More adventures

21 i 2012
0621- sleeping
1035- working up the motivation to go get my battery checked
1731- at the lab
2125- eating dinner with Massimo, Mikey, Brendan, and Tom

Random fact- in winter weather the transmitted frequency of a crystalline transmitter can be up to 1khz lower than at normal air temperatures

Lunch- subway steak sandwich with tomatoes and pickles 
Dinner- sweet and sour shrimp  

Most of the day was spent chasing around a red tail hawk who while not wanting to be caught also wasn't too upset with our presence.  We even tried getting her in the dark, which only resulted in us getting very, very cold, and questioned by the cops.  Luckily I was with a cop and the fact we were using night vision while wandering around on the side of an interstate was not an issue.  Mikey came down for the weekend also, in hopes we can go to the farm tomorrow and shoot, but from the looks of the weather this isn't going to work out.  At least one lucky thing happened- my truck started this morning, and according to the mostly clueless guy at Auto zone the battery itself was dead but didn't need to be replaced.

22 i 2012
0900- sleeping
1702- on my way home from Mass
2045- leaving Massimo's after dinner
2250- working on my Calculus

Random fact- T-mobile had copyrighted the magenta color it uses in its logo, so no other telecom or related company can use it.  However, blue (my favorite color) is the the most popular part of the spectrum for logos. 

Lunch- burger at the cafe
Dinner- chili

My accomplishment today was making a pot of chili (although as my mom likes to point out, my chili doesn't include any chile, and hardly any vegetables).  It turned out pretty good and hit the spot on this cold, wet, and dreary day.  I also started working on my calculus assignment, and have been highly amused by the text, which includes statements about how Mathematica is not like a drug (so always say yes) and calling problems math kittys.  Eddie and I decided as long as the math kitties aren't evil like GGK it'll be fine.  We also had a really nice thunderstorm tonight, and from the weather map it looks like the parentals, Maria, and Eddie are also being hit by the same band of storms...

uncooperative hawk, luckily she isn't mine...

0237- sleeping
0734- still sleeping
1825- helping John figure out how to get his RT back
2248- eating dinner

Random fact- CERT is a civilian program where members are trained in disaster response targeting their local areas.  The one in Brazos county has responded to 6 actual events including fires, search and rescue, and floods.

Lunch- tacos from Chipolte 
Dinner- fish sticks 

We had our planning meeting for discussion group today, looks like we'll cover 3 different topics with some programs thrown in.  It was snowing when it we were finished, and KJ and I got hot chocolate and talked about lice (and birds).  Speaking of birds I spent the afternoon/evening first trying to help John get his bird back, and then when that was unsuccessful making him a quail harness.  Hopefully he can get her back tomorrow, she's been out since yesterday and shows no interest so far in coming back, although she's also not leaving the area.  I tried a different style of noose (double nooses), they seemed more efficient for the limited space on the harness, we'll see what happens. 

Lazy day

0250- getitng files ready for BEAST
0944- sleep
1759- running errands in Decatur
2016- playing with the dogs

Random fact- The tanker heading to Nome to deliver fuel (the first winter fuel deliver to western Alaska) is loaded with 1 million gallons of diesel and 300,000 gallons of unleaded gas.

Dinner- friend catfish, potato salad, pickles, tomato, and sweet tea 

Hung around the house most of the day working on my Bayes and BEAST analyses.  We went into town for a little bit to check out the National Championship tshirts (still not many options in medium) and get groceries.  It rained all day so the dogs spent the day inside rotating 2 dogs in the house one dog in the sunroom/bed room.  It was also too wet to do anything outside with the falcons so I just called them to the lure in the garage.  Both had instant responses with easy trade offs, not bad for being on the block for a month...

The falcons return

0300- sleeping
0647- sleeping
1447- at Bobs picking up the falcons
1852- driving back from getting the falcons

Random Fact- Today in 1901 the first Spindletop (the first big gusher in Texas) was discovered near Beaumont.

Lunch- McDonald's 10 piece chicken nugget
Dinner- grilled cheese sandwich, potato salad, and grapefruit

Today I finally got my falcons back [HRE].  What was suppose to be a quick two week separation while I was in New Zealand became a month long due to my truck issues.  Luckily Bob brought them down to weight for me over the last few days so I'm pretty much ready to get going again.  Since my mom came with me and drove there and back I was able to work for most of the way on my analyses.  I tried all kinds of variations in gene combinations and taxon sampling, but I'm still coming up with 4 clades (PARA, DELT, HEC, and  small clade including 2 each of PARA and DELT), need to look at the raw sequence data again...

