Another picture or two

Hello! Sorry for taking such a long break from this blog, but life has gotten in the way lately. I had a lovely vacation (in Gloucester, MA and Hanover, NH), then had to deal with end-of-summer-craziness in Maine, then moved to my new place in Dover, NH, and just barely started working in a lab at UNH. I'll still be traveling up to Maine once a week to check traps for another couple of months. Whew! Very busy! I still have lots of posts in the works to catch up on all the fun things that happened this summer, but for now I'll give you two recent pictures.

Newt! I love the newts, for some reason. Well, one reason is that they do a crazy defensive pose, demonstrasted by this guy here (he's a different species)

Me driving the brand new field truck (with an official UNH seal and everything!)

P.S. This post is dedicated to Susan, since she told me she'd be checking tonight, and that actually motivated me enough to write something. :-)

A Picture

Here's a picture of me from the spring, to make up for my recent lack of posts. We had to wade in the wetlands to count egg masses twice, and here I am in wetland 59 (which has since dried up completely). Enjoy!

Apartment Hunting

I still have many other adventures to talk about, but I wanted to mention the newest. I spent the last three days in the Durham/Portsmouth area looking at apartments for when I move down here at the end of the summer to work in the lab at UNH. All of the apartments I ended up seeing were in Dover. Most of them were really nice, but not quite what I was looking for (e.g., sometimes parking was a nightmare, sometimes laundry wasn't at the building (and I do laundry at strange times of the day/night), sometimes they wanted a year's lease with no potential to sublet if I'm up in Maine again next summer . . .), but I found one that seems pretty perfect for what I need right now. It's a quirky place on the top floor of a building, so there are slanting walls from the roof here and there. However, it really does seem to have most of the things I was looking for: a nice (if somewhat small) kitchen, a nice living room, a nice (and clean) bathroom, coin-op laundry in the basement, roommates (one boy and one girl) who are close to my age, plenty of parking (even enough for a guest!), and a nice-sized bedroom that comes with a bed(!!!), dresser, bookcases, desk (no chair, though), and large closet. Also, the landlord is okay with painting the place (hence the quirkiness, the living room and some of the trim are a sunny orange color), so if so motivated I can really personalize my room!

Dover is also a really neat city. There is a great downtown with lots of neat shops and restaurants, and my parents and I had a fun time exploring. On Sunday night we had a delicious seafood meal at Warren's Lobster House in Kittery, ME (stuffed shrimp plus their wonderful salad bar, yum!). For lunch on Monday we ate at a little cafe, the Cafe on the Corner in downtown Dover, which had yummy sandwiches and beverages. Monday night we ate at the Third Street Grille, which was delicious. I will definitely be going back there at some point. Tasty spinach and artichoke appetizer, delicious grilled sea scallop meal, and yummy mixed drink (Pomegranate Jewel: Pomegranate vodka, triple sec, pomegranate juice, orange slice). Yum!

I think I am going to really enjoy living in Dover.

Wildlife!

Living and working where I do (in the back woods of Maine), I get to see a lot of wildlife. I don't usually carry my camera with me in the field, so I only have a few pictures to share with you. Also, fun wildlife stories! But first, a list of the various animals we've seen:

• lots of turkeys (some with poults!)
• lots of deer
• a few moose
• various hawks (which I can't yet identify further than "Look! A hawk!")
• ducks (some with ducklings!)
• lots of rabbits
• a beautiful barred owl
• a muskrat (used to live in the backyard)
• an otter (passed through the backyard one day)
• many snapping turtles
• a few painted turtles
• a porcupine
• Cedar Waxwings (plus tons of other small birds that I cannot (yet) identify, but I think these guys are adorable)
• Ruffed Grouse and Spruce Grouse

And probably others, but those are all I can think of at the moment. Pictures (but only a couple):



And one interesting wildlife story, about Ruffed Grouse: the Ruffed Grouse mom has a neat little display she does to protect her chicks. When she feels threatened (e.g., when we're driving by in our big truck), she hunches over, drags one of her wings on the ground, and makes this pathetic sound, looking just like an injured bird. She also takes off in the opposite direction from her chicks, luring the "predators" (in this case, us) away from her babies, who then fly up into the trees or just sort of scatter into the brush if they're not quite up to flying yet. It's a very convincing display (although the one we found couldn't decide whether to lure us with her injured act or puff herself up and hiss, and switching back and forth between those two tactics was not very effective). Really exciting to see up close, though.

That's all for tonight! Posts to look for in the future include: pictures of our study subjects, fun things to do in Maine, and an update on the work situation (the baby frogs are emerging!).

Hello

It's been a while. Just wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about this place, I've just been busy, and for some reason I find blogging to be pretty tiring. In the next few days (I hope), expect entries on the wildlife I've seen, the fun things I've been doing on days off, and perhaps some more recipes. Also, pictures, lots and lots of pictures! For now, here's a scene from our backyard a couple of weeks back:

The Apartment

I only have a few pictures of the apartment at the moment, but I will try to take more at some point. It's actually quite nice, much better than I was expecting for a living space / field station that only gets used for half of the year. We get a lot of sun, and it gets very warm (which was great during the cool days of spring, but will be awful in the heat of summer). It's spacious, everything in the kitchen works well, a washer and dryer are right in the apartment, there's a lovely deck and a pond/stream in the backyard. What more could you ask for?

The entryway/mudroom has bootwarmers, tons of buckets, and plenty of space for leaving muddy boots or hanging up wet rain gear to dry. The grill has been moved to the deck now that it's grillin' weather, and the washer is in the left front corner that you can't see.

