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Published On: Sep 16, 2005 07:13 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Sep 16, 2005 07:13 AM
A Great Day at Work
I had a great day monitoring the drill rig up in
Lincoln County today. First of all, there were the beetles. Large, black,
flying, stinking carnivorous beetles came swirling around the light towers in
the night covering the ground and causing the drillers to swear much more than
usual. The beetles feasted on the grasshoppers and tore them apart, fighting
over the pieces. If a beetle was crushed they would eat the unlucky one leaving
just the hard black exoskeleton. I got some video of them swarming around. It's
pretty creepy.
We had a class of UCLA geology students come by with their professor who had done the geologic mapping of this area. It was fun to talk to the students about their adventures in the desert.
The next cool thing was a I got a new bird for my life-list today. Although pretty common, the small group of yellow warblers was an exciting find for me. These are very pretty birds — bright canary yellow and the males have thin red stripes on the breast. I may have seen some down by the Las Vegas Wash but I never got a good look at them.
The other good bird sighting was a golden eagle. I was driving down the road and the eagle took off, laboring to carry a roadkill jack rabbit into the air. Immediately two ravens that were on the ground nearby took off and started harassing the much larger eagle. The eagle only flew a few hundred feet before it landed with its prize. The ravens took off.
My prize for the day was finding a desert tortoise. This area in Lincoln county is near the northern and altitudinal range of the tortoise, is fairly heavily grazed, the vegetation type is wrong, the soil type is wrong. I have found no definitive tortoise sign near any of the drill sites and figured my best chances of spotting (and saving) a tortoise was to patrol the roads. Well, about 4 o'clock I found a 5 inch long juvenile tortoise walking down the road. I watched him move off the road and flagged the area and then warned the drillers (and especially the water truck drivers who use that road). I think it helped my credibility out here to have some sign that there are tortoises in the area.
My big goal was to show the local rancher the tortoise. The guy who owns the grazing rights to the area is an older guy named Lavar Wade who is very friendly although he was initially a bit suspicious of having a tortoise biologist on "his" land. He has told me that he has never seen a tortoise in this valley and I guess he has been ranching here for several decades. However, he has spotted tortoises closer to I-15 (which is much better habitat and is actually managed as a tortoise preserve) and up near Carp. He says his children have seen tortoises in this valley. I've told him before that the population here is probably pretty low but not zero.
To top the day off, as I was leaving I was treated to spectacularly bright rainbow over the East Mormon Mountains. What a great day.
We had a class of UCLA geology students come by with their professor who had done the geologic mapping of this area. It was fun to talk to the students about their adventures in the desert.
The next cool thing was a I got a new bird for my life-list today. Although pretty common, the small group of yellow warblers was an exciting find for me. These are very pretty birds — bright canary yellow and the males have thin red stripes on the breast. I may have seen some down by the Las Vegas Wash but I never got a good look at them.
The other good bird sighting was a golden eagle. I was driving down the road and the eagle took off, laboring to carry a roadkill jack rabbit into the air. Immediately two ravens that were on the ground nearby took off and started harassing the much larger eagle. The eagle only flew a few hundred feet before it landed with its prize. The ravens took off.
My prize for the day was finding a desert tortoise. This area in Lincoln county is near the northern and altitudinal range of the tortoise, is fairly heavily grazed, the vegetation type is wrong, the soil type is wrong. I have found no definitive tortoise sign near any of the drill sites and figured my best chances of spotting (and saving) a tortoise was to patrol the roads. Well, about 4 o'clock I found a 5 inch long juvenile tortoise walking down the road. I watched him move off the road and flagged the area and then warned the drillers (and especially the water truck drivers who use that road). I think it helped my credibility out here to have some sign that there are tortoises in the area.
My big goal was to show the local rancher the tortoise. The guy who owns the grazing rights to the area is an older guy named Lavar Wade who is very friendly although he was initially a bit suspicious of having a tortoise biologist on "his" land. He has told me that he has never seen a tortoise in this valley and I guess he has been ranching here for several decades. However, he has spotted tortoises closer to I-15 (which is much better habitat and is actually managed as a tortoise preserve) and up near Carp. He says his children have seen tortoises in this valley. I've told him before that the population here is probably pretty low but not zero.
To top the day off, as I was leaving I was treated to spectacularly bright rainbow over the East Mormon Mountains. What a great day.
Posted: Sun - May 1, 2005 at 06:08 PM