Tire changing (tines two)

0725- sleeping
1551- loading up the horses
1821- on our way home from the field
2201- talking to Harry

Lunch- beef enchilada at a taco place in town
Dinner- spaghetti

Random fact- The collared forest falcon (Micrastur semitorquatus) is a rare vagrant to the lower Rio Grande Valley. Only one record has been accepted by the Texas Rare Birds Committee, in 1994, although others have been reported and not accepted.

Nothing brings in the New Year quite like a flat tire, especially when that flat tire is on a trailer and the spare rubs so it has to be replaced (and the tire re changed).  Luckily the weather was pleasant and we got it done just in time to load the birds up.  No Jamaica today, so we just had Harry's gos and HH, both of which took quail in nice flights.  We had a close call with a RT that came in on the gos while we were trying to locate him on a kill, but between the dogs and my more or less failed attempts to make Dancer run the RT decided not to mess with the gos.  It was a bit cooler today and you could really see a difference in the gos's flight style, he was really turning on the heat and chased the quail with gusto before nailing it.

Happy New Year [HRE]

0855- eating breakfast- bacon and hard boiled eggs
1342- watching the A&M game
1448- loading up the horses
2041- Talking falconry with Harry

Lunch- turkey pot pie
Dinner- casserole, tamales, single malt, and wine

Random fact-Avian Vacuolar Myelinopathy, first detected in 1994 (in bald eagles), is diagnosed by microscopic examination of very fresh brain  tissue and is caused by exotic hydrilla and associated epiphytic cyanobacteria.

My rifle is now sighted in, almost by accident.  I thought I was adjusting the elevation when I was actually adjusting the left/right- figured it out when the left/right went from dead on to off target without any move in elevation.  Had another successful hawking trip- both the aplo and the gos caught quail, but due to some telemetry fun the Harris Hawks didn't get flown.  The other exciting news for the day was A&M's victory over Northwestern- no matter how hard A&M tried to loose it Northwestern tried harder.  Brought in the New Year with some single malt scotch and a bowl of ice cream, this past year was amazing, here's to hoping 2012 is just as great.

Desert Hawking

0247- sleeping
0753- still sleeping
1048- test firing my new rifle, but it's too windy to really sight it in
2230- watching a show about anacondas
 
Lunch- turkey sandwich and sourdough
Dinner- casserole, beans, and single malt

Random fact- King cobra's main food source is other snakes, in particular rat snakes.  This makes them likely to occur in human areas as rat snakes are attracted to rats and mice which are often in high densities in human dominated landscapes.

After a quick breakfast and a few false starts involved Beth being locked out of the house Harry and I took my rifle out to the desert and shot a few rounds.  The wind was too high to sight it in so that will have to wait until tomorrow, but luckily they were low enough not to impact the hawking.  We loaded up the hawks and horses about 1500 and headed to the field with Jamaica, her daughter, 2 hawks, and dog.  We took turns riding the horses (including Debora and I oozing off Dancer when the saddle slipped, luckily it happened slowly enough I was able to mostly avoid landing on Debora when we hit the ground) and got all the birds flown.  The gos (ok flight, but a bit heavy so not amazing) and aplo (good flight, caught on the reflush) both caught quail while the Harris Hawks struck out.

Heading west

0725- sleeping
0813- starting to get things organized so we can scatter to the winds
1212- sleeping as my sister, brother, and I head west
1925- transferring my stuff from Maria's car into Harry and Beth's

Lunch- 10 piece chicken nugget, fries, and a sweet tea at McDonald's (the KFC was shut down)
Dinner- beef and pork pieces, rice, and bread with some single malt

Random fact-  Samoa and Tokelau are moving back across the international date line, so now they are aligned with various Asian countries that are their current trading partners.  They moved to the US side of the dateline in 1892 to facilitate trade with the US.  This switch means there will be no 30 December 2011, although people scheduled to work that day will be paid as if they did.

One of my favorite things about falconry is the fact that there are few enough falconers there are just one or two degrees of separation between each of us no matter where in the world we are.  Back when I was a first year apprentice I used this to get in touch with Harry McElroy, a falconer in Arizona who has written a number of books on falconry, and managed to talk him into letting myself and 4 other college kids into staying at his house one night on our way to a conference.  Since then we've kept in touch and I usually come visit he and Beth for a week or so each season.  My brother, sister and I headed west this morning about 930, stopped for bagels in Albuquerque with the kitten to keep us amused (seriously, how can she possibly think sleeping wedged between the door and the front seat, with her head behind the seat and her feet on the arm rest is comfortable?).  This year I had to leave the birds home due to the truck drama, but between Harry and Jamaica's there will be enough falconry to keep me out of trouble. 

