Bird vs. Fish

Vinegar Ridge

Today, we visited a recreation area and tackled a number of sites!

I started on the next locale today, in this lovely scientific & natural area! I think the KT tape helped, but my waterlogged feet meant that it peeled right off with my socks at the end of the morning. I’ll have to up my game by investing in the “extreme” kind with the swimmer on […]

Day Off

I didn’t survey this morning, but sadly awoke to deer tick bite #3! This one I’m the most worried about: did I track it in? I’m especially paranoid about it because I remember having a scab there; was it a deer tick I overlooked? I have the least certainty about how long this one was […]

Avian Point Counts on Bluffs

I finished all of the points in Whitewater Wildlife Management Area (WMA) today! I wore my compression socks, but maybe I should have paid more attention to my feet yesterday: by the end of the day, I couldn’t stand on them. I had “pins and needles” in the bottom of my feet, which were especially […]

Point Counts on Bluffs

Today was a unique challenge to get to a number of points: I had to find my way down a ravine, pick my way down a dry stream bed, and climb up a bluff to get to the last points in the series. I should have been wearing my compression socks, because it did my […]

Point Counts on Bluff Prairies

Today definitely had the most raspberry patches of any of the counts. I got scratched a number of times, even through my classic Carhartt original fit pants. Also, my waterproof hiking shoes are anything but; I ended up with water pooled around my feet just from the dew! A reward of bushwhacking, though, was finding […]

Point Counts

Today’s point counts were good, especially because I had some help! I did get a deer tick bite, though. I think I caught it as the tick bit me (found it by feeling a bite/itch).

Super-computing?

Here’s an interesting note: just to try a parallel run with multiple nodes, I requested 9 nodes x 24 cores for 48 hours and got it (maybe because everyone is clearing out their jobs before the shutdown). However, I am just running with a small subset; it scheduled last night and is still running! It […]

Whitewater WMA

This morning’s survey was less than a fairytale. The gnats didn’t respond at all to DEET so it was the 1st survey where I had to break out my head net. Also, I abandoned my trucker hat in favor of the brimmed field hat I bought before I left. My first test of my Carhartt […]

Bluff Prairie Surveys

I’ve arrived in Winona, MN to do the “eastern part” of the bird survey work. I’ll be based here for at least the northern surveys. The bluff country is so beautiful!