Tag Archives: field work

Mid-April Update

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I’ve now been at Chicken Camp for a few weeks. Ryane and Gail got the camp set up and the crew oriented, so I was stepping into a well-oiled machine when my 9-seater turbo-prop touched down in Riverton. There was a light snowfall just after I arrived, and that lead to some great photo opportunities on Chugwater. I shared my first morning on the lek with a birder/blogger/education graduate student named Christian who was visiting camp for the day. It was fun to share the grouse and our project with him, and to learn about his ambitious project to use a “big year” (seeing as many species as possible) as a way to connect with birders and learn about how they use technology and form communities. His website is worth a look: thebirdingproject.com

 

Female sage-grouse solicits a displaying male

Female sage-grouse wanders to the edge of the lek

Territorial male sage-grouse evicts a non-territorial male from the lek

After Christian left, we caught a HUGE winter storm, that over two days dumped at least a couple of feet of snow. I can only remember one storm that left this much– back in 2007, we had another 2+ feet that fell just after peak breeding and left a 3 day hole in our daily observations at Monument lek.

 

Sunrise from camp

Needless to say we were kept off the leks for a few days for a few days with this year’s storm as well. Chugwater lek is fairly accessible, so we were back there after 3 days. Cottontail took another couple of days, and required a tough effort to forge a path there.

 

Photo courtesy Brett Sandercock

We had another visitor, Brett Sandercock from Kansas State University, who came out to Chicken Camp for the weekend. I knew Brett from my Berkeley days when he was a post-doc and I was a wee grad student. We’ve since crossed paths as grouse-ologists– Brett has been working on Prairie Chickens in the Midwest for a number of years. It was fun getting to show him sage-grouse for the first time!

 

 

We also managed a quick afternoon trip to the Nature Conservancy area in Red Canyon.

Lower reaches of Red Canyon

 

The snow seemed to extend the peak in breeding this year, and we had a lot of females showing up in the first week or so after the big storm. From the few banded females we have, we know they were there before the snow and came back again after, suggesting they might have abandoned their first nesting attempt.

 

Two banded males courting a banded female

A very few females we can tell individually even with out bands. Ryane had sent me a digiscope of a white-feathered female that was seen a couple of times early in the season. It came back last week, and one day I was on the lek and able to get some shots.

 

Leucistic sage-grouse hen with white plumage

Losing a nest is generally a bad thing, but our Game and Fish contact said that we shouldn’t be concern. Any females that got caught by the storm were breeding early, and have plenty of time to try a second nest. Add to that the huge benefit that the big pulse of moisture will provide to the ecosystem. It looks to be a green spring out here, which should mean lots of new growth and insects for the chicks.

 

With fewer and fewer females showing up every day, we finally have a chance to start our experiments for the year. I’ll leave the topic of those for another post.

Field season underway… without me!

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In a previous field season, we dug shallow trenches to prepare for laying microphone cables at Monument Lek.

For most of the past decade, the 2nd week in March would find me fully entrenched (literally) in getting our sage-grouse research projects up and running. Not this year. I took on a winter quarter class at UC Davis, and won’t be joining the rest of the crew at Chicken Camp for another couple of weeks. I’m doing what I can to help Gail and Ryane from here, but so far I’ve missed some excitement in the form of minor vehicle and trailer calamities.

From what I’ve heard- it’s been a weirdly warm winter so far, with the area getting rain (rain!) as often as snow, and no permanent snow cover when they arrived at the field site. The males were already displaying on the leks, and attendance seems pretty good, although it’s hard to know how to interpret numbers.  Does more males relative to same date last year reflect an increase in the population, or that the season has advanced, or both? We should have a better answer for this once we see how the season plays out.

I’ve been teaching Behavioral Ecology in the WFCB department at UC Davis this quarter. I’ve never taught BE before, but the subject is definitely in my wheelhouse, and my past experience with Animal Behavior and Intro to Evolution classes have definitely given me something to work from. Hopefully the 60 students in WFC 141 have learned something this quarter! Now to write that exam!

2016 Field Ad – Now Filled

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[NOTE- All positions have been filled 2/2016]

We’ve now started advertising for our 2016 sage-grouse field season. This year will be a little different from normal. Most relevant to potential applicants, this year the positions will be volunteer only (room and board, but no stipend this year). We are definitely sympathetic to the opinion that all technicians should be paid, and, if possible, paid what their work is actually worth. However, when it comes down to it, the choice to get as much research done as possible on our federal grant, continue supporting the dissertation research of at least one graduate student, and yes, providing training and mentorship to technicians, outweighed the alternative (i.e. the alternative being NOT collecting any new data, running new experiments, continuing to conduct much needed population surveys, etc…).