Trapping

0517  sleeping
0630  sleeping
1121  Eating at Jason's Deli with Maria
1350  getting ready to go do some trapping
  
Lunch- Roast Beef sandwich with cheese, tomatoes, and pickles  
Dinner- Haiku with Eric, I had a Bento Box (beef) and 16 California Rolls (no avocado)

Random Fact- 131 of 254 counties in Texas are currently under a burn ban.  This is down from all but 4 towards the end of the summer.  Here in College Station we're 20inches below normal still.

Woke up, went to Church (St. Anthony's cheats on the new translation) then got lunch with Maria (we grabbed some plastic spoons so now we have utensils).  Drove around Brazos Co. for about 3 hrs and got a bunch of sets.  Only problem was there were too many birds- on almost every set I would end up with 2 birds crabbing over the trap almost instantly and not being able to get either (at one set 2 birds flipped the trap over then sat on neighboring fence posts watching the mouse until I realized what happened and picked up my trap). I think the drought has everything pretty desperate for food, although I saw a ton of doves, dickey birds, and ducks (the recent rain is starting to put water in the ponds) while I was out driving.  Talked trailers, tools, and food allergies (another person with my allergies, no wonder we're friends) at dinner, cats with Alice, and then watched some gangland before bed. 

Why my parents should have name me Peregrinus

When I got my passport back in 2005 I had no idea how I would come to rely on that little blue book.  I had decided to go on a study abroad trip to the island of Dominica in the summer of  2006 (check the archives if you're interested).  Before that trip I had figured the tallgrass prairies of the central US was what held my research interests and other than this one trip (which I was going on since a number of my friends were also going on) I had though I'd be spending my field work running around the southcentral US.  Boy was I wrong.  It quicky became apparent I inherited the Tokar traveling gene.  Many of my aunts and uncles on my mom's side have spent large protions of their lives wandering the globe for work and play.  As many of them are into developing agriculture in underdeveloped nations these locations were usually less resort style vacation and more wild adventure.  I grew up listening to stories of finding cobras in trucks, getting diseases most US doctors have at most read a paragraph about, and landing on dirt runways where a mistake sends one into the canyon walls or ocean.  When I told my parents I was going to Dominica the first responce was talk to Matt, he's been there a few times.  In the process of that trip I found a calling.  Even though that trip was overseen by a couple professors who had been working on the island for over a decade, field work in a developing nation is never predictable.  This unpredictablity, presence of situations that require quick thinking, and need for ingenious solutions made for an incredibly exciting time, and something I found I was pretty good at.  International field work has become my addiction. 
Falconry, being the rather rare and idiosyncratic passion that it is, has given me a way to interact with locals in a way most field biologists don't get to.  Often, before I head off someplace I get in contact with the local falconers and when it works out we meet up and go hawking or at least talk birds.  If I've learned one thing it's that falconrys the same the  world over.  As soon as company shows up the birds fly off, the dogs run amuck, and the quarry fails to fly fair.  But when it all comes together the joy is the same be it sage grouse in Idaho or frankolin in South Africa.  Even more amazing is the ability to cross the language barrier.  I don't understand a word of Arabic, but walking into the falconry store in Abu Daubi was walking into the merchants room at a NAFA meet.  Once I pulled out my phone and showed the shop keeper a picture of my peregrine I was instantly "in the club".


So now that passport I wasn't planning on using more than a time or two is literally full.  I already don't have enough blank pages to enter many countries, and once I get back from my December trip to New Zealand (and Australia) I think it will officially be full.  It's more cost effective to get a new passport instead of adding pages to my existing one it'll soon be replaced.  Since it has been my trust companion for the last 6 years the prosepect of getting a new one is a bit sad.  As Peregrinus means wandering (and is the name of a bunch of early Saints, my parents major critera for names) it would have fit quite nicely.

Lets try this again

So I've toyed with the idea of starting this thing again for a while now. The timing seemed right (and I really didn't want to work any more tonight) so here it goes. In the last 2 years I've almost filled my passport up wandering the world (including a revolution for spring break), defended my first masters (Entomology), passed my prelims for my Ph.D, bought an old ford f-250, trapped a beach bird, and navigated a boat through the Inside Passage from Seattle to Wrangell, AK just to hit a few of the high points. With the highs come some lows too. I've lost a few birds, gotten malaria, wrecked a truck in Africa (but was lucky my tech and I walked away without injury) running into a cow, and learned snow and I are not friends. I'm a little bit older, hopefully a little bit wiser, but definitely not any saner than I was when I wrote that last post back in 2009. I'll try and fill in the blanks as I go as I like to think I've done some pretty cool stuff over the last few years. Here are a few pictures...

