Turkeys, cows, and snow 24 April 2001 Hello again! Well, things have been going great so far. We finished up the training period about a week ago. We had navigation training using compasses and topographical maps as well as GPS units. Although you can get along perfectly well with either, we've been trained in both because you can't always count on the GPS to be correct, or have batteries, etc and the topos are from around 1960, and only show elevations every 40ft. We also had ATV training so that we are now all properly able to operate the project ATVs. Too bad only the noise crew use them. The owl crew generally won't use them at all, but it was fun learning. :) We also had 2 days and nights of official owl survey training, which is needed to be working in a national forest. Survey training was fun, but quite a shock to the body after several days of around the base camp training. Then, as of last Tuesday night, we began our official surveying. I had gotten to go out the day before training started with one of last year's experienced people. Basically, we start at about 6-7pm (before sunset) and drive to the beginning of the route. Sometimes we still have to do some walking to get to the start because there are only so many roads out here (far too many roads for a national forest actually, in my opinion). We walk and hoot (yes, hoot) for the owls along our route. Occasionally, we will stop and call from one point for 15 minutes. Nighttime surveys are usually over between midnight and 1am. Morning follow-ups usually start around 4 or 5am and last until as late as noon (although that's only on rare occasions). During the daytime, we walk silently to the place where the owl was last seen or heard from the night before. Usually, if we've found an owl the previous night, we can call them in the morning and then we try to get them to take us to their nest or roost by feeding them mice. So far we've only found one nest, but several pairs of owls. Obviously late nights and early mornings make for very sleepy afternoons, so it's usually pretty quiet around here until about 4pm. "Creative napping" my boss calls it. :) As for me, I get to do both field work and office work. I'm in charge of keeping all the data organized, but I also get to go out and do surveys and follow-ups, just not as frequent as everyone else because I "have a day job". Since we're still getting a few kinks worked out, I've been at camp a lot. The supervisor type people also get to take turns monitoring the forest service radios that we take out with us everywhere. I've had to sleep with the radio in my tent in case anyone has problems and needs help. They also call in to let us know that they're on their way home or settling in for the night (we have some routes that are far away and it's easier to just camp out there instead of drive back and leave early again). Needless to say, sometimes I don't get enough sleep, even I'm at camp, which is fine since naps are strongly encouraged here. Easter Sunday marked the beginning of turkey season in the Gila so we've been seeing quite a few more vehicles and people out here than we did the first few weeks. Also, because the weather is warming up (somewhat) there are more cows out here too. We had about 7 or 8 cows come wandering through camp a few days ago, looking for grass since it had just snowed the night before. Yup, more snow. Only a little bit though and it was melted by mid-day. We had some nasty winds though from Friday to Sunday. Up to 60mph, or so the weather forecast said. We actually had a tree fall down really close to camp, and about 30-40ft from someone's tent (not mine). It's finally stopped, but the wind made for a few long days because no one could do any work. We're not allowed to survey when the wind is above 30mph because it makes it very hard to hear anything, which is very dangerous for the owls. We could inadvertently call in a Great Horned Owl (a predator of Mexican Spotted Owls, especially the young ones) and show him MSO locations if we can't hear them. So we all basically sat around camp for 2 days watching movies, and walking around the area a bit. We even piled into a few trucks and trekked down to Reserve for lunch. Thankfully, the weather is now cooperating and even warming up a bit. Reserve is an interesting little town. Or village, actually, as the sign says. They're not too keen on us environmental folks being up here. We have to be fairly low profile when we head into town. There are bumper stickers in some of the shops saying things like "spotted owls taste like chicken" and "if you're starving, eat an environmentalist". So we don't exactly go around proclaiming the wonderful work that we're doing up here. It's the same way if we run into anyone while we're on the mountain because there's a really, really good chance that they're turkey hunters or elk hunters, and would gladly do some damage if they knew exactly what we're doing out here. So that's about it for out here. I'm going to take a few days off next week and drive to Tempe, AZ to see my favorite musician play (Steve Poltz). It'll be a nice break from camp life. I hope everyone is doing great. I'd love to hear from all of you!! Love and sunshine, Stef ;) top of page letters from camp