I am officially here! And I've got at least a few days under my belt to have a sense of what's going on. Well, some sort of sense. Theoretically.
I got in on the 14th, had a brief evening to get unpacked, and then started work on on the 15th. Well, "start" is overstating things a bit--the first day mostly consisted of hiking around the reserve being introduced to the layout, doing a practice run of birdwatching, and then getting lessons in driving the "mules" (UTVs that you have to use to get to the more isolated areas). The rest of this week-and-a-half has been similar, with a combination of "doing actual work" and more tours and lessons. The other new tech (Russel) and I are still a little shaky on the names and locations of the several dozen woodpecker groups, but we've gotten to the point where our data is considered reliable enough to record, so that's progress.
 |
| This is about 60% of my job. I stare through the scope and try to make out what color leg bands each ACWO (acorn woodpecker) is wearing. |
Those several dozen woodpecker groups are scattered throughout this park, mostly on four hills. I greatly enjoy their names, and the names of the hills, and the names of most things around the park--they remind me of living on the farm, because everything clearly has a personal history for somebody, and possibly a history spanning more than forty years. One hill is called "Haystack" (clearly for it's shape), and another is called "Poison Oak" (clearly for...other reasons); a woodpecker group near the office is named "Jaime" after the steward, and another is named "Aardvark" after a deliberate mispronunciation of a previous student's name; and one of the residences is called "Schoolhouse" because it is literally a refurbished one-room schoolhouse. No one locks anything. There are ancient Star Trek posters in the equipment shed and drawings from someone's eight-year-old stuck on the office fridge. In my house's random drawers, I have found items including 1) a single bent knitting needle, 2) an extensive collection of cassette tapes, 3) a peg solitaire board that miraculously still has all the pegs, and 4) a seal nose in a jar. I really don't know what the story is with that last one.
So, speaking of, I am staying in Rob House! Technically Robinson House, but nobody calls it that. It's an old farmhouse that's been reworked into research housing, with five bedrooms scattered across 2.5 floors. I'm currently in a very goofy little room right up top: it is really a repurposed attic, and it has two blankets in lieu of a door. Rob House isn't usually full enough for people to need this room, and I'm just in it until one of the other techs moves out in a couple weeks. I kind of like it--though I'll certainly be glad for more space once it's available! I'm currently here with Zoe, Sarah, and Russel. Zoe and Sarah have been the woodpecker techs here for the last six months, so they're introducing me and Russel to the job and the place.
 |
| I don't have a photo of Rob House right now, so instead you get a picture of Sarah and Sahas looking pensively into the distance over Poison Oak. |
The rest of the park's researchers live in various other, similarly-eclectic dwellings. These include Sahas, the postdoc who's currently running the woodpecker project here (my boss); the researcher who is actually running the whole woodpecker project (Sahas's boss); a mouse researcher and her two techs (the "mousers"); a scrub-jay researcher and his wife; and some other folks who keep this place afloat. We had a potluck last week, so I finally got to put names to faces for the whole bunch--they're a good group.
Going forward here, Russel and I will be finishing our attempts to memorize the park layout and learning the rest of our field techniques (such as catching and banding woodpeckers, watching their nests, and doing "tick dragging", which is exactly as charming as it sounds). It really is a lovely place; I'm still adapting to the amount of straight-up-and-down-the-hills hiking that's involved, but those hills do make for spectacular scenery.
 |
| The hills are aliiiiiiiive with the sound of ACWOs... |
There are a bunch of random animals wandering through the area at any given time, ranging from deer and turkeys to some more Western species like California quail and a special endangered newt, as well as the more occasional bobcat or fox. There are flocks of bluebirds around, which often get quite close when you're sitting still long enough woodpecker-watching--on one of my watches, one bluebird decided to perch on my blind for a bit! The frogs here have a very traditional "ribbit".
 |
| One of my tasks is to hang out at dusk watching for roosting birds, but birds don't show up very often--so that mostly translates into "meditating and listening to frogs". |
This is far from everything, but I think it's enough for now. I'll put together some more specific descriptions of what I'm doing for the next time, and keep you posted with any further developments!
