June 28th

Rainy day at the field site. Boring and cold. Had a good conversation with Nicole, but the day was kinda long without spending a chunk of it chasing turtles. We did go out for an afternoon walkthrough, though, and found a couple of awesome king snakes (see below). Hopefully it will clear up – and warm up – by tomorrow. I’m cold, and I don’t really like it. Might even sleep here in the rec room tonight, since it will be warmer. Not sure how comfy it would be on the floor, though, even with my thermarest.

Yesterday was a good day at the field site. Five turtles out of the water, and I think people were having a good time. Had a bit of a hassle with a telemetry turtle who couldn’t be located after nesting, even though we searched for an hour in the dark. Amazingly, we found her late this morning, though. We’ve already had a good season, so if it slows down now because of the rain, that’s okay. I would just like for the weather to get a bit warmer than it is now. It is weird to be getting rain at this time of the year. Then again, weather everywhere is screwy. And people still doubt that climate change is real?

Right now, I’m exhausted and really just biding my time until I can go to bed. Which might actually happen in about half an hour.

June 23

Yesterday was a good day at the field site. I conquered my fear of the tree blind – I sat in it for about an hour and a half, watching turtles. I can now get in and out without any hesitation, and being up in the tree doesn’t make me feel sick to my stomach. I actually really like it now. Working on my fear of heights, one tree at a time. 😀
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June 21st

Still at the field site. Just found out this morning that the Oakland Zoo’s turtle release is happening on Thursday, so we decided to just stay up here a couple of extra days, instead of driving back today and back again on Thursday. Plus, there should be plenty of turtle stuff to do. We found eleven turtles out of the water last night, which I think is the most any team has ever found in a single day. Pretty cool, especially since there were just three of us – me, Kristi, and my son, and he wasn’t working the whole time.

Tonight we have a big team, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we find even more. Yay turtles! Other than that, not much to report. It’s kind of quiet up here, so it’s not like I have a lot of adventures to detail. Well, I guess I could give more details about the turtle research.

Last night, most of the turtles we found were in the small meadow, but my son and I found one really exciting turtle in the far wooded meadow. Earlier in the day, I had removed an exclosure from one of last year’s nests, thinking that it would be good to get it out of the way in case another turtle, or even the same one, wanted to nest there. Guess what? We found a turtle nesting less than one foot away from the old nest. I don’t know yet if it was the same turtle, but if it is that is really exciting.

The other cool thing is that we found the turtle right after she finished nesting, so we didn’t have to wait around for her to finish. I love that turtle. #228. Bless her heart. Turtles are awfully cute.

In other news, my son and I held a king snake today, caught by Erika. Super cute! My son wants to get a snake as a pet, and I’m thinking about agreeing to that one. Oh, and I have lost the cables and charger for the field camera. That does not make me happy. I hope they turn up soon. We’re off to the field site in a few minutes, so I think I’ll call this one a wrap. Is that how they say it in Hollywood?

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Cobb Mountain

Up in Lake County today, drove up with my son this afternoon. The weather is beautiful here, cooler than back at home, I think, which is good. It’s starting to get a bit warm for me. Apparently, there have been turtles galore over the past few days, so we should be busy at the field site this afternoon. Which is good, it will make the time pass quickly. I just hope we don’t end up being out there until some ridiculously late hour tonight. We’ll see.

Watched a pair of orioles chase away a crow. They must have a nest right near our campsite. The orioles are absolutely gorgeous, orange and yellow and black.

Will be off to the field site shortly, so I guess I’ll wrap this up. Feeling a bit out of sorts . . . hopefully being out with the turtles will cheer me up.

Here are a few photos from the first couple of weeks of the field season, including a Banana Slug Club pic. 🙂

Turtle Research

Since I am pursuing a bachelor of science degree, I will be writing a senior thesis. Of course, this means that I first need to do some research, so I have something about which to write. It looks like that something will be turtles, more specifically the nesting preferences and nest site fidelity of western pond turtles. I spent a a good part of last summer doing field research at a site up in Lake County, and this semester I am working in the lab with the data we collected, but for my own project, and also for a continuing project on temperature-dependent sex detemination in turtles.

This all came about last semester when i was speaking with my advisor about possibilities for senior thesis topics. Dr. Derek Girman, my advisor, suggested that i speak with Dr. Nick Geist, as he does the kind of vertebrate stuff that interests me (he is also a paleontologist, which is also stuff that I love). As it happened, while Dr. Girman and i were talking about this, Dr. Geist walked by and saw us talking – he must have had a psychic moment because he veered over to join us, and a couple of minutes later he’d agreed to help me come up with a project in his lab. A couple of weeks later, he invited me to be part of one of his big research projects and join the Turtle Team. Dr. Geist is one of my favorite professors, and I was thrilled to be accepted into his lab as an undergrad!

After some discussion, we decided that I would work on nest site fidelity – whether or not females return to the same location year after year to nest. I’m also interested in whether or not they return to their natal sites – the place where they themselves were born – but that might be outside then scope of what in will be able to research given the time I have to work on this project.

So, over the summer, I spent a lot of time up in Lake County at our research site, helping one of the grad students with her project, and also beginning to collect data of my own. The main project involved tracking females who had come out of the water to nest. Sometimes, we just followed them and monitored them while they were nesting so we could get a count of their eggs afterward. (Later, the eggs were removed to be incubated in our lab to be head-started by one of the local zoos and released about a year from now). Sometimes, we tracked them using radio telemetry equipment – we glued transmitters to their backs, and then tracked them to their nests that way. Mostly, the work involved tromping around a really beautiful location up in Lake County, grabbing up turtles (who almost always peed on us when we picked them up), and keeping track of the nests they laid. I also collected soil samples from all nest sites, and got GPS data for nest locations. Since most of the work took place in the early evening (we were usually in the field from about four in the afternoon until nine or ten at night), so we camped overnight instead of making the long drive home. Super fun!

We went up there a couple of days a week during June, until the end of the nesting season. Later in the summer, we went back up to help collect eggs, and also to release the baby turtles who had hatched last yes, and been raised in zoos. That was also lot of fun, except my boots kept getting stuck in the mud.

Now that the semester has started, there isn’t any field work until next year, so I’m working with data – plotting my location coordinates on a map and eventually I’ll get down to analyzing my soil samples. Dr. Geist wants me to put together a poster and present it next year at a conference, so I’ll be working on that, too, eventually. OH YEAH TURTLES!

A Photo of Me!

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If you’re wondering about the black thing on the turtle’s back, it’s a radio transmitter. This gravid female had been captured the night before and given an ID number, weighed and measured, and fitted with a transmitter. Then, she spent the night in my car. This photo was taken right before she was released back into the lake the next morning. Then, over the next few days, her radio frequency was monitored each evening in the hopes of finding her out of the water and laying her eggs.