Love is in the Mucky, Mosquito-Infested Air

So no real news today, but some funny shenanigans.

Firstly, Batwillet has a friend! Possibly a lady-friend! This did not mellow him out one bit today, though. In fact because he had a friend I had 2 squawky neighbors. This displeases me. 6 hours of squawk-ridden data collection is not my friend.

Secondly, as the title suggests, I stumbled upon more marsh couples. 2 more, in fact. Both mating mud crabs. Which is the most awkward and hilarious thing I've seen in a while. Unfortunately I brought my camera but not my cable, so I do have pictures but they'll have to wait.

Piiictures! See the crab on top?

For those unfamiliar with crab anatomy, their reproductive bits are underneath them, on their bellies. Males have a plate that kinda looks like the eiffel tower, whereas females have a broader plate where the eggs sit once they've been deposited. Crab eggs kinda look like a sponge. It's weird.

Suffice to say, to get crab sex, imagine 2 crabs, then flip one upside down, and smack their bellies together. It's kinda like a freaky Transformer but really they're just making babies. Oh yeah also there were mating blue crabs yesterday! They don't do it that way though.

Sorry if this post was a bit too raunchy. Isn't nature beautiful?

Mysteries in the Marsh

So I apologize for the lack of posts/general brevity on my part. Days have been long and busy, and data collection is possibly the most tedious part of good science. I spent 6 hours doing it yesterday, 2 today, and tomorrow will be another long day of it. So with that aside, I do have cool things to share.

Firstly, Sapelo is full of prickly pears. What's cool, though, is they have a pest that's pretty much killing off a lot of them. I haven't ID'd it yet but it's a voracious eater, and also kind of pretty.

 

Secondly, I think I mentioned pretty early on how Sapelo is a study in deep south urban decay. It doesn't disappoint. We went on a walk the other day and I took some shots, and in the process found a raccoon skull and something's pelvis. Oh, wilderness. You so fun.

The Greenhouse. Still haven't gone in or very close.

Houses and wreckage. Fun.

And a stately, if run-down looking house. I think it's one of the so-called Sears Houses.

 As I mentioned earlier though, been in the field quite a lot doing data collection. This can be quite mind numbing. In my case, it's lots of counting snails and measuring their heights over and over and over across 12 different experimental plots, each with 4 rows of 16 stakes each. Lots. Of data. It helps to find things to keep you sane. Especially when you have a willet (a type of marsh/shorebird) screaming incessantly at you.

Like this but noisier.

For days on end this little guy (and I'm seriously thinking it's the same one) has squawked and squalled and done flybys at me. It's seriously like the scene from The Dark Knight where Batman's just about to run down the Joker on his motorcycle, Joker's all braced and ready for it (and in fact cheering him on to do it, because if he did kill the Joker it'd be against everything that is Batman), but then Batman swerves off at the last second because he just can't kill people. It's against his moral code and whatnot.

Yeah this guy is exactly like that. He comes within punching distance but never close enough to hit. I have tentatively started referring to him as Batwillet. Sometimes I encourage him, like the Joker did. Seriously if you've forgotten that scene go rewatch the movie. Such a good one.

I have against my better judgement though started bringing my iPod into the marsh as an escape, but today I had a different escape.

The marsh itself.

The lighthouse from a different angle. Namely, across a creek from the other end of the marsh.

I wandered long and far today, for about an hour after I got done collecting data. My goal? The edge of the marsh, nestled in the high Spartina, literally chest high in plant matter.

Which I found. Also there is a sunken structure that I realize is probably invisible in this shot because I'm a wuss and won't take my good camera  (with the long zoom) into the marsh.

 The journey there was perilously muddy, but fun. Aside from the structure above, I also saw a pod of dolphins (no good pictures, sigh) frolicking and whatever it is dolphins do not far from shore. Very cool stuff.

Additional goodies about this trek? The edge of marsh tends to be oyster beds. And oyster beds are a hotbed (no pun intended) for some very cool crabs.

Despite the similarities, I'm fairly sure this guy is neither white or black claw, instead a cousin. Perhaps Dyspanopeus or Eurypanopeus. Pretty neat though.

Petrolisthes armatus, the green porcelain crab. These guys are absolutely spastic in the way they move and will do anything to get away from you.

The same guy, looking like he's about to lead an invisible lady-crab in a dance or something.

I also spooked some mating blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) which was good for a giggle. They didn't stop. Shameless. 

Also, back on the abandoned theme from earlier, I found another odd structure, half eaten by oysters and marsh, on this trek.

Whatever it is, it's wrecked. Maybe a boat or small railroad car. It had what looked like railroad-esque wheels.

 And a boardwalk to nowhere. Once upon a time it may have crossed the creek in the above shot, but it's long since been out of order.

The vast field of brown on the left is wrack, the term for dead Spartina which floats around until it catches and settles on something, in this case, the bridge.

Honestly, after so much data collection, this was the refresher I needed. A nice reminder of why I enjoy ecology and exploration.

Bad Data Blues

So data is in, and it's weeeeird. Bad weird. May need to retake it or rethink the design somewhat. We'll see! I'll be talking to my adviser about it later.

Otherwise, news is pretty sparse. Just been building more cages and watching movies. Chill, but pretty boring stuff.

Eye Candy

I didn't do much today beyond make lots and lots of cages, so here is some eye candy from a quick hike down the Nanny Goat Trail.

Not from Nanny Goat, but still cool. Very bug-eyed.

These little six-lined racerunners (Cnemidophorus sexlineatus) are everywhere but difficult to corner for a good shot. This isn't even the prettiest of the ones I've seen, but it's the only one who sat still for long enough.

 

Cooler posts to follow tomorrow when I've taken data from the trial run and had time to process it!

A Moment of Relaxation

Many apologies for the terse posts lately, it's been a very busy week and it's not likely to get better for a week or two. In a big rush to get all of my project setup, and the trial run is finally done today. FINALLY.

To put this into perspective for y'all, I spent the past 3 days cutting down the better part of a bamboo grove for materials (it's invasive anyway, haha), trimming the bamboo to size, placing cages, placing bamboo around them in precise increments, catching crabs, catching snails, putting them in the cages, zip tying it all together, and sweating my face off. Most of this I did alone or with one helping hand. I seriously cannot help that helping hand, who shall go unnamed, quite enough.

The bamboo grove was especially murderous, though. I have more mosquito bites on my body than I have ever had in my life. There were literal clouds of mosquitoes there, like the kind you see in children's cartoons. Makes me itchy just thinking about it.

But it's worth it! Because the trial run (Yes, the trial, not the main experiment. That's later. And harder work.) is finally ready and running. My fingers are crossed for good data or all this will be for naught. I will know more on Saturday. Also I promise I'll give a better write up of the main experiment when it's up, but in the meantime I am not risking jinxing this. Not for y'all anyway!

On a sidenote, two cool happenings. The first one merits a story.

So I'd been working hard this morning setting up cages and finally had gotten to the stage where I could start gathering crabs to put into them. I'd wandered into the grass, taking a PVC pole with me. Normally you use PVC to jam into the ground next to a burrow. The sudden pressure pushes water out of the ground (and the hole) which usually shoves the crab out with it. But this time, as I'm wandering, I find a ball of grass. A literal ball, folded delicately and woven. I give it a cursory poke, and out comes flying this small, roughly softball sized blur of orange-brown fur tearing across the marsh. It's squeaking in alarm. I give chase but quickly lose it in the thick marsh grass.

I'd startled a rather elusive marsh mouse.

Like this, only probably not the right species. This is a deer mouse, genus Peromyscus.

These guys are relatively rare. Nests are uncommon, and by the time one is found, the mouse is usually long gone. But I found one. It was so, so cool. I seriously regret not having any pictures of it or even a good species ID. But still!

Secondly, though, my lovely girlfriend Jenn is getting her SCUBA certification this weekend. I'm very proud of her, and also a bit jealous because I haven't been diving in a month and a half now. So wish her luck!

Me, though? I'm going to relax and let my mini-experiment run for a couple days and in the meantime make lots of cages and watch movies and stuff. Whee.

Progress! Sorta.

So today was mostly picking a site for my final project and setting up the mini-survey mentioned in the previous post. It went well, except that I got rained out again and we ran out of materials halfway through, so it'll get finished tomorrow. Hopefully. The going is kind of slow and intense at the moment, so it's gonna be a crazy hectic week or two getting everything running.

On a lighter note, I do have some cool pictures to show off.

A better picture of a white-claw. Only his claws have some blue, too!

Them claws.

This is classic white-claw behavior. They can be very aggressive when cornered and tend to spread their claws wide and stare you down. Black-claws are a bit more kind.

This is not the first nor the last fiddler I've found carrying around a fallen comrade or some other oddity. For those of you who are sappy, he's not mourning - he's going to eat it.

Tonight's the Silliman Lab get-together/seafood fest, so should be fun. And most importantly delicious. I miss real food. See y'all tomorrow.

A Quick Update

So things are really rolling on my experiment! Expect me to be quite busy quite soon. We're doing a quick trial run on the cages to look at some basic data to direct the main experiment, which meant making lots of those cages today. Like 12. And then the plan was to set them up in the marsh.

Only it poured down rain on us 3 cages in. Oof. We'll try to rework it tomorrow, but tomorrow is also the seafood festival/Silliman Lab get together, soooo. Dunno how much will get done. Hopefully it'll work out though and I'll have the main experiment ready to go by the weekend!