What have I been up to?

Sunset at SUNY Cobleskill on 1/27/2014.

The holidays have come and gone, winter break has ended, and I’m now back at SUNY Cobleskill taking classes. Over my “winter break”, I was hardly relaxing. I was taking an online statistics course and finishing up the last hundred or so hours of my internship at the DEC! It’s been busy for me and I haven’t had much time to update my blog. But today I found time!

This semester I am taking: Chemistry I, Fisheries Science, Evolutionary Biology, and Herpetology. It’s not a bad schedule, and they’re all pretty interesting. Although, Chem I is going to give me a run for my money!!!


I’m also an officer for our student chapter of The Wildlife Society on campus. We have a great club, and we’re really active on campus and in our community. It takes some work to manage the club because we are so active and our department faculty really impress on us the importance of an active chapter.

Last week in Fisheries Science we began learning about standard methods of “sampling” for fish. This is so an agency, for example, in Nebraska can conduct a research project similar to one running in New York, and we can compare data because it’s been taken in a standard way. Our first lab for the class entailed us driving over to Otsego Lake to conduct ice angler surveys. We’re interested in how much in resources (time and money) anglers are investing in their fishing trips, as well as what kinds/ages/sizes of fish they’re catching. We have the opportunity to go out on our own for extra credit, so my friend Ben and I headed out immediately after class, and spent all day Saturday on the ice of Otsego Lake.

A freshly caught Lake Trout on Otsego Lake, NY

Myself and classmate Ben attempting to measure the total length of this Lake Trout.

In Evolutionary Biology we’re reading this fascinating book, “The Naked Ape” by Desmond Morris.

The first text we’re reading

 in my Evolutionary Biology course, 

The Naked Ape.

Read this immediately.

It’s so interesting to read about ourselves in a totally different way. It was published in 1967, so it’s dated, and theories have changed. Regardless, read it. It will make you think about where we came from, how we got “here”, why we are the way we are.

I purchased it for the Kindle app and have it on my iPad, which is making for a whole new reading experience. Normally I like to read a physical book, but for my last semester, I decided to purchase as many books as I could via Kindle and just tote around my iPad. Six books cost me $63, and the iPad is less than a pound. I wish I had been able to do this from the beginning!

In herpetology last week we learned how to “probe” a snake to determine it’s sex. I have to say, I’m not a “herp” person. I like salamanders and turtles, I don’t mind frogs or toads, but I really don’t like snakes or lizards. It’s not that I’m afraid of them in the sense of getting bitten or scratched, it’s that I imagine them to be crawling with germs. I’m sure mammals have just as much or more germs, I just have this irrational thought in my head that I WILL get salmonella or coccidiosis when handling a herp. SO, when Dr. Losito asked who wanted to probe a snake first, I volunteered right off the bat. I wanted to prove to myself and others that I could do it, and guess what: I’m still alive.

Here I am, with the help of classmates, probing an adult female pine snake.

Here I am, with the help of classmates, probing an adult female pine snake.

To be brief, a small metal probe is inserted in the vent of the snake, and you kind of feel around in there for resistance. If you meet resistance, it’s a female. If not, it’s a male. We have a nice collection of snakes and turtles at SUNY Cobleskill used for teaching and for community outreach. I’m eager to learn more about them.

I’ve had this beautiful Red-bellied Woodpecker visiting my feeders lately as well. I love watching the birds come!

Red-bellied Woodpecker in Cobleskill, NY

SUNY Cobleskill Fish and Wildlife Students at the SCCA Fishing Derby

Wildlife Students at the NYPA

Wildlife Students at the Huyck Preserve

(PS I just set up a camera trap in a really neat spot…hopefully I will have something cool to report in a few days!)

