Elephant Mountain is an area that is protected and managed by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD), making it a Wildlife Management Area (WMA). This is one of my study sites - the closed one to Alpine. It only takes about a half hour to get there from Alpine, which is nice compared to the hour long (plus some) drive to my other sites. That may not seem that far either, but when I'm leaving after classes and trying to get back at a reasonable time on Sundays in order to prepare for classes on Mondays, only having to travel from EM is pretty nice! Anyway, that's beside the point.
I spent the past two weekends at EM starting my second season of trapping. This also included beginning to do herp surveys in addition to small mammal trapping and bird surveys, but I'll get to all that later.
I have to admit... lately I have been REALLY missing home - and kind of hating the desert. I go through times when I am selfishly tired of the heat, dryness, and lack of trees... I've been feeling this way pretty strongly the past couple weekends as I was doing some of my fieldwork. What usually happens during times like these is that I witness some natural event or scene that reopens my eyes and mind to how truly beautiful it is down here - despite the differences from home - which I am still getting used to. Maybe it's just God's little way of reminding me that I'm blessed to have been given an opportunity to learn about a completely different ecosystem (one that He created!) than what I've been exposed to for most of my life. Seeing the vast expanse of the desert, lined with mountains that even though may not be the biggest I've seen, still manage to take my breath away when seen in the right light or from the right angle, make me feel very small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It's very humbling, and usually puts me back in my place fairly quickly. This time, the 'natural event or scene' was revealed to me by way of a simple sunrise and sunset. Something I've seen many times in my life, in many different places, but for some reason this weekend it really touched me. And the pictures don't do any of it justice at all! Still, I figured I'd share them :)
First was the sunset...
As I set out to begin one of my nighttime road cruises looking for snakes and lizards on the road, I walked out of the bunkhouse and had this for my view. In real life everything is much bigger than how it looks in these pictures!
As I travelled further down the road, the sunset was behind me. I couldn't help but stop and get out to take some more pictures. Even after the sun had disappeared behind the mountains the colors of the sky were still bright and beautiful. It's amazing what a few clouds can do to create a truly amazing sunset!
...Followed by the sunrise!
The next morning I went to my site to begin my bird survey and start checking small mammal traps. Soon after I started looking and listening for birds at my first point, I was distracted by this scene. It was fairly overcast that morning but the sun might as well have been shining directly on my face!
As the sun continued to rise the color spread out across the whole sky. It was so beautiful!
This is the east side of elephant mountain which is directly behind me in the picture above this one. That is the amount of light that the sun shining off of the clouds was giving to the area around me. That's pretty bright! And the funny this was, once the sun rose above the clouds - it was a pretty dull and dreary morning without any color at all...
Well, after that my respect and admiration of the desert was reinstated... right up until this morning when it was SO windy that I could barely run my traps!! I got over it though :)
Anyway, moving on... One thing Elephant Mountain is pretty well known for around here is it's population of bighorn sheep. A lot of effort has been made in the past several years to increase the number of bighorn sheep in the Trans-Pecos since their population was once overexploited (I don't remember exactly what happened to them though). Anyway, the project has been pretty successful and they even moved a large number of sheep from EM to Big Bend Ranch State Park, which is right next to Big Bend National Park. They did that back in December and it even made the Washington, PA newspaper! A couple other Sul Ross grad students helped with the capture, but unfortunately I was flying home for break for one of the capture days. Apparently they are planning on doing it again December of this year... so maybe I will get to help then!
Here is a picture of a couple bighorn sheep rams. This was back in January when I did my first round of small mammal trapping and bird surveys at EM. I was pretty excited to see some!
EM also has cattle on it most of the time too. I don't know if they lease out the land to other cattle owners or what, but I was able to experience them up close and personal this weekend! There was one cow on one of my study sites last weekend that seemed to show up out of nowhere when I came out of running my mammal traps. I didn't think much of it, and kind of enjoyed the company when she was around... She never bothered me, but did take an interest in one of my trail cams!
Here are some pictures of her being curious.
Of course animals seem to have to put their face right in everything! Guess she just wanted her picture taken :) I actually set up this camera right next to a water tank that was on one of my trapping sites. It's a good place to catch good wildlife photos since water tends to be good gathering places out here in the desert, obviously!
I thought this picture was funny since it's obvious she messed with the camera enough to make it tip forward... so now it's only showing the ground. Thanks cow! Luckily I was back there a couple hours later to fix it.
I had a lot of pictures of her on the trail camera. They were spread out between about 9:30 am to almost 11:00 am! She must have really been interested in the camera... or just had nothing else to do (I've always seen cows in huge groups - so I'm sure she's lonely by herself!). But my brief encounters with her were not close to what I experienced this weekend! Now, I have no idea what they're like to work with - I am no cattle farmer... but I LOVE cows. If I ever get the chance to live on a farm or own a large amount of property I would really enjoy having some cows there too. I know they are not the brightest of animals (which I witnessed this weekend on several occasions), but for some reason they really entertain me and I like them :) I actually really like all farm animals - they always make areas where you get to feed and pet the farm animals in zoos and stuff seem like it's all for kids... but I love the petting zoo part! Anyway... back to the EM cows...
