At the Big Bend in Texas!

You can guess where Big Bend National Park is located, given it's name - Big Bend...  It's at the very bottom of the Trans-Pecos region of the state, right along the Rio Grande River separating the US from Mexico.  Given that the river is usually very low in some places, it is possible to wander across and step on Mexican soils, although this is frowned upon - don't worry... I obey the rules and have not been across (although have been around when other people have!).

Considering this park is in the middle of the desert, it still attracts quite a few tourists each year, mostly during the cooler months.  It is a little different from my other study sites in that I meet these tourists regularly and am often asked about what I am doing down there - which I am sometimes a bit vague about since my study sites are pretty easily accessible even for visitors and I don't really think they need to know too much about where I am working!  Anyway, Big Bend is a popular gathering place for people interested in lots of different wildlife.  People interested in snakes and other herps go there to look for several different obscure species that are native only to that area.   Birders come to the Chisos Mountains (located in the heart of the park) in hopes to see rare bird species migrating through, or species known in the US only to the Chisos Mountains.  The park is also very informative towards visitors about the presence of black bears and mountain lions, which of course starts rumors of how the mountain lions come into camp sites - in broad daylight - to lounge on picnic tables and steal campers' food.  I have had several people ask me specifically how many of these popular carnivores reside in the park after learning of my research objectives there (and are disappointed when I do not know the exact number)...  Regardless of what I tell them, I'm sure they'd much rather believe the somewhat unlikely rumors so that they can go back to their city homes and tell their friends about how they were brave enough to camp out in known bear and lion habitat.  Most seem to have already made up their minds about what they believe anyway even before they speak to me about it. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure that there are many visitors to the park who know better than to believe every rumor they hear and have only come to enjoy the isolation and wildness of the area - but you always have those few that need to tell you everything they know about the animals there and assure you that what they are saying is absolute proven truth (ehem... even though I am the one with the wildlife degree).  Oh well, I'm sure most of you have run into the same kinds of people in your respective career choices.  And to be honest, it is nice to have a little bit of conversation with humans since I am usually alone for the whole time at my other study sites.  After a while of chatting with the mice I catch, I realized they're usually not too happy with me...

Okay, enough rambling.  I spent the past two weekends working in Big Bend.  I was actually supposed to be in the Davis Mountains but because of the fires, that was cancelled until later this month (this weekend I'll be up there).  I knew it was going to be uncomfortable working in the heat in Big Bend, since it is usually about 10 or more degrees warmer there than it is up here in Alpine, but it was a little worse than I thought it would be... Out of the 8 days that I was there between the two weekends, I think maybe two or three of them were UNDER 100 degrees... Most of them were around 104 or higher during the heat of the day.  Yesterday (my last day of trapping in Big Bend for this season), when I started my first bird survey at the first site at 6:45 AM it was already over 80 degrees.  By 9