Weighing a prairie dog

Saying hello to a prairie dog

A Badger we caught at the prairie dog release site

Prairie doggin II

It has been a very busy few weeks here in Utah! I've been working 10 hour days, which is why I haven't been updating my blog! Sorry :) A couple weeks ago we got to go to a wild horse adoption/auction. Basically, there are way too many wild horses around here, so they are starving and damaging a lot of vegetation, so the BLM captures them and if they are 3 years old or younger, they auction them off to the public. The day we went, we sold 10 horses. Bidding starts at $120, and that is the price all but one went for. For the last three weeks, we have been working with the Utah DNR translocating prairie dogs. It has been a lot of fun to actually get to work with the prairie dogs. They mostly live in the city, so we have been trapping them at the baseball fields, golf course, cemetary, and private properties. Before anyone can build a house or any building for that matter, they have to get approval from the DNR, and if there are any prairie dogs on thier property, they have to pay the DNR to remove them, which is where we come in. After we trap them, we weigh them, record their information, put ear tags in them, and bring them to a release site near Bryce Canyon National Park. The release sites have man-made burrows, made of plastic tubing, where the dogs can hide until they are acclimated to thier new environment and disperse to make thier own burrows. The DNR also does predator control at the release sites, and sets traps for badgers. So far they have captured about 6 of them. We have been working with the DNR on this project for about four weeks, and it has been a nice change to actually be working with the animals instead of just assessing thier habitat.

Lucy's warbler, the smallest bird we caught

Rock Swallow nests

Lily retrieving a bird from the mist net

Brown-crested Flycatcher

Prairie Doggin

This week was again spent doing prairie dog habitat monitoring, but we are nearly done, and then it will be time to file away all the data we've collected. Many of the sites we've been evaluating do not actually have prairie dogs on them, but at one time did. I think they will be translocating pest prairie dogs from agricultural lands to these places. When they do, the biologists have makeshift tunnels and burrows for the dogs, which are made of large PVC pipes. Eventually, the dogs will colonize the area and make thier own burrows. We saw plenty of abandoned PVC and natural burrows while doing our surveys. We also did get to actually see some prairie dogs, which was good. We also worked with the state DNR again, catching and banding song birds. Although we didn't catch as many birds as we did last time, there was quite a different variety, so we got to see different birds than we saw last time. Some of the new species we caught were a black-chinned hummingbird, Bullock's oreol, Black throated sparrow, house finch, and a Lazuli bunting. Mist-netting and banding song birds is one of my favorite projects I've worked on so far during my internship.

Golden Eagle nestling that we have been waiting four weeks to see fledge