There is a non-zero cost for technicians to join us this year, although we believe that will generally not be too high, since we do cover room and board, and there’s just not much to spend money on during the normal field season. Thinking about what costs will pop up- any pieces of winter gear not already owned, travel to the site, vehicle insurance, cell phone bills, rent at home, etc. In terms of benefits, the position should include coverage under UC Davis workman’s comp. Additionally, technicians typically receive two certifications- a BLM cert for ATV operation and an animal use certification through Davis. The less tangible advantages: working in a really beautiful place with really fascinating birds, getting trained in new techniques, and (hopefully) earning really strong reference letters. We have (or are currently) working on manuscripts that have had technicians as co-authors (although we can’t promise this), and many of our techs have gone on to great careers in ornithology, graduate school. Two former techs even joined the Patricelli lab as graduate students!

We definitely understand that for some people this isn’t enough to tip the scales, but we do believe that Chicken Camp is still a great place to spend a couple of months!

Anyway, here’s the advertisement [note please direct applications to Ryane this year]:

VOLUNTEER FIELD ASSISTANTS (3-4) needed approximately March 7 through May 5 for investigations of the behavior and ecology of Greater Sage-Grouse near Lander, Wyoming and the scenic Wind River Range. The projects are part of a larger effort in Prof. Gail Patricelli’s lab at UC Davis to understand the environmental and social factors shaping sage-grouse display behaviors- see the following websites for more information (http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/gpatricelli/) and (http://www.alankrakauer.org).

Assistants will use video and audio recording technology to support an NSF-funded study of courtship dynamics and display plasticity on the lek. Duties include some or all of the following: maintaining camera and acoustic monitoring equipment, observation of basic courtship behavior and lek counts, capture of adult sage-grouse, radio-telemetry, data entry, and some computer and video analysis. Assistants must be flexible in their needs and comfortable living and working in close quarters in a remote field station, and able to work in adverse field conditions (mainly MUD, WIND and COLD).  Work will be daily and primarily early in the morning, with afternoon and night work required as well.

Applicants must have a valid driver’s license, basic computer skills, and have participated in at least one field biology project in the past. Previous experience/certification with off-road driving and/or ATV’s is preferred but not required (uncertified individuals will have the opportunity to get ATV certification in-field). Individuals with previous sage-grouse capture experience especially encouraged to apply. Must be able to show proof of United States employment eligibility.

Assistants will receive food and shared housing, but need to provide their own transportation to Lander and their own personal gear.  Please send a single PDF containing a cover letter, resume, and contact info for two (2) references to: Ryane Logsdon, Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, 2320 Storer Hall, Davis, CA 95616, or preferably by email to rlogsdon [at] ucdavis.edu.  The positions will remain open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately.

 

Photo Milestone

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Photo G. Patricelli & S. Harter

One of my main hobbies is photography. Almost all of the photos on this site are my own. I only put a handful of pretty and/or relevant images here on my blog– most of my best photos end up on Flickr. Spurred by a lot of views of some photos I took for a sustainable farming non-profit, my Flickr account just logged it’s 100,000th view! Obviously an arbitrary milestone, but I’m not going to lie- it’s fun to know people are out there occasionally looking at my photos.

 

My most viewed photo is still one of my favorites. This is a night-shot from our Wyoming field work. We were out on ATVs spotlighting to find and catch sage-grouse. I took a 3-hour time exposure to capture the star trails as well as the lights from our activity.

For me this is a hobby, not a business. This is particularly true for the images I capture in Wyoming. I get the privilege of living and working in one of the most beautiful places on earth working with a fascinating but threatened species. I’ve earned this privilege because various permitting agencies see the value in our research, not because they like my photos and want to see me make money on them. That’s why I make my photos available on Flickr as “non-commercial, creative commons.” Any media, education, non-profit use that helps inform the public about our research, sage-grouse biology, or aids in the conservation of grouse and their ecosystem are fulfilling for me personally (and fit squarely under the “broader impacts” mandate of our research as well).