A Visit to "The Shack"

When I first graduated from high school, I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I started a Bachelors of Arts communications degree program at a very small, private college in the Finger Lakes, and I was not successful. Although I completed about 75% of that degree (barely), I left before I started my senior year. I just wasn’t in the right place, and was wasting time and money. After several years of hopping around from job to job, all horrible, yet another blow came: my laptop died- the “blue screen of death”. I had no money, was living at my parents, I was 24, and pretty miserable with my life. Friends were getting degrees, getting married, buying homes, having children, and I was not doing any of those things. Luckily, for me, my mom devised a bribe. She’d buy me a new computer, but I had to enroll in at least one class, somewhere. So, I spent some time looking online at local community colleges, and what appeared to be “fun”. At the time, I was working full time at a very large retail store, and if I was going to take a class, it couldn’t be boring. On the Finger Lakes Community College website, I came across a class called “Introduction to Environmental Conservation: CON 100″ which totally seemed interesting and fun! I enrolled, and began taking night classes a few weeks later.

When I walked in that first night, I was nervous. I had repeatedly felt stupid with my last go around of college, not because I was, but because I hadn’t been invested. But at the time of starting this new class at FLCC, I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to keep up, or other students would be way smarter, or whatever. I had a million scary thoughts. I met the professor, sat through the first lecture, and was hooked. Not only was the content fascinating to me, because I have always loved the outdoors, camping, hiking, wildlife, etc, but the other students were just like me. A variety of ages, backgrounds, and interest levels. Of course there were those who were disconnected, uninterested, rarely came to class- and I commiserated with them. Then on the other end, there were moms and dads who were coming back to school after years or decades of being out. I was right in the middle of those extremes, and I felt so welcomed. But the piece of this that has really been the driving force for me, and almost 4 years later still is, is that professor of CON 100. I won’t make this entry a fan club submission, it’s just that this field trip to “The Shack” cannot be discussed without the inclusion of John.

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.
Image courtesy of www.amazon.com

John introduced Aldo Leopold to me.

In CON 100, we had to read excerpts from A Sand County Almanac, which is a collection of essays written by Leopold. Leopold is considered the father of wildlife management, and his views changed our country’s ways of conservation and dealing with wild animals. He participated in predator eradication as a young man. He was commissioned to shoot wolves, for example. Less predators= more game, right? Through time, Leopold realized that what we were doing, was not increasing prey species (like deer), but totally disrupting ecosystems. He developed a “land ethic” that gave us ideas about conservation of natural resources (“wise use”), and preservation (no use). This man was also an incredibly talented writer, who meticulously documented everything he observed. Some of these writings were eventually turned into a collection of essays which is now A Sand County Almanac. I would wager that all environmentally-focused students are required to read at least sections of this book. We must, as wildlife managers, stewards, biologists, enthusiasts, understand how it all came to be.

A few weeks ago, I attended the 20th National Wildlife Society Conference that was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although Leopold did not personally found TWS, his actions and movements, along with others, inspired the need for a professional organization of like-minded scientists. Leopold also lived and worked much of his life in Wisconsin, not far from Milwaukee. In fact, the area where he wrote A Sand County Almanac, which is fairly “famous” among us wildlife and conservation folk, was only about a 2 hour drive from Milwaukee. And the final cool piece of this trip is that John also attended, and we got to take a field trip with other conference-goers to Aldo Leopold’s summer and weekend abode, or The Shack.

The day after the official conference ended, was when we found ourselves on a Coach bus headed to Baraboo, Wisconsin. Leopold was the United State’s first professor of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. This is interesting to me, since most of my classes are taught by his academic descendants and disciples, and he even wrote the first wildlife management text book. When he wasn’t teaching and working in the city, he wanted a place to escape to, as I’m sure we all do. He bought about 80 acres of agricultural land out in the country along the Wisconsin River. It even had a standing structure on it, which has been termed The Shack. This Shack was actually a tiny chicken coop that he moved his family of a wife, 5 children, and various pets into on weekends and whenever he wasn’t teaching.

There are features around the Shack and on the property that I’ve read many passages about, and the most influential piece was entitled “A Good Oak”. I’ll try to explain what that meant for me, and why I’ve remembered it. A Good Oak begins with a description of Leopold warming by the fire on a cold, winter day. He begins to asks the reader to consider the following:

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from a furnace.”

