alaskan crew

heres some crew photos from the season in alaska. our crew divided after training in fairbanks. 2 went to dillingham, 2 to umiat, and 4 to nome.

THE DUDE himself

ellen, me, nate, jimmy, ted, melissa after one of our rental vehicles broke down






wow this is my trusty sidekick ted and no he doesnt always look like this

the next photo is not for the faint of heart so consider yourself warned

this is the end of a horrible cold i had, hope its not the bird flu

hawai'i

heres some pics from a job on the big island of hawai'i studying palila, a native honeycreeper. we were tranlocating captured birds from the western side of mauna kea (the worlds largest mountain) to the north side. hopefully establishing a second population, ensuring the species' survival in the case of catastrophe. we lived in volcano on the southeastern side of the island outside of hawai'i volcanoes nat'l park.

team palila: top l to r; ian, josh, bobby, emily, me, i forgot, rob bottom l to r; jenn, sara, carter, dre, aran

the male palila in all his splendor


melodie, emily, jenn, becky, bobby, sara, me, carter, aran at the sheraton on the big island

carter and i before a hike to the active pu'u o'o lava cone

cresting the cone, looking back over the kilauea lava field

sunset behind the cinder cones, this is really a once in a lifetime experience. the cone is dormant most of the time but we were lucky to come on a afternoon with favorable winds keeping the noxious gases blowing out to sea and active erupting lava. absolutely amazing, the most intense feeling i can imagine, we couldnt pull ourselves away

carter and i looking tough

the largeousity of the cones, even from there the heat was too intense to keep facing it. the spurting liquid lava falling around us added to the fun, keeping us on our toes

night only added to the intensity

how can you not love that flippin' guy!! aran with an amakihi

Sara and Me

random pictures of me and sara



cross dressing weirdos


sara and i traveling down the big sur coast, ca

venezuelan odyssey

pics from the 2005 field season in northern venezuela studying phylogenetics (whatever that means) of desert birds with adriana rodriguez, a phd candidate from u. of missouri-st louis. the study involved blood and feather sampling different populations of six endemic species to determine if the populations had genetically diverged into subspecies due to spatial separation. we began in the northwest near coro, on the paraguana pennisula, our next site was near barquisimeto. then a couple days off in caracas and on to isla de margarita.




taking blood samples with adriana in the field


during banding in coro we had torrential rains and flooding; 3-4 ft in the streets of adicora. here we are cleaning our nets after they were swept away by floodwaters. the house had a couple inches of water on the floor for the entire week (notice the water seeping through the walls of the house). oh the joy of field work!!!


adriana's little jeep did its best with the conditions, but needed help occasionally.

the amazing troupial, the national bird of venezuela






ooo la la hot stud. drawing blood from a brown headed parrotlet












andrew and the girls; dr. virginia sans, me, and adriana on the ferry back from isla de margarita

at the airport with adriana before my departure

yo quiero miami

i spent the spring of 2006 in south florida (miami) with the university of florida-gainesville studying wading bird breeding success and health. the everglades as you may know is a slow moving "river of grass" as Marjory Stoneman Douglas so eloquently put it. this huge living freshwater filter that has been drastically manipulated by agricultural (sugarcane) and developmental interests until it is become an environmental disaster. millions of gallons of freshwater are now diverted to the gulf and the atlantic leaving the "river of grass" a ball field of grass. fortunately the everglades project is now the most well funded wetlands restoration project in the world. this study was an annual index of the nesting success and general population numbers for breeding long legged, wading birds (egrets, storks, herons). days started before sunrise by airboating into huge colonies of birds and walking through on a weekly basis to record how many birds were breeding and how many chicks were fledging (successfully leaving the nest)


pretty drastic difference huh


airboating to the colony; we enter the rookeries early and spend only a hour in each because the intensity of the sun can overheat and kill the chicks if they are directly exposed to the sun without the shade provided by the adults


liz, becky, and john trudging through stinking, chest-high, gator infested swamp water, just another day at the office


standard measurements of bill length helps to determine age and how quickly chicks are growing


using a improvised mirror pole (a bike mirror taped to a telescopic pole) to check high nests for numbers of chick and eggs


using the mirror pole. we wore the blaze orange vest for the extra pockets not for the hunters


kate and liz weighing chicks in pillow cases


you thought i had bad hair!! these two great egret chicks are engaging in siblicide, where the nestlings fight to the death for the food that the parents bring to the nest. before the chicks open their eyes the chicks awkwardly slam their beaks into each others eyes and necks competing for scarce resources. one of the bird worlds common yet less glamorous behaviors.


roseate spoonbill chick with its distinctive pink coloration and rubbery soft bill


wood stork chicks; as they age the bills turn darker


this wasnt exactly sanctioned by work but catching small gators became a favorite pastime


sam with a huge florida red-bellied slider


sara and paul worked on a crew studying snail kites, an endangered raptor that has co-evolved with a certain snail (apple) and relies largely on them for its survival, another species adversely affected by the mismanagement of the everglades.



helping band fledgling snail kites with saras crew


we counted bird populations by aerial surveys in a small plane to get park wide estimates

snake wranglin' in mexico

i worked with a phd candidate from notre dame studying the endangered ridgenosed rattlesnake (crotalus willardi) in northern mexico near agua prieta (lower right corner of map) in 2004. the abstract: the forest service was designing a fire management/species recovery plan for some land in arizona and wanted to understand the snakes survival and response to burned areas. but because the snakes are extremely rare on the american side but somewhat plentiful on the mexican side of the border they had to send us across to find a large enough sample population. we had a couple different plots: frequent fire presence, sporadic fire presence, and control as well as different forest types.

the crew included kirk sester, the phd candidate, estrella, masters student from mexico, three other mexican students. the typical day was a drive to a remote canyon, park and split up to hike the narrow ravines looking for well-camouflaged venomous snakes, sounds smart right. the easiest way to find them is to listen for a rattler underneath your foot, im not joking these boogers are well camouflaged. they are this beautiful light pinkish-purple and black. which when you think pink you dont think blending in but...



when this is the habitat you understand



our tools of the trade were a pair of 20" tongs and a handful of pillow cases. we would find a snake, catch it with the tongs and ease it into the sack, tie it off, record gps coordinates and habitat composition. next came the crazy part, the other crew members would tuck the knot of the sack under their belts, essentially resting the snakes on their thighs as the bumped and bounded their way through the canyon for the rest of the day. at first i was hesitate about going indiana jones style for the sake of science but it was the only way to keep your hands free so i too ended up doing it. which on a good day you could have 3 or 4 venomous snakes gently bouncing on your legs for 8 hours. but no one was ever bitten, move over southern baptist snake handlers and indian cobra charmers theres a new sheriff in town.



"back at the lab" came the processing of the snakes. we implanted a radio chip, the size of a grain of rice, so that we could relocate them with telemetry equipment to track movement. we also took blood samples to determine genetic variance from the american group.






to handle the animals we would slide them into a sealed tube with a chemical that would sedate them, after a couple minutes they are like play-doh.



we werent opposed to using child labor for this dangerous work either, just kidding this is the daughter of the ranch family that worked the canyons in one of the plots


we also worked with the non-venomous arizona mountain kingsnake (Lampropeltis pyromelana)






ridgenosed rattler caught after a meal

ridgenosed rattler after eating a bird i suppose check out the feather in the mouth

paintball at wilson

matt mo, jack, i forgot, justin conley, dave tormey, nate jones, joseph jeffers, me, wilbur jeffer, jedediah brown, tom hughes

the morning after the all night paintball war with the boys