You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2006.
I’ve noticed that many of the people on my blogroll have moved to ScienceBlogs in the last few months (Pharyngula and GrrlScientist were there already, of course): Good Math, Bad Math, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, and Carl Zimmer’s The Loom.
It doesn’t surprise me–ScienceBlogs is a good collection of blogs with some very smart and articulate people writing for it–but it does amuse me that it’s happening so quickly.
I have a private bet with myself on who will be the next one from my blogroll to join the hive mind (I don’t mean that in a bad way–it’s a very smart and awesome hive mind). Who do you think will (or should) be next?
National Park Service Director Fran Mainella resigned yesterday after six years of service. During her time as NPS director, Mainella helped create Great Sand Dunes National Park and Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail. She led the effort to get 6,000 park improvement projects started or completed and tripled cyclic park maintenance funding.
Her most important contribution was to foster a culture of partnership within the NPS. During her term, most national parks have formed partnerships with other federal and state departments, local residents, private museums, and friends groups.
Mainella will continue to serve as Director through the planning and celebration of the 90th anniversary of the National Park Service and through the completion of the 2006 National Park Service Management Policies.
Here’s to you, Ms. Mainella: you lasted longer in a tough job than most of us could.
On Saturday I took another of the Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds seminars, “Focusing on Exceptional Nature Photographs,” taught by Kevin Snyder (Event Code: portfolio) of the Catamount Institute.
It was a very basic class–since most seminar students are seeing teacher recertification or education credit, most seminars assume little or no background in the subject–and I’ve already taught myself the basics of photography, but it was useful for students with no background. I personally would have liked to spend more time on composition (my weakest point besides the limitations of my camera), but I had fun.
After the morning lecture, we headed out to the Barksdale Picnic Area (the east side of the park, off Teller Co. #1) for lunch and photography. This is the most easily accessible wet area in the park, so it’s a decent spot for plant photography.
Moth pollinating thistle, Barksdale Picnic Area, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
f/8.0, 1/200 sec
The moth was a very uncooperative subject! I’m trying to convince myself that I like the blurred wings here, but this was the best composition of the shots (almost all of which had blurred wings).
The stream had some interesting opportunities as well.
While we were waiting for birds to fly into the mist nets, we walked around the Manitou Experimental Forest and talked about other signs of bird activity.
A woodpecker nest cavity in an aspen trunk, Manitou Experimental Forest. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
I don’t remember exactly, but I think this nest cavity was made by one of the medium-sized woodpeckers. Woodpeckers, flickers, and sapsuckers play a vital role in this ecosystem, since they use each nest cavity only once. Secondary cavity-nesters, like mountain bluebirds and the rare flammulated owl require woodpeckers for their own nesting purposes.
Flickers make the largest cavities, and the only ones the flammulated owl (Otus flameolus) can use. The Manitou Experimental Forest hosts the longest-running flammulated owl study, and our instructor, Brian D. Linkhart, is perhaps as close to a flammulated owl expert as anyone.
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds sponsor a summer seminar series every year, on topics ranging from paleontology to flint-knapping. Today I attended Ecology and Conservation of Forest Birds in the Pikes Peak Region, taught by Brian D. Linkhart, a professor of biology at Colorado College. A former Forest Service (USFS) employee and teacher, Linkhart has studied forest raptors for 26 years now.
We started at 7:00 a.m. at the Manitou Experimental Forest near Woodland Park, Colorado. The Manitou Experimental Forest has been a USFS research station since 1936.
We got a relatively late start for bird observation; it heats up quickly in the Rocky Mountains in summer, and the best time to set up mist nets is around 5:30 a.m. Mist nets are nearly-invisible lightweight nylon nets that ornithologists use for catch-and-release trapping of small birds.
Linkhart and students set up the first mist net. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
Mist nets work best when set up at the ecotone, which is the border or transition zone between two ecosystems, such as aspen forest and meadow. Many songbirds fly between ecosystems while foraging.