For some reason whenever I would get to the point in the road where they were standing they'd all start walking towards me. I never understood that. Like they were expecting or wanted something from me... who knows... Anyway, that's what they were doing in this picture. And they would all start mooing really loudly. Then they'd quiet down once I passed.
Sorry this picture isn't the greatest. As you can see I was taking it through the windshield. These cows are stubborn! They hardly moved at all until I was practically bumping into them with the front of the truck! Then they'd all turn around and just start running into each other. They didn't seem to be too aware of their surroundings.
Then, once I passed them they usually just stared at me for a while. Sometimes with grass sticking out of their mouths. I was obviously disturbing them from eating and they never seemed too thrilled about it!
Eventually they move out of my way until I would round the next corner and have to dodge one standing right in the middle of the road like this one!
I never really worried about passing by them close enough for them to stick their heads in my window, until I came up to this guy. Those horns look awful pointy! Although he mooed and snorted at me some, he let me pass without incident. I guess we had an understanding :)
Here I came around a corner to a huge group of them! See that opening there on the road that I thought I could squeeze through? Guess again Laura... nice try...
As you can see, by the time I got closer they had filled in the gap and begin moving in around the truck. I'll never understand it!
Not only do they have cows roaming the WMA, but burros too! Burros are like donkeys - another animal that I love! :)
They're also curious, but not as bad as the cows. And they usually get out of your way right away! I think the one on the right in this picture is really pretty!
The one in the back was my favorite. She was the prettiest in my opinion. She had more brown on her back and sides that made her coloring really cool!
It's really hard to see in this picture, but if you look through the bushes to the right of this burro, you'll see another one on the ground with it's legs in the air rolling around in the dirt. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, but it sure was funny to watch!
Ok, enough of the cow and burro pictures. Sorry... I told you I liked farm animals! :) The weekends at EM were fairly successful. I picked up two new small mammal species and even saw a couple lizards (one of which was in a mammal trap!) This past weekend was very very windy! None of the animals I captured were happy, obviously, but once they were out of the trap and I was holding them, they were even more unhappy to be in the wind! They were so squirmy and difficult to hold on to! Still I was able to get some pictures. I'll at least show you pictures of the new species I added to the list.
Here is another wood rat species! Neotoma albigula (White-throated Wood Rat). They are so calm when they're being handled! Such a nice change from the little mice :)
This is a grasshopper mouse. They are easy to identify because of their really tiny tail! There are two species of them in the Trans-Pecos. This one is Onychomys arenicola (Mearn's Grasshopper Mouse).
As I mentioned earlier, I also started doing herp surveys since it is warm enough (hah, warm... it's HOT!). Unfortunately I haven't had much luck with seeing much. I walk my mammal trap transects looking in every place I can for snakes or lizards. The first weekend I found two lizards - more by accident I think... I probably would not have even seen them if they hadn't moved! I didn't see any this weekend, besides the one I caught in a mammal trap. I also do nighttime road cruising looking for snakes that come out on the road at night. I do that each of the three nights I am trapping, but didn't have any luck... hopefully that gets better!
Here is the lizard I caught in the trap. I haven't identified it confidently yet, but I think it is a type of spiny lizard? I'm not positive, but I know another grad student who likes herps, so I'm sure she can help me.
There have been a lot of fires in the Trans-Pecos lately. One occurred at EM while I was there last weekend, and yesterday (Saturday) there was apparently a pretty destructive one in Fort Davis, which is just a little north of Alpine. I heard about it on the radio last night during the road cruising, but haven't actually talked to anyone about it yet. It was bad enough for them to close the road that leads to Fort Davis, and I heard they won't have power back until tomorrow and are taking bottled water donations from people in Alpine. On my way back from EM today I noticed a huge burned area right outside of Alpine (there is a big hill that you travel down to get into Alpine, and from there I could see the whole town and some of the outskirts, which is how I saw the burned area). It was still smoldering in some places, and I know it wasn't like that when I left on Thursday. Luckily, no one was seriously injured or killed in the fire in Fort Davis, but it did do some structural damage there, or so I heard. The fire on the outskirts of town looked to be out of reach of any residential areas, and the one at EM last weekend was fairly small and taken control of pretty quickly. (As I am typing this the power just flickered off... interesting...). Fire down here is somewhat of an expected occurrence since it is so dry, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous or destructive. The fact that it has been super windy the past few days does not help either. I'm sure that has made these fires worse than they would have been if there had been no wind. Still, people down here are used to them, so they know what to do when one starts.
Here is a picture of the fire at EM. It was not very big, although it covered more ground than is seen here in this picture.
This picture and the picture below were taken yesterday (which is when the Fort Davis fire occurred). Now I took these pictures thinking that it was so hazy because it was so windy which caused all the dust to be kicked up. But now knowing about the Fort Davis fire, I wonder if part of this is from that. It could also just be dust - I didn't smell any smoke or anything, so it might have nothing to do with the fire in Fort Davis. If it was dust, you can now see how truly windy it was (and still is) down here! The normally clear blue skies were definitely not clear in these pictures!
Well, I guess that's all I have to say for now. I have two weekends free before I go out to the Davis Mountains Preserve (which is north of Fort Davis), to do my second round of trapping there also. Then after that it's finals for school already! I can't believe how fast this semester has gone by! It's crazy! I'll keep you all posted on what I'm doing!
Thanks for reading! :)
Laura
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