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

Paragrine Falcon that we have been observing for about four weeks

This week was spent surveying current and potential Utah Prairie Dog habitat. We did get to see a few prairie dogs, which was cool. We have a hundred something points in several different allotments that we have to survey. We basically have to find each point and walk four transect lines, determining what kind of cover (plants, rock, bare ground, etc.) there is at each step. I have realized that the task ahead of me will be challenging and time consuming. As well as trying to find transect points in the middle of nowhere using terrible maps with no GPS points, I also have to organize 20 years of very disorganized prairie dog data contained in at least 20 three ring binders! But I am up for the challenge!

Wild horses in Hamlin Valley

Hiking at Bryce Canyon National Park

Well, it's week five and going strong! Like we do every week, we started the week checking on the paragrine falcons that we have been observing. We were beginning to lose hope that the pair had reared any offspring, but this week we heard the youngsters! We can't wait to see them venture out of the nest and start flying. It should be any day now. We'll continue to observe them until they fledge, to try to pinpoint exactly when they start flying for the first time. We also started doing some habitat assessment in sage grouse habitat. Unfortunately, we only saw signs of sage grouse in one of our plots. Hopefully that isn't any indication of the presence of these cool looking birds. Part of this assessment is to note signs of any other animals, and we found sign of cows, wild horses, coyote, elk, deer, rabbit, and sage grouse. Plenty of animals use that area! On our way out to the study site, we got to see wild horses for the first time! We were beginning to wonder if they really did exist! We had a pretty good view of them, which was lucky for us, because they are usually very skittish around people. We also had another first this week: RAIN! We are coming into what the people of Utah call "monsoon season," although I highly suspect that the term monsoon is quite an exageration!

A scrub jay that we caught while mist netting birds

It has been yet another fun and exciting week as a wildlife biologist! We spent the first two days of the week with a couple people from the Utah state DNR mist netting song birds. We set up 10 large nets along a 3 mile stretch of creek, and then we would drive down the line and untangle all the birds that got stuck in the nets. Although the task seemed daunting at first, we were pros (almost!) by the end of the day. We had to bring them back to the truck, record measurements, and put a leg band them if they were not yet banded, drive them back to the nets and release them and start the process all over again. It was an eleven hour day, but it was so fun it didn't even seem like work. Some of the birds we caught were yellow warblers, lucy's warblers, black phoebes, blue crested flycatchers, mourning doves, a robin, a scrub jay, and a couple others. We also started doing some habitat assessment on the Utah Prairie Dog sites, which is going to be one of our main projects for the summer. While there, we only saw one prairie dog and a bunch of old abandoned burrows. Hopefully that isn't any indication of the current population. We are also keeping watch on the paragrine falcon nest that we started observing a couple weeks ago. We still have yet to see any young, which isn't a good sign, but we're still hoping, and we'll still continue observing them!