A Happy Fourth and Birthday Celebration!

I had a pretty nice Fourth of July in the City of Portland and visiting Cannon Beach, OR. Once a year my sister tries to come out here with my nephews so that we can all spend some time together since we don’t see eachother that often. This time it just so happened that we were both free on the fourth of July weekend and they’d be able to spend my birthday weekend with me as well since my birthday is on the 6th. We decided on Portland so I could take them to the ocean which is only 1.5 hours away. We had a blast. We played on the beach, we went to the zoo ( I was VERY impressed with the Portland ZOO. I normally hate zoos but this one was really nice and the animals are well cared for), we went to Saturday market, ate cupcakes at Saint Cupcake and visited Multnomah Falls and the Museum of science and industry. I left feeling tired and happy. It was so nice to see them, and it’s such a short flight for me that I was able to get home in time to unpack, and relax before heading back to work today. Here are some highlights from the trip. I'll post some more photos tomorrow from the trip.
Happy Fourth of July! Enjoy the Summer!
Sandiana

An evening with 2 talented women

I had the most magnificent kick off to the summer last night at the Boise Botanical Gardens. What a great venue for a concert. There's not a bad seat in the place and you're right by tons of beautiful flowers. It sits at the base of the foothills where a wonderful breeze sweeps across the crowd as you listen to some of the best performances you've ever heard. Let me just say that Brandi Carlile and Jewel were 2 of the most adorable people ever. They both got up on the stage and sang alone with nothing but the guitar in hand....and man what a treat. I'm such a sucker for acoustic performances. Brandi rocked the stage with the great classics of Johnny Cash, Hank Willams, Tammy Wynette, the Beatles, and more as well as her own stuff. It amazes me how she can change her voice from edgy to sweet and classy with every song and sometimes in the same song. While not as big of a fan of Jewel, I certainly enjoyed her newer stuff and she was an entertaining storyteller. Jewel took requests from the audience which gave the evening a more intimate/coffee house feeling. Of course one of the best parts of the evening were the impromptu songs and the duet they did to a Tom Petty song. Sure wish I had a copy of that because you certainly can't find it. I do however have a lead on Brandi's version of Folsom Prison which was phenomenal.

All in all, I'm looking forward to the next time I can see Brandi in concert. If you haven't yet, you don't know what you're missing. So much better than listening to a CD.

Well that's my review of the first concert of the summer that I attended. What a great evening was had by all

Till Next Time

Sandiana

What would McGuyver do?

So if you ever have to you ask yourself...."If I'm ever dumb enough to forget my tent poles at home but I bring my tent with me....what would McGuyver do in this situation" I can help you out. B, the dogs and I went camping this past weekend and we did exactly that. We had washed our tent after the last camping trip and forgot to put the poles back in the bag. Having arrived at 9pm at night at our destination 3.5 hours from home, we had to improvise, so we McGuyver'd the heck out of this baby. It's a really good thing that I married someone who is also part lumberjack....I'm so lucky! B found a slash pile and dug out 2 pits - 3ft deep to place the pieces of branch in, then packed the dirt tightly around them and Voila! we had two posts to tie the tent to. Then we pulled the truck up next to the tent and stuck the remaining rope from the tent in the windows and rolled them up, staked out the sides, and damn if that tent didn't stay up and house us comfortably for the whole weekend. I was so proud of us! We didn't even get mad at each other, we just went right to work with our duct tape, dental floss and chewing gum! For those of you who don't get the McGuyver reference, I feel sorry for you because that was quality TV, not like the useless garbage you see now.

With tent in tact we were able to salvage the weekend and as you can see from Sage's smiling face, she and Bo had a nice time too. I sipped my coffee each morning on a rock that faced the Beautiful Eagle Cap Wilderness, and in the evening B and I sat on that same rock and watched the sunset. It was a much needed, relaxing break in the woods.

Happy Spring All!

SJ

What a Way to end the week!

What a Fabulous week for me (rare I know). The weather was cold at times and snowy at times but ended on a beautiful note on Friday with me getting to spend the day with an incredibly knowledgeable, former raptor biologist from the BLM on a trip to band owls and inspect nesting platforms in the Snake River Birds of Prey Area. These little screech owls were adorable! It was neat to see them (all 6 of them) huddled up inside their nest box trying to keep warm. Mom and dad must have been confused by the warm spells we had weeks ago because these guys should only belittle eggs right now, and as you can see they are maturing quickly. We took them out of the nest box for a few minutes just to band them and then returned them to where they could sleep off the chilly morning. I Love this photo of our feistiest guy from the nest. He did not like my camera but it made for a cool photo! The scenery photos are where I ate my lunch from and watched Golden eagles riding the currents and a fox looking for ground squirrels to hunt. On our way back to the office we checked out some of BSU's homemade burrows for the burrowing owls and found that they were being used for sure!
At the end of the day John dropped me off and told me he would contact me when the Ferruginous Hawk chicks were ready to be banded. I can't wait! I love ferrugs' and I've never seen one up close. So exciting to be starting the field season off with some seriously cool projects.
More later from the field!
Sandiana Jones :)

Girl Gone Wild

Well I'm back in the field for the summer and busy with all kinds of projects. The other night I was fortunate enough to be able to go out on a sage grouse capture with a few fine folks from 3 different state and federal agencies. One of the many perks of living in sage steppe country are these guys. An amazing bird that we don't know nearly enough about. To find out more about how to protect these guys and their habitat it's necessary to conduct research on them. These birds were carefully captured and fitted, radio collars and released so that we can track their movements and behaviors. I was responsible for taking a small blood sample which will be sent off to a lab for DNA analysis. What an adventure. We were snowed on, rained on, covered in mud, and hiked over 2 miles in the dark across lava rock beds (I have the gashes and bruises on my knees to prove it) to find these guys. In the end we were successful and the birds were released after a few simple measurements and collar fitting.

If you ever find yourself in the western states that these birds call home I urge you to try and get out to see these guys strut during the leking season which is usually mid March until early May. It is something to be seen and heard for sure. These guys are out on the leks from sun up until around 10am spinning, thumping their wings; producing a loud drumming sound that can be heard from far away, and presenting their magnificent air sacs to area females, all in the name of passing on their genes. It's quite impressive. The air sacs, amazingly enough, are protected by scale like feathers that are pointy to the touch. I was quite surprised when I touched them.

Anyway, it was a long night (6:30pm until 6am the next morning) and I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep but hopefully I'll be back soon with some more photos from some other surveys I've been working on. I've been taking lots of photos I'm just behind on downloading and posting. It's that time of year though for me.

Cheers!

Sandiana