walk through marshes, swamps, and forests. Around the time we paused for lunch, I was so cold I could hardly bend my fingers. But we kept going. We had a difficult time finding the last tree, so when he was going one way to find it, I went the other way to the end of a ridge (where I thought it was). The ridge wasn’t as narrow as I thought, so I was on the other side of it for a while. I figured out where I was, then I found my way back to where they were. Apparently he had tried yelling my name a few times, but I was out of earshot at the time. I was gone for at least 20 minutes, so hopefully they weren’t too worried. One of the TAs was there with my partner and when I showed up up the hill, he asked my partner “was she wearing a yellow hard hat?”
The Ruffed Grouse survey was a “King Strip Census”. For that survey we had to walk in a straight line across the landscape and count any grouse we saw or flushed. Fortunately I didn’t see any grouse (if we did we also would have to measure all the trees around it and the distance they were from the line). The line I had to walk was over two miles. Along the way, I saw a fisher (which disappeared up a tree before I could get my camera out), found some morel mushrooms and wild onions (which I cooked that night – they were really tasty!), and saw a smooth green snake. The smooth green snake is a non-venomous, placid snake, and I believe it is endangered, at least in Michigan. Our TAs hadn’t been able to find one, so they had offered a reward (which I later found out was a trip to the bar, which I might have bargained for something I could use at the time, like a book of stamps) for anyone who brought one back. So I tried to catch it. I had a grip on it around the middle, but it was whipping around to bite me. So I grabbed at it again and got it somewhere closer to the tail. I ended up dropping it and it was gone in a flash. That was my “one that got away”.
I guess that pretty much covers my five weeks. Anything else you want to hear about?
Summer practicum was a lot of fun. If I were to write everything that I did there, it’d be about book length, and I just don’t have the time to do that and I doubt you all would want to read that much. So I will just give you an outline of the weeks (assuming now that I will be able to remember it all) and tell you some stories of what happened.
The first week we did compass work, aerial photo interpretation, and that general sort of thing. That Friday we had “Find the Flag” the infamous exercise for the field camp. More on that one later.
The second week we did habitat types and site indices. We learned a whole bunch of new plants too. It’s amazing how you can key out a habitat type just looking at a few indicator plant species.
The third week was the first week wildlife, fisheries, and forestry split apart. I only know what we did with wildlife. We had a couple of field trips. One to the Nicolet Forest and one to Wildlife Services in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. In Rhinelander we learned a lot about how to set traps for various animals, observed a beaver necropsy, saw a black bear being processed (ear tags being put in, etc. so they could release it in another area), and had some talks about how and why humans and animals have conflicts. During that week we also studied ways to measure animal densities.
The fourth week we didn’t really have as much as most years because one professor is now head of the department and another’s wife got sick on the way up so they had to stay back. But one made it at least, and our TAs were able to cover a lot of the herp stuff because they were really interested in it personally. On the Tuesday (I think it was), we had our “triathlon” day, where we split into three rotating groups. In the first time we went to, we had a lecture about drugs used to put animals under in the field (mainly with dart guns), then went out and learned how to set a coyote leg-hold trap and set our own and were critiqued on our sets. The second thing we did was radiotelemetry. And then we did a lecture on darting and then we got to dart targets with the dart guns – three darts sitting with the gun propped on sandbags (for which we were ranked for precision), and one from standing to see what it was like to shoot from a standing position. Also that week we did live trapped small mammals (voles, mice, squirrels, etc), ear-tagged them, and released them. Sadly, I didn’t get to handle any because my group only caught one animal and our teachers used it to demonstrate because it was the first time we checked the traps.
The fifth week was bird week. We had to get up really early for that, but I guess it was worth it. We learned a lot of bird songs (which we were tested on that Friday) and got to mist net birds and leg band them. That was a lot of fun, despite having a week of before-breakfast (which was at 7:00) classes (Tues and Wed. 5:00, Thurs. 6:00, Fri. 5:30!). I’m not a morning person. Getting birds out of mist nets isn’t very easy. But I can now say that I managed to get a Least Flycatcher out of one of our nets. We saw some pretty cool birds when we went out birding too, like the Indigo Bunting and Evening Grosbeak. I think the coolest bird I saw though was the Piliated Woodpecker.
During the whole time I had a job driving the Purdue vans, which didn’t pay nearly enough ($5.50/hour with very few hours in a week). On the way up it wasn’t too bad, but the vans were a lot wider than anything I was used to driving and one of my passengers thought she was going to die every time we crossed the white line (huge contrast with when I come home and my brother complains that I drive too conservatively). For the first couple weeks, nobody seemed to want to ride in my van, so passengers would change a lot. Then I had a fairly steady set of passengers who seemed to like riding in my van. On the way down, there weren’t many people who wanted to ride in the vans (a lot of people had their own vehicles at camp), so I had no passengers. I didn’t have maps for most of the way either, so I followed another van. They didn’t get us lost, and I managed to stay fairly close, even in Chicago (which was quite a challenge! Though it was clear on the way up, going back to Indiana it was pretty bad. Kind of like California traffic, only gridlock. A whole bunch of people passed me on the right, and considering I was in the farthest right lane and they were in the shoulder, that’s pretty bad). We made it back and fortunately I had a place to stay in Lafayette with Lauren and her mom and sister (it was pretty close, but they were awesome hostesses).
I said I would write about the find-the-flag later, so I’ll do that now (Ruffed Grouse survey next). For the exercise, we were paired up into twos (I didn’t really know my partner beforehand, and I think the TAs planned the teams that way) and given an aerial photograph with pinholes where the trees would be. We had a topo map before we left to get a scale and north arrow from, but we didn’t get to take that into the field. They dropped each team off at different spots on both the north and south ends of the area. There were TAs at some of the trees and in between (in camouflage, and very difficult to see), so they would know if you cheated (split up to look for different trees or gave answers to other teams). It was rainy out that day, and rather cold as well. The first tree we had to find was amid a dense conifer stand. I was soaked rather quickly from that. Throughout the day, we had to walk through marshes, swamps, and forests. Around the time we paused for lunch, I was so cold I could hardly bend my fingers. But we kept going. We had a difficult time finding the last tree, so when he was going one way to find it, I went the other way to the end of a ridge (where I thought it was). The ridge wasn’t as narrow as I thought, so I was on the other side of it for a while. I figured out where I was, then I found my way back to where they were. Apparently he had tried yelling my name a few times, but I was out of earshot at the time. I was gone for at least 20 minutes, so hopefully they weren’t too worried. One of the TAs was there with my partner and when I showed up up the hill, he asked my partner “was she wearing a yellow hard hat?”
The Ruffed Grouse survey was a “King Strip Census”. For that survey we had to walk in a straight line across the landscape and count any grouse we saw or flushed. Fortunately I didn’t see any grouse (if we did we also would have to measure all the trees around it and the distance they were from the line). The line I had to walk was over two miles. Along the way, I saw a fisher (which disappeared up a tree before I could get my camera out), found some morel mushrooms and wild onions (which I cooked that night – they were really tasty!), and saw a smooth green snake. The smooth green snake is a non-venomous, placid snake, and I believe it is endangered, at least in Michigan. Our TAs hadn’t been able to find one, so they had offered a reward (which I later found out was a trip to the bar, which I might have bargained for something I could use at the time, like a book of stamps) for anyone who brought one back. So I tried to catch it. I had a grip on it around the middle, but it was whipping around to bite me. So I grabbed at it again and got it somewhere closer to the tail. I ended up dropping it and it was gone in a flash. That was my “one that got away”.
I guess that pretty much covers my five weeks. Anything else you want to hear about?