Field Trip

Been extremely busy with many projects recently. Tomorrow I leave for Brooks Memorial which is in the Columbia River Gorge region. A wildlife refuge and environmental learning center are around these locations.... I will be back Thursday!

Dry Falls, Sun Lakes

Time sure flies, this past week from Monday to Friday I went on a class trip to Sun Lakes State Park. It was about a 5 hour drive to eastern Washington and was very pretty. We spent the week getting to know each other, doing lots of hiking/surveys, and creating research projects for the quarter. The first and last night I slept inside cabins, however in-between the weather was great so I slept outside with many classmates. The stars were incredible and we could see a large amount of the milky way galaxy along with a few different planets. We did some group hikes up a few plateaus and had lots of independent time to hike out to lakes and survey bird behavior and also do some swimming. The reason we went here is because this place is unique to the world and was actually the worlds largest waterfall. Most of Washington was covered in glaciers however eastern w.a. didn't have any and was more lush. There was basically a large ice-wall, which on a few occasions erupted releasing the largest amount of water ever. This happened a few times within a few hundred years and around 12000 years ago. Consequently it washed all the fertile soil into Oregon, and dropped huge erratics(large rocks placed in flat land) all over the prairies. It also created a very harsh environment with almost nothing surviving. Now there are more species living there including lots of birds, snakes, and fish. A few of the animals I saw were rattle snakes, scorpions, quail, preying mantis, and many other insects and birds. I ended up creating a project group and am very excited for this research study and to collect data! I'm researching Red-winged Blackbirds and am specifically looking for a correlation between the colorful wing coverts males have and the vocalizations they make. The coverts on the wings of the males in this species have been chosen through sexual selection(a form of adaptation) and basically are a signal to the female about the health of an individual. The brighter the color the more nutrients and better genes is the constant. My question is if birds with lesser coverts compensate with higher vocalizations. I intend on taking pictures(in RAW format) and analyzing the spectrum's of color using photoshop to determine the intensity of color. I'm going to also take sound recordings at the same time and analyze the amplitude of each individual. Eventually once all the data is collected I will process it all and try to find patterns using statistics and excel. The methodology of this study is pretty complex and to inspect the amplitude of vocalizations I will have to use a sound format to adjust for the range in distance from the recorder to the subject.... Its very exciting and I am beginning to feel very self sufficient in carrying out my own studies. Also I not only got my job back, but now have FOUR JOBS! I went into the rec center today and after lots of persistence they hired me back as gym staff, concessions, sports, and general req. This means I will be working in the gym, sport games, selling food, and also helping with school non-competitive games(ultimate Frisbee)! I'm starting again on Friday and will be working as "ball shagger" for both a soccer game on Fri and sat! Its great here, the new house rock, and class is great in every aspect! Hope all is well everyone.....o yeah here are the photos from the trip http://www.flickr.com/photos/23083581@N02/sets/72157625145896234/