A glimpse of The Shack across the meadow, with a white oak framing the picture.

I do not consider myself particularly high maintenance or naive, but I definitely did not not grow up planting and weeding a garden, or heading out to hunt to fill the freezer, or even sewing. My family had a small hobby garden for end of the summer tomatoes, rhubarb, sweet corn, and pumpkins. I fished for “fun”. I learned to sew because I was in 4-H and I think that’s somehow one of the H’s. My mom went to Wegmans every Saturday, we went back to school shopping, and while we did have a woodstove, I was rarely part of the fuel collecting. My dad would call a guy, he’d dump already-chopped wood in a huge pile in the driveway, and sometimes my sister and I would be forced to help stack it and fill the rack in the garage. I was an outdoorsy kid though, I liked camping and the idea of “living off the land”. I just was born into the 20th century in a 1st world country, so I didn’t HAVE to live off the land.

Leopold reminisces with us about that Good Oak. With each pass of the saw through the growth rings, he speaks of what happened in the world that year.

The saw that cut the Good Oak.

“Now our saw bites into the 1890′s, called gay by those whose eyes turn cityward rather than landward. We cut 1899, when the last passenger pigeon collided with a charge of shot near Babcock, two counties to the north; we cut 1898 when a dry fall, followed by a snowless winter, froze the soil even feet deep and killed the apple trees; 1897, another drought year, when another forestry commission came into being; 1896, when 25,000 prairie chickens were shipped to market from the village of Spooner along; 1895, another year of fires; 1894, another drought year; and 1893, the year of The Bluebird Storm,‟when a March blizzard reduced the migrating bluebirds to near -zero.(The first bluebirds always alighted in this oak, but in the middle, nineties it must have gone without.)”

Of course I brought my copy of A Sand County Almanac with me to visit The Shack. And I also had the pleasure of eating an apple from a tree Leopold himself planted.

The Good Oak is of course long gone, but perhaps relatives of that oak are sprouted around the property. There was a large group of us visiting the Shack that day, so while some were actually inside the building, others of us wandered the grounds. I stopped to collect a few leaves and acorns for my journal that I try to keep when I travel. The acorns, perhaps, I’ll get to plant some day, when I own my own slice of land.

It was a terrific trip for me, a budding biologist, to take with her friend and mentor. Back in CON 100, John imparted the words of Leopold to me, and gave me a solid appreciation for the man who “paved the way”, and for delving into a hard read. If you haven’t read Sand County, please do, but realize that Aldo Leopold was a BRILLIANT man who had certainly had a way with words. The passion in which John read us excerpts in class, and they way he explained what it meant to him, has stuck with me these past 3 years. I’m now in my senior year at SUNY Cobleskill, and about to hit the ground running in May. I am glad to have Aldo Leopold’s book in my back pocket, should I need a “reality check”. John has his own blog entry, The Shack, where he details our trip in his own words. Please click over to see!

The Shack is also on the National Register of Historic Places, which gives it federal protection. Check out this document (Aldo Leopold Farm and Shack) for some great pictures of the property and shack from recent times, and while it was in use by the Leopold Family. If you ever find yourself in Central Wisconsin, make a point to stop at the Shack. There is also the Aldo Leopold Foundation visitor center just down the road, which has great information about stewardship, living green, and history of the family.

Thanks for sticking in for a long entry, this was a really fun entry for me to write!




Myself in front of Aldo Leopoldo’s Shack.



Aldo Leopold shown in front of his shack in ~1940. Photo borrowed from: UW Digital Archives

Inundated by wildlife!

Collecting waterfowl food items for a project at

Rossman-Fly Pond 9/30/2013. Photo credit: Tyler Barriere

And, no I’m not literally inundated by wildlife, unfortunately. This semester has been my hardest yet. Upper level courses, lots of work, extracurriculurs, traveling, and my internship have all kept me very busy the past 9 weeks.