Marabou storks (Leptoptilos crumeniferus) at the Simnuye dump (Swaziland). We use to prebait them every morning back in June and July 2009 for a research project.  In the process I learned to call down the storks in siSwati, leading local residents to belives 1) I was crazy and 2) i spoke siSwati.
Picture by Laura Sands (December 2009)

Light collecting at Malolotja, one of the National Parks in Swazliand. This national park is one of the coolest places in Swaziland.  It features high elevation grasslands, with really neat rock formations.  More pictures to come.
Picture by Laura Sands (December 2009)

 Trapping peregrines is one of those things falconers have been dreaming of since they were first listed as endangered species.  Starting in 2009 a few lucky falconers got the chance to trap a bird.  I tried (and failed, more on that later) in Oklahoma duirng the 2009 season.  In 2010 I was drawn for a Texas permit.  Here is my passage tiercel peregrine, Diablo, trapped on South Padre Island. (October 2010)

The outcome of 2 hours of war driving in Muscat, Oman. This was the only place we found wifi, and I really needed to send an e-mail. 
Photo by Thomas Catanach (March 2011).

Well thats a big bigger than a tiercel

So i randomly decided to go to Idaho to meet a falconer I've been corresponding with for a few years. While there I was treated to some awesome merlin flights plus got to hang around at Merlin Systems and see some of the new things they are coming out with. I also went to the Peregrine Fund. Since I worked for them for a few years on Aplomados (and Jim's p-fund connections helped I expect) we went on a behind the scenes tour. The culmination was having a male Harpy on the fist. It was pretty dang heavy, made my tiercel feel like my kestrel. Pictures below


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another month have passed

Well another month has passed and my life can pretty much be summarized with a few brief statements.
1. I defend my first thesis next month, i sank about have the members of the genus, and described a new species. Additionally I'm working on the description of 2 species in a related genus. No names posted so as not to cause confusion.
2. I got a 3 year fellowship to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to get my PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation. Start up there in August doing leafhopper systematics, hopefully some biogeography, and of course still playing in avian ecology
3. My peregrine is molting like its going out of style, if this continues he should be ready to go in September. I flew him in the Texas Sky Trials and learned an important lesson about greedy pitches. My kestrel is still weak from WNV but she is finally flying pretty strongly
4. I go back to africa in May. Will get my plane tickets next week, but it looks like I'll be there for 2.5 months, plenty of time to get the black spar hunting.
5. My pointer is going to be awesome, hes 9 months and already holding point like a pro.

Thats all for now, maybe I'll really start updating this thing now that its spring break and i have time to find cool stories to talk about...

Two months later...

Lets see been to Africa and back yet again, this time South Africa and Swaziland. Was collecting insects in the sugarcane fields among other things as part of some wildlife research projects being done by students at TAMU. My data looked pretty promising so the plan is go to back for a couple months this northern hemisphere summer (southern hemisphere winter). Should be a good time especially since its falconry season- if all goes to plan have a black spar in my future! Plus some hawk trapping for good times.

In other news the peregrine is doing well, hit his first duck a few days ago, been two years in the making. I have to say falcon stoops are always cool, but when its your own bird there is nothing like it in the world. Kes's season starts in 2 weeks starlings beware.

So what has therese been up to in the last 6 months?

Well as you guessed I never did finish putting up the Argentina stuff, maybe I'll add that at some point. To sum it up the collecting was amazing, the food was fantastic (2 steaks and a beer for 3$ US can't be anything but good), and the group of people I was with were great fun.

Since Argentina I've went and played around in South Africa for a few weeks, went to conferences on 3 of the four corners of the US (all in the course of 3 weeks), and now am describing my first 3 species (and maybe my first genus too). The International Congress of Entomology was in Durban, South Africa, and like any good falconer I went a few days early since it was winter and ran around with the falconry crowd. I got lucky enough to pick a falconer who also has cheetahs, so that was doubley cool.

On a different note I got a new Elhew English pointer since my last one died last March. Dumas arrived at the end of August (the weather wrecked havoc on shipping him down at 8 weeks). He is out of good grouse hunting lines ( including Elhew Snakefoot and Hanna's Elhew Lou (for the pointer enthusists out there here is his pedigree: http://www.gundogcentral.com/pedigree.php?dogID=2230)), bred in Montana. I found out from a friend of mine that a statue of my pup's grandfather is in the town square in an Alabama town, hopefully this coming week we'll get to see it and have a family picture. Hes turning into quite the bird dog, beating out some of the much older pups in our bird dog group. Heres a picture from when he was almost 4 months old: