Well it's been just over a month of living in Alberta working for the
Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, and what a month it's been! My current position in Alberta is all about monitoring all
sorts of biodiversity: plants, moss, lichens, trees, birds, soil, water
quality, water inverts, habitat habitat habitat, just about everything. Our job
is to collect all of the data at a whole bunch of sites throughout Alberta during
the summer field season. This data is made publically available for baseline
data, research, and management purposes
J It’s a really large
scale monitoring project , and a really cool organization dedicated to providing
high quality, unbiased, accessible biodiversity data.
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| We collect lots of lichen; this is a cool one I found in a forest. |
So far my two-person crew has been to a good chunk of
southern Alberta: sites near Hanna, Medicine Hat, Elkwater, Milk River,
Drumheller and Pigeon Lake. Lots of driving, but lots of great places to see! The
aspen forests of central AB are full of cool shrubs and fun birds, but I
definitely like the open rangelands of the south the most. There’s nothing like
open rolling prairie, clouds for miles, and sparrows flitting about the grass. Very
thankful to cattle ranchers for keeping the native prairie alive (some say the
only reason there is any native prairie left is cattle ranching).
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| The sun rises over native prairie at Onefour Research Station. |
Highlights of work have involved:
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A sweet little hobby farm run by the nicest
couple; they introduced us to their chickens, rabbits, cats, dogs, and horses
and even let us play with a month-old foal. It was pretty much the cutest
little horse I’ve ever interacted with. They also tried to pawn off a baby
kitten on me, which was incredibly hard to say no to since it was riding around
on my shoulders for a good half hour as we toured the farm. To top it all off,
they sent us away with three dozen fresh eggs of all colours and sizes. Really
lovely farm! I still miss the kitten a bit.
- ·
Many early early mornings (generally waking up
between 3 and 3:30am) watching sunrises and listening to birds sing. After the
first couple mornings you start to get used to it, and I even started to like
it. You see the best wildlife on bird schedule!
- ·
Getting about a pound of mud stuck to each boot
on a rainy day in a very clayey crop field. Good workout, unpleasant life experience.
- ·
Getting barked at by a pronghorn. She actually
seemed really curious, since she hung around the site for most of the morning
just watching us. She was a cutie!
·
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THIS very friendly pronghorn, to be exact.
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- ·
Sitting on a cactus and not realizing it until
later that night when I discovered a bunch of cactus spines in my bum while
showering, and subsequently spending 20 minutes picking them out. Not exactly
what I imagined I’d be doing on a Friday night, but made for a funny story.
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| Cacti. Nice to look at, but they are not my friends. |
- ·
Locking ourselves out of our hotel at 3am and
trying to explain to the staff that yes, really, we just needed to get back into our room to
get some stuff, and no, we weren’t trying to skip out on the hotel bill in the
middle of the night. Not the best start to a morning... a morning which continued with me having to crawl through 3 tight fences and running-long-jump over a creek to get to my bird point inside a llama pen.
- · Did I mention the stunning views? At our last site, which was really close to the
Montana border near Milk River, listening to a plethora of birds binging as the
sun rose in the east, casting a warm glow on the Rocky Mountains to the west,
endless rolling lush native prairie, and a cool mist rising off of the
wetlands. Probably one of the prettiest mornings I’ve ever seen. Also two Baird’s
sparrows (no photos though, bummer)!!
- ·
Finally, meeting a crew of older men at the
motel who were hired specifically to shoot gophers for a week, since apparently
some farms have been overrun by gophers that dig up the land and ruin the crop
and break cows’ legs (although I have recently been told that studies have
shown the broken-cow-leg thing to be a myth) . I will admit, there were a crap ton
of gophers at our site in the area, I almost stepped on a few…But curiously
didn’t see very many hawks around. Not a single FEHA! L
And
that’s mostly the work I’ve been doing for the past month. Off days have all
been spent in the Rockies, around Canmore and Kootenay Plains. I should probably be in bed right now since I have to be up at 2:45am for birds, but tomorrow (or sometime very soon) I'll write about ABMI's adventures during breaks, which have all involved camping, mountains and FUN (and also lots of pretty photos).
Extra photos from spring shift one:
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| Pronghorn are my favourite prairie animal. |
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| Baby bird is hungry! I felt a little bad since the parents wouldn't feed it while I was shooting nearby... |