I’m currently enrolled in: Mammalogy, Wildlife Damages Management, Ecology and Management of Waterfowl, Chemistry, and Statistics. Chem and Stats are both 100 level courses, but foreign to me, so they might as well be upper-level work. The courses are great, faculty is great, it’s just the nature of the beast. Being an undergraduate requires time-consuming writing, reading, journaling, lab-writing, test-studying, and flashcard-making.

Getting ready for the Quiz Bowl competition

with the team from SUNY Cobleskill!

In addition to that, I try and make time to attend our college’s student chapter of The Wildlife Society. I have been really involved throughout my college career with TWS, and it’s been really rewarding. Sometimes, some of the best learning happens outside of the classroom. I’ve also participated in all kinds of events that have helped reinforces things I did learn in the classroom.

The most recent TWS event I was involved with, was that I was accepted to travel to, and present at the national conference held last week in Milwaukee, WI. My previous blog entry describes a bit of that trip. To make it brief though, I got to spend a week with professionals and students of all levels, talking about wildlife. Wildlife nerd HEAVEN! I even participated in the nerdiest thing of all: Wildlife Quiz Bowl. Colleges submit 1 team each to this “Bowl”, and answer trivia questions about wildlife, policy, history, etc…and compete. SUNY Cobleskill did NOT win, but we did make much farther than the previous year’s team!

THE "Wildlifers" mecca.

I sat in on many presentations about wildlife-related research happening around the world. Everything from river otters in the Finger Lakes, to gray wolf resoration in the Midwest, to the lack of wildlife collegiate-level education that’s available in Japan. It was awesome.
I also got to meet up with two fellow bloggers: “Trailblazer” and “xdhaas“, which was pretty neat as well.

The week ended with a phenomenal field trip, that perhaps only a true wildlife nerd or conservationist would appreciate. I will go address that in a subsequent blog entry though.

What else have I been up to?…

In my Mammalogy class, 3 of my classmates and I are going to attempt to live-trap a fisher, and with the assistance of our professor and with a professional DEC biologist, we’ll depoly a GPS collar on the critter.



A fisher visiting a bait set in Schoharie County.



Taxidermy mount of a fisher

modeling a GPS Lotek brand collar.

We’d like to put on a collar on the guy/gal at left, and track it’s movements. We’ve only gotten 1 picture, above, in the past month of prebaiting the traps. This means the traps are in the woods, locked open, which allow the animal to check them out. Then, when it’s time (hopefully next week), we’ll trigger the traps to close once an animal enters. This is all dependent on the wild animal of course.

While we were talking about our plans and logistics last week, we decided to try our collar on a receptive critter. Our taxidermied mount of a fisher. She didn’t seem to mind!

And, just so I’m clear- this isn’t “just for fun”. This takes the cooperation and involvement of our group members, our professor, the college holding a collection permit allowing us to live-trap, and DEC staff to assist us in the chemical immobilization, handling, and collaring of the actual animal. If we ever get to that point! Unfortunately, the fishers have been scarce all fall. And our project is due in less than a month.

I’ve been so busy this semester, that I haven’t written nearly as often as I like. I have so many things to write about, I will keep trying to get entries written when I find the time!

#tws2013

http://wildlifesociety.org/

Here I go again! I'm sitting in the Albany International Airport awaiting my flight to Chicago then to Milwaukee! I'm attending the 2013 National Wildlife Society Conference in Wisconsin this coming week. I've been looking forward to attending this conference for months, especially since I found out in June that I had been accepted to present a poster on black bear work I have been involved with for the past 3 years. I consider myself quite fortunate to have been connected with people at Finger Lakes Community College and also who are facilitating the National Science Foundation grant that FLCC administrates: the Community College Undergraduate Research Inititative.

