Wilderness

So the past few days have been a bit crazy, but in a cool way. Unfortunately I haven't been posting a lot and I apologize, but yeah. Jenn's been here and we've been doing a lot of exploring and some working, too. Thanks to her I now have a good 111 cages for my main experiment which was a good amount of the prerequisite labor time.

Also Sunday one of our fellow labgroups was gill-netting and caught a shark. 3 sharks, actually. Small guys.

That said, it's been a fun time. It rained all day Monday and Tuesday so we didn't get out until late on Tuesday, but when we did finally make our way down to Nanny Goat, it was a blast. By which I mean the wind was literally threatening to blast us off the beach. Strongest wind I think I've ever been in, hands down. Tropical storm weather is intense. That evening too we went for a drive in one of the mules. Tons of white tailed deer everywhere, including a buck that ran a few hundred yards out alongside our mule. Jenn was quite pleased.

Yesterday we finished making some cages and also did the Nanny Goat Trail. Lots of coolness to be seen, including lots of butterflies, a black racer, and a bunch of other neatness. When we finally got down to the beach some of the stuff we found washed up from the storm was pretty startling: a mangrove seed, and a coconut, in particular. On closer inspection, the coconut had some gooseneck barnacles stamped onto it.

Later on we did a bit more exploring, including wandering out to a tree overlooking the marsh that was full of wood storks. They're relatively uncommon and very cool birds, but they sound so ugly. Like a squonk sort of noise. They're nesting in that tree though - babies and all. Didn't see any directly, but the birds themselves are definitely feeding the young in traditional bird fashion (i.e puking). So majestic.

We also wandered out to a little island in one of the ponds linked to the mainland by a system of bridges. On the way out we spotted a family of deer: a doe, buck, and 3 fawns. Deer make me spooky (bucks can be very aggressive) so we stayed our distance, but it was a cool experience. Lots of neatness. There's a little terrace at the end for hanging plants that's seen better years, but still sort of captures the ruined, age-old feel of the island in general. I love that stuff.

As for today, Jenn and I went data collecting on the second mini project. It was fun, and much, much quicker than I would have been alone. We make a lean, mean, science-doing machine. I also showed off my crab wrangling skills to her (as well as all of the common marsh crab species), and as an added bonus, the snails at this site are delightfully well behaved so preliminary data looks good.

My plots. Aren't they pretty?

I'll be headed to Jacksonville with her tomorrow for a cook-out with her family, but I'll try to be better about posting this weekend and in the following weeks. We should be working on getting my main project up and running soon. Also as soon as I get a chance, all of the stuff I mentioned here and more will be posted on my Flickr.