Happily, a few of my photos have been picked up recently, including for couple of Associated Press articles [1,2] as well as a Yale Environment article and an NRDC piece. Sage-grouse will be in the news more and more, and it’s nice that I’ve been able to help put at face to the name, so to speak.

If you are interested in using photos, I’d definitely love to hear about it! Sage-grouse photos are in a couple of albums: either Sage-grouse or, for typically more research related, Wyoming Field Work.

2015 Field Recap Part 2: Research

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As I mentioned in the last post, things seem to be looking up for the sage-grouse. So what about our research?

Lots of sage-grouse watching again this year

A burrowing owl looks in on the sage-grouse lek

We stuck with the same two focal leks that we used last year, Chugwater and Cottontail. Basic monitoring went well, especially with the increasing number of banded birds making it a little easier to get ID’s on the lek, especially in windy weather. We came back with a great set of video and audio data. What is particularly nice is that we can now look at lekking behavior in an increasing population. We now have a lot of recordings from “bad” years in which the population was declining, so seeing how hard males work and what females do in a “good” year, a year with lots of young males on the lek and possibly better overwinter survival, could make a nice contrast when we start to examine the long-term trends in display and mate choice.

The first of our main goals was to continue with our robot experiments. This year, our goal was to try the “outside option” experiment again. We first tried this in 2013, but our additional robots “Salt” and “Pepa” were not constructed until fairly late in the season that year. We started a few trials, but the males were already winding down their display effort and were not responsive enough to warrant trying a new series. Turn to 2015, and we now have our robots ready! Credit to Anna Perry, who devised the first protocol, Ryane, who took the reins this year as experiment planner and main robot director, and of course Gail who put the robots together and has been working with robot birds for a long time.

So what was the experiment? Briefly, there’s a principal from the economic literature that while negotiations and haggling often occur in one-on-one situations, the broader market includes lots of different options and competitors for both buyers and sellers, and the presence of these “outside options” can make a big difference in the decisions that are made in the market. In particular, if a seller is engaging with one buyer who is not terribly eager to buy, the seller might benefit from switching to a new buyer, but only if the new buyer seems more profitable or eager than the original trading partner.

We wanted to test this with the sage-grouse, using two fembots as potential “buyers”, and treating the male sage-grouse as sellers. We were able to get trials on each lek where the outside option was either “interested” or “disinterested”. We also ran control trials throughout the season with only a single robot- these will help us correct for seasonal changes in how hard the males work (they seem to get tired towards the end of the season).

A successful night

Our second main goal was to gather a lot of movement and foraging data, so we can uncover the feedbacks between on-lek display behavior and off-lek foraging behavior of the males. This was moderately successful. The first step was catching males and putting on encounternet transmitters. These are small solar-powered devices that can log both where the male is and also capture data about how it is moving it’s body. We managed to get around 20 tags deployed, although we were hoping for more. The tall grass, while great for the birds in providing cover from predators, may have made it more difficult to see the eyeshine at night during our spotlighting forays. Additionally, the age ratio of the growing population meant there were more young males to be caught, and not all of those males set up territories on the lek.

Downloading encounternet data

All in all, we collected tracking data from 7 males, which when combined with the 4 males from last year, should give us a good picture of where males go off the lek and how they spend their time. For these 7 males, we used the positional GPS data to go out and find their foraging and roosting spots, and measure aspects of the habitat at these locations to learn more about how male sage-grouse use the landscape. We also took small clippings of the sagebrush to see how selective they might be in what they are eating.

One new pilot project this year, we collected some poop from the leks to check for the presence of a certain type of gut parasite called coccidia. If sage-grouse have a lot of it, it could be an important factor in explaining differences in behavior. There’s also the possibility that the toxins in the sage are strong enough to limit this type of parasite. Dr. Rich Buchholz at the University of Mississippi has agreed to look through our samples and give us an idea of what we are working with.

Many thanks to our crew this year Amber, John, Miles, McKinzie, and Kelly for their help this year! Also thanks for the help from the Boise State crew, in particular Chelsea and Marcella who stayed at Chicken Camp for several weeks helping catch birds and organize the vegetation sampling. Also thanks to Sue Oberlie (BLM) and Stan Harter (WyoG&F) for local institutional support and a number of people who stepped in once to help capture sage-grouse. We couldn’t have done it without you all!

The 2015 Crew

In the next post I’ll talk about outreach and other odds and ends of the season.