I came into FLCC just as the CCURI grant was awarded (Finger Lakes Community College Earns $3.35 Million Grant) and my professor/advisor (John at Backyard Beasts) is also a co-principal investigator of the grant. I began studying in John's Black Bear Management class at FLCC, and learning about this interesting and understudied type of marking and behaviors that black bears have been observed creating. I began reading everything I could about black bears, and eventually John suggested presenting our class's work at a local student science conference (Rochester Academy of Science). I put together a 12(ish) minute long oral presentation, and started on a "quest" of sorts. I didn't realize at the time that in a few short years, I would be applying and getting accepted to national conferences with this topic. Since that first presentation, I've presented at: the Finger Lakes Institute Research Conference, the Northeastern Natural History Conference, the State University of NY Undergraduate Research Symposium, CCURI's own 1st national conference, and the National Conference of Undergraduate Research. It's amazing to me.

I am just so grateful to John, and Jim Hewlett (the brilliant man who wrote the grant, and who is now it's executive director) for all they are doing for URs like myself. There are countless others who have made this thing possible for me and other students, and I give you all a shout out as well!

So off I go! If you're at the TWS conference this week, perhaps we'll run into eachother.

 

 

John and I at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts this past summer, posing next to a bear-scratched and bitten red pine.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology field trip!

Myself at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology!

This past weekend (4/20/13) a group of Wildlife Management major students journeyed to Ithaca, NY to check out the Bird Nerd Paradise: the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The CLO is known nation, and perhaps, world-wide. Anyone who’s anyone in the world of birding has probably checked out their awesome website All About Birds. I highly recommend you check it out! So what is ornithology? It is the scientific study of birds (anatomy, ecology, etc), and how they interact with their environment. I don’t claim to be an ornithologist, at best I’m a bit more than a backyard birder. We have multiple types of feeders set up in our yard that brings in common feeder birds. But I also have gone actually “birding”, which is basically just going to a specific destination with no other purpose other than to observe wild birds! Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in March- go there and see hundreds of THOUSANDS of Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens). It is amazing.

So to live just hours from Cornell University, and their Lab of Ornithology, many of my classmates and I really wanted to check it out. Also, many of us are currently in SUNY Cobleskill’s spring offered Ornithology course, so birds are really on our minds. We’re tested weekly on sight identification and aural song identification of a given list of birds, which changes every week. By the end, we’ll have hopefully successfully committed to memory just around 150 birds!

The male Great Blue Heron on the nest

 where the ‘Heron Cam’ is posted!

We got to the Lab around 9:30 on Saturday morning, and what most of us immediately wanted to see was the “famous Heron nest”. For the past several seasons, perhaps longer, there has been a live-feed camera mounted on this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) nest in a 50 foot tall dead white oak tree, in the Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary. I’ve watched this camera on and off for the last year or so. It’s sometimes calm, with the Heron just sitting and incubating the eggs. But last year, a Great-horned Owl made it his/her mission to attack this poor Heron! I happened to be watching when an attack happened, and it was intense! There’s also sound, so sounds of a wetland are streaming. It’s beautiful to see and hear. The picture at left is a picture from the visitor center of the nest, with the male on it. As we walked the paths through the woods around the pond, we were able to catch better glimpses of it. For the live view, PLEASE check out this link, it is so cool! Heron Cam!

Inside the CLO it’s kind of like a visitor’s/nature center. There are a few interpretive displays, taxidermied mounts of various birds, art work, an auditorium where various presentations are held, and my favorite part- the wall of windows.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

The floor to ceiling windows overlooked the wetland. There were chairs and scopes available to watch the birds. While we sat there for a few minutes, we saw a Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps), a pair of Common Mergansers (Mergus merganser), a Hooded Mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus), Red-winged Black Birds (Agelaius phoeniceus), the Great Blue Heron, Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and Canada Geese(Branta canadensis). There was also a feeder-watching station where we watched Pine Siskins (Carduelis pinus), American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis), Northern Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis), Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis), Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), Red-winged Black Birds, House Finches (Carpodacus mexicanus), and probably more that I can’t recall.