Stove, refrigerator, sink, tons of cabinet space. The dishwasher doesn't work, unfortunately. The dishes, silverware, and pots and pans are all a little strange, since they were mostly acquired from Goodwill, but we have pretty much anything needed to cook tasty food.

Extremely comfortable couch, and the rocking chair is pretty nice, too. That chair with speakers is where we've been setting up our computers to watch movies (or Futurama or Life of Mammals). If you look on the couch, you can see the afghan I'm currently crocheting.

We've got a few mismatched chairs (all broken in one way or another), and that table in the back is for work-related things. Out the doors you can see a tiny sliver of the deck. The hallway leads to the bedrooms, with the bathroom on the very end (dryer is in the bathroom, plus a gigantic tub and separate shower (not gigantic or very nice, unfortunately).

This is all you get to see of my room at the moment, since it's sort of a mess. Queen sized air mattress on the floor, sheets, blankets, stuffed animals. The mattress is surprisingly comfortable. If I ever get things tidied up in there, I will give you a better picture.

And there you have it, folks. My little home for the next few months.

A Game

Today was a day off, and on my To Do list I wrote "update blog." I certainly intend to give you an update on my life (plus pictures, I finally uploaded them!) sometime soon, but I just stumbled across this fun little thing on teh interwebs:


You can play too!

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name

As you can probably tell, sometimes the pictures that show up have almost nothing to do with the answers to the questions. Sort of a pretty mosaic all the same. And, photo credits:
1. Yashica: Allison On The Beach, 2. Beautiful but very sharpened!, 3. February in Rutland, 4. Lilac A Floral Fountain, 5. Harrison Ford, 6. Bottoms up!, 7. Cayman palm sunset, 8. tiramisu, 9. Call of the Raven (formerly Nature's Special Effects), 10. Peace Love Happiness Friends 63/365, 11. Step by step… steadily ♫♫, 12. Gravity

Adventures (and successes) in Cooking

If you know me at all (and if you're reading this, I assume you do), you probably know that I really like to cook. Since graduating last year I've been cooking for myself almost every night, often to great results. However, since I'm lazy about updating my food blog, nobody gets to hear about them. Sorry.

However, Joanne and I really pulled out all the stops with our dinners this week. First, we made beef stew and angel biscuits. This was my third time trying to make the biscuits from my mom's recipe and finally, FINALLY, they came out right. Hers are golden diamonds of perfection, and mine weren't quite that wonderful, but they tasted great (and weren't burned on the bottom but too doughy in the middle, which is what happened the other two times). This is a huge achievement for me.

Then, last night, we made this:
They're from a recipe here, although I used my own teriyaki sauce. You should definitely click on the link (it opens in a new window), because her picture is much better than mine. If you like salmon and pineapple, you should definitely give it a try.

Bronx Zoo!

A few entries back, I mentioned that C and I visited the Bronx Zoo before I moved up to Maine, and we had a wonderful time. Here are a few of the pictures from that day. Hover over the picture for a little bit of information.

Update (finally)

Yikes! I don't know why, but time just seems to be getting away from me here. I have good intentions to post regularly, but I'm either busy with work or distracted by other things in the evenings.

I'm going to start off with a description of the project, and basically why we're doing what we're doing. Feel free to ask questions and I'll try to clarify anything that isn't clear.

The project is with amphibians (specifically wood frogs, spotted salamanders, and blue-spotted salamanders) that live in vernal pools in Maine (pools of water that form in the spring and then dry up during the summer). We also catch non-target species, such as newts, redback salamanders, toads, peepers, leopard frogs, green frogs, pickerel frogs, and bullfrogs.

We have a basic sampling protocol from which a variety of data can be examined. We've erected a fence around the (11) wetlands with pitfall traps at intervals around the fence, both inside and outside. The idea is that the amphibians try to get into the wetland, are blocked by the fence, and walk along the edge until they fall into a trap. We take them out, record the species and sex, and place them in the water inside the fence. When they come out, we record species and sex for everybody, and for our target species also mass and snout-vent length, and we clip one of their toes (different toe at each wetland) so that we can note which ones return in other years.

We also record rainfall and high/low temperatures once a week, water chemistry once a month, and do egg mass counts twice.

So, the main focus of the study is to determine how large of a buffer of forest is necessary for logging to not affect the amphibians. We have controls (not logged), 30 meter buffers, and 100 meter buffers. However, there are so many other factors that affect basically EVERYTHING that I have no idea how anything meaningful will be found in the data. Some years the vernal pools dry up early and none of the tadpoles survive. And all the sites have very different features. It will be interesting.

There are other smaller studies that have been done in the past by graduate students, including things like where the metamorphs go once they leave the pools, if there is significance to the direction the amphibians take when they leave (we often find piles of them in one trap, with only a few or none in the rest of the traps), and how the insects in the area affect the amphibians (apparently some of the insect larval forms eat the tadpoles).

The days are occasionally long (our longest so far was 12.5 hours), especially in the spring when we have to open all of the wetlands (stand up the fences, open and bail out the traps). Because we're driving on old logging dirt roads they're very muddy, and we have to sometimes hike a few miles to get to the wetland (carrying stakes, staple guns, a mallet, and sometimes an axe). We also have some long days in the spring when the amphibians are either coming in or going out (which they seem to do en masse). Right now it's pretty quiet, and we've been doing all of the wetlands in one day (8-9 hours) and then either taking the next day off or working on fence repair.

Feel free to ask questions about the study! Or life in general up here.

Sorry for the picture-less entries, I'll try to steal some of my roommates' pictures to post soon!