Week Two: Bat, Otters, Mooses and Flowers!

Week one was a blast. Who wouldn't love motorboat training? In week two though, I finally got to start one of my summer-long projects: deploying bat monitors. We get to boat and hike to several different points on the island where leave we microphones to capture bat calls attached to monitoring devices that record them. At the end of the season a computer program can "listen" to the recordings and determine which bat species are present. It's kind of like identifying different bird species by their songs, and doing so with a computer. We've been having fun learning about bat behavior to help us place the monitors in locations where we will "hear" the bats.





Saw pink corydalis on the
way to bat stations!

Putting the monitor and mic in place.





We’re told that starting next week my partner in crime, Matt, and I will get to use a boat called the Borealis for our field work. First, we had to use our knowledge from motorboat training to inspect the boat and make sure it was safe to operate and had all of the necessary equipment. This was an exciting task because it drove home that we get a boat!

The Borealis. Photo by Matt Pierle.

I had several personal highlights as well this week, including seeing a wild river otter! The otter was just playing on a trail, and was nice enough to stick around long enough to get some photos and even a little video.

I really thought that seeing the otter would be the highlight of my week. I was wrong. Out casually (fanatically) looking for ram's heads orchids with Julie and Mike, Mike pointed out two bull moose in a pond! I got to photograph one. As if that wasn't enough, I saw mama and baby moose on the next ridge! Didn't get a photo of baby moose, but we did see its prints in the mud!

 

Bull moose with a full belly. Thanks, pond!

 

 

The wildflower walk would have been a huge success even if we didn't see the mooses. Our 1.5 mile hike took us about 2 hours because I was with fellow plant nerds, so we stopped to look at every single thing in bloom and attempt (in my case) to take good photos of them.



Ram's head orchid



Yellow lady slippers

Julie with a shield lichen that must be really old. It's huge.
Yes, I was with folks that stopped to appreciate and identify
the lichen with me :)

Mealy pixie cup lichen

Bog bean



Blueberry flower (now I know where to come during
blueberry season!

Blue flag iris

Bog laurel

Mike admiring a patch of bog laurel

The Adventure Begins!

Grinning like an idiot because I was

so excited to get my ticket to board.

I'm super excited to start working directly for the National Park Service, and at nothing less than the beautiful Isle Royale National Park (ISRO) in Lake Superior. Working for the Park Service has been a long time dream, and I'm so excited to get this opportunity.

On the island, I'll be working for the Great Lakes Inventory and Monitoring Network, a scientific branch of the Park Service that works in the Great Lakes area, doing water quality testing on the inland lakes. Other duties will include assisting with bat surveys.

Natural Resources Team, including our chief, summer  volunteers,

ISRO biotechs, and me and my water quality biotech buddy.

Since we're working on an island, the first thing we had to learn was how to operate a motorboat safely on the waters of Lake Superior, so we got to start with a boating class! This was a ton of fun. I particularly enjoyed the practical section, which of course was done in a cool rain. We practiced useful skills, like docking, and had other drills to help us improve our boat handling skills. This included boating forward to gently "kiss" (touch) a buoy with the bow of the boat, but backing away before running it over, and a serpentie course where we got to practice taking sharp turns at higher speeds and making sure we know how to avoid obstacles. Oh yeah, and we took expired visual flares and practiced setting them off. Boat training is no fun whatsoever.

"Kissing" the buoy. In the rain.

Smoke flares are awesome!

First day in uniform!

I also had the proud moment of getting my uniform, here complete with a boating whistle and a hand held radio (not pictured), cause cell phones won't work in emergencies. On a related note, please don't leave messages on my phone right now. They'll be a bear to sort through later and won't do either of us any good. I have zero reception here. The landlines have dropped calls. Anyway, I'm told I'll get sick of wearing this grey-green, but I'm not sure it will really happen. I love green. It brings out my eyes. I might already be tired of the high-waisted pants though. The Park Service could fix that. At least I get an awesome leather belt with sequoia cones embossed on it.

Okay, but my biggest high this week gets back to my plant nerdiness. You guys, I saw Calypso orchids, and totally freaked out. And they're on the island I live on, so I'm going to go see them everyday. While I hike around with my plant and lichen ID books. Like the happy plant nerd I am.

Calypso orchid.

Happy plant nerd enjoying Calypso orchids.