Male Red-winged Blackbird- Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary

Male Hooded Merganser- Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary

A pair of Common Mergansers- Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary

A (female?) Canada Goose on a nest right next to the entrance to the visitor center!

A female Mallard taking a rest. It’s hard being a duck!

A Pied-billed Grebe, which is a New York THREATENED species, in it’s summer plumage. This was a good one I added to my ‘life list’!

A pair of Hooded Mergansers. While we were watching, the female actually caught and ate a small fish!

After spending sometime perusing the gift shop (which had everything from $2000 optical equipment to bird seed), and bird-watching from the windows, we started to hike the paths around the wetland.

IMMEDIATELY upon leaving the building, this Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) flew right over the top of me and landed in a tree. It was the closest I’ve ever been to one!

Red-tailed Hawk at Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary.

Check out the tail on this Red-tail!

The paths brought me back to my semesters at Finger Lakes Community College, where I attended and received my Associates degree. There are awesome trails on the main campus like this.

Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary

Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula)

Male American Goldfinch

Male Northern Cardinal

Male American Robin (Turdus migratorius)

It was a great morning. The weather was a bit cold and snowing a bit, BUT the birds didn’t seem to mind. I’d love to go back and walk the trails on a really warm day, or attend when an event is happening. Before leaving, we stopped back inside, and I was able to get the following picture of some Siskins feeding!


Pine Siskins on the tube feeder

Thanks to Krysten, our Wildlife Society’s co-adviser for taking her personal time to drive!

 

Group photo! I always love a group photo :)

 

 









CCURI and NCUR

I know, that's a lot of letters. I'm in a bit of a lull with camera trapping and other fun projects, so I thought I'd share these exciting upcoming events with the Blog World.

Myself and a male black bear in Addison, NY
February 2012. Photo credit: John Van Niel

While I was a student at Finger Lakes Community College in Western, NY I was able to participate in a truly unique course titled "Black Bear Management". For my entire life I have been infatuated with black bears. I will admit that up until 3 years ago, my infatuation was totally based on looks. I was shallow. Bears of all sorts are so darn cute!

But since participating in this class, I've grown to love them for what's inside. And what they do. And how they do it! Black bears are relatively common in NY. They are not found at an even dispersement across the state, and you are not able to hunt them just everywhere yet. But, they are conspicuous and pretty darn cool. So when they ARE around, you know it.

The one part of BBM that I want to share briefly is this project of studying a particular marking behavior that black bears do. If you'd like more information on the specifics, see here and here.

Through a grant that jim Hewlett, a faculty member at FLCC wrote, the Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative through the National Science Foundation was born. CCURI has been influencing undergrads across the nation for the past 2 years, and I was lucky enough to attend the homebase college. CCURI funded not only the class, but funded a trip for my class to attend an area in Massachusetts where these marking behaviors were being documented by a couple of researchers. After that trip, the professor of the course, John, was so excited about what we were learning that he urged us to put a presentation together to share it with others. I ended up being the only student left that following semester (Fall 2011) because everyone else had graduated. That's the problem with community colleges...high rate of turnover! Since that summer, I've presented at the:

·         38^th Rochester Academy of Science Paper Session, Monroe Community College, Henrietta, New York, October 29, 2011

·         7^th Annual Finger Lakes Research Conference. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York, November 19,2011 (Awarded Best Student Poster)

·         3^rd Annual State University of New York’s Undergraduate Research Symposium, Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York, February 19, 2012



·         Northeastern Natural History Conference, OnCenter, Syracuse, New York, April 16, 2012



From left to right: Barb Dagata, the SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher,

Courtney Stein, and myself at the SUNY Undergraduate Research Syposium.

February 2012 - Photo credit: Beth Van Winkle 

And NOW I'm excited to share that I was asked to attend CCURI's very own national conference this coming March in Washington, DC! I will not only be presenting my poster, but I will be speaking to a group of students about the struggles and triumphs I've experienced as an undergraduate researcher in a community college. Even though I am no longer at FLCC, those 2 years were the best of my life so far and that is largely because of the opportunities I was presented as a student.

Also, back in November, I applied for the National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR) which is being held in La Crosse, WI. I, along with 2 other FLCC students have been accepted to present our work. Melissa is presenting on work she's done in the caribbean monitoring coral reef degradation, and Michael is presenting on methods of river otter scat preservation for future DNA testing. We are all honored and excited to rub elbows with other undergraduates at this prestigous event!

 

I have one possibly two more events coming up this year that I will be presenting at. One has not been announced yet, and so I'm going to jinx myself and share that...just yet. The other is the National Wildlife Society Conference being held this October in Milwaukee, WI.

 

I have a lot of exciting things coming up, and I'm very thankful to have these opportunities available to me.

NuCanoe Elite Paddler's Package...RAFFLE!

Photo credits:
www.wildlife.org,
www.cobleskill.edu

During my time at Finger Lakes Community College over the past couple of years, I was very involved in the student chapter of The Wildlife Society. I became the President in the fall of 2010 and was lucky enough to be voted in for a second term which ended this past spring. Since I transferred to SUNY Cobleskill, I have become a member, rather than holding an officer position…but I’ve still been involved in the chapter. I loved my experience at FLCC, and our rather new and small chapter. Cobleskill’s chapter has been around a bit longer though and have a better student participation I think, because it’s a 4-year school rather than a 2…so they get to do bigger and more glamorous events!

Every year there is a national conference held either in the western US, central states, or on the eastern seaboard (it rotates yearly). Just this past October, select members travelled to Oregon for the conference. In 2013 the conference is being held in Milwuakee, Wisconsin! I love WI, I’ve been there once…and had a great time.

I’m interested in attending this conference, and just submitted my application to our chapter faculty advisor, Kevin Berner. There were several pages of short answer-like questions asking about why I think I’d be a good representative of SUNY Cobleskill, what species I’d like to see in WI, if I own my own binoculars, and what courses I’ve taken related to wildlife and plant identification. I’m crossing my fingers that I get accepted!

SUNY Cobleskill students at a temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula in NW Washington during post TWS annual meeting field tour. Photo Credit: Kevin Berner

To help offset the cost of the trip, we’re participating in a raffle! The New York State Wildlife Society Chapter is actually the “parent” of this fundraiser, but as a student chapter within the state, we get to participate.

We are raffling off tickets for an elite canoe package!

-The package includes: (1) 12′ NuCanoe in OD Green, (2) aluminum paddles, (2) personal floatation devices, (2) captain seats, (2) paddle/rod holders, and (1) sportbox. (For more information about the canoe, check out the NuCanoe website)

-Tickets are $5.00 each or 5 tickets for $20.00

-The drawing will be held April 7th-9th at the annual NYS Chapter Meeting…the winner DOES NOT need to be present to win.

So this is a shameless cast out there- if you’d like to buy a raffle ticket and help to fund my WI trip, then please leave me a comment! If I should not be chosen to go, the money will end up in our chapter’s account and will be used by students.

Thanks for letting me plug our club’s fundraiser!

Sleeting, and Snow Geese, and Sandhills...oh my!

Photo credit: The Wildlife Society

When I was at FLCC, I was very involved with their chapter of The Wildlife Society. I was elected to be the president in the fall of 2010, and then was lucky enough to keep that title through 'til I graduated in May 2012. My current college, SUNY Cobleskill, has a very active chapter. I think it's a bit easier for a 4-year school to keep members, there's less turnover and more momentum between school years. And because FLCC is still very near and dear to my heart, I had wanted to do a joint event between the chapters. FLCC and Cobleskill have a good articulation agreement, so many students transfer here from there, as I did, and I thought it would be cool to get the 2 groups to mingle!

Students here already had a field trip planned to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in Seneca Falls, NY for this past Saturday, 11/3. For FLCC, this is a quick 35/40 minute drive. For us, it was more like two and a half hours. BUT it's worth it. This past spring I planned this same trip for FLCC's chapter, and we had a great time. Check that out at: Wildlife Wednesday: April 18th, 2012.


Photo credit: Google Maps
A= FLCC, B= Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, C= SUNY Cobleskill
 

Montezuma is located at a prime location for migrating waterfowl. As you can see at letter B, the Refuge is located between NY's Great Lake Ontario, and at the northern end of NY's largest Finger Lake, Cayuga. Montezuma is a complex of wetlands. There's a lot of emergement vegetation as well as open water for birds to rest at. In the spring and fall, it's an AWESOME place to bird at. Upstate NYers are lucky to have this great spot to visit.

I've been many, many times with my family, friends, classmates, and fellow club members, and I can add to my "bird list" everytime I visit. What made this visit unique is that not only are waterfowl migrating, but we just experienced Hurricane Sandy here in the northeastern United States. While Upstate New York really didn't suffer from Sandy, the birds may or may not have been blown about, and they're using this Refuge even more than normal.

The day we went was cold, rainy, snowy, windy...not ideal for us, but the birds didn't seem to care. My only complaint about the weather was that I couldn't keep my binocs and camera clear of water droplets. I did the best I could with pictures, but the lighting wasn't the best. There were some cool birds there this time. The following is what I could best capture!

Oh, and by the way: our day was led by John Van Niel, a past professor of mine, current prof at FLCC. He has volunteered for years at MNWR, and know his birds. I selfishly wanted him to lead so that I could visit with him and the other FLCC students, and I think Cobleskill students enjoyed him too. Thank you JVN! (John's the one who got me into blogging, please visit his blog: Backyard Beasts)

We caravan'ed around the Refuge. There is a several mile "wildlife drive" that you can take, and there are several spots to get out and observe (from the road). This was one of them!

Cobleskill TWS Treasurer Kristi is using one of Cobleskill's PREMIER spotting scopes: a 85mm Zeiss Diascopes, 20-75x. I've heard that apparently we have around $45K worth of this gear, which is pretty awesome!

Canada Geese

The next place we travelled to was the Tow Path Road. John said that this was open to the public, but I'd like to think it's a secret spot. Because we saw this:

Sandhill Cranes!

 

Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Soldotna, AK
May 28, 2012

Sandhill Cranes are special to me, as I'm sure they are to many people. I first learned about these birds in the Conservation 100 class I took almost 3 years ago. John was the instructor of that class, and drilled Aldo Leopold's collection of essays, "A Sand County Almanac" into my brain. I'm a reader. I love it- BUT this was and is a hard read for me. I've since picked it up 4-5 times and tried to read it cover to cover, and I can't. So instead, every now and then I pick a story and read just that. Aldo purchased his "shack" in Wisconsin because he heard that Sandhill Cranes had been seen nearby. So he purchased this land with hopes of seeing them one day. This was back at the turn of the century, when populations of animals were low due to overhunting and slaughter. Aldo is the Father of Conservation, as he's known, and established the beginnings of managing wildlife in the United States. John also has a few great Crane stories himself, and told me before I went to Alaska this summer, to watch for them. He told me that even though I may have never heard them before, I'd know it when they were near.



Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge
Seneca Falls, NY
November 3rd, 2012

My first night in AK, I was sitting on my porch (at 11:30 pm reading in the daylight) and heard this bizarre trumpeting. I ran down the steps out into the open of the parking lot and stood staring, open mouthed at a pair of Sandhills flying over.

 

It was magical.

 

So now, I associate that sound with Alaska. You know how sometimes a particular smell or sound can bring you back to an earlier time and place? That's what these Cranes on Saturday did for me. Brought me back to my cabin in the black spruce and poplar forest I lived in for 3 months.

Ok, anyway...



Snow Geese

Assorted ducks and swans and geese...not sure of species. This was REALLY far away...

AnotherSandhill Crane...and for more information on birding at MNWR, visit: Montezuma Birding.

 

It was a great time for all, and I hope we can do a joint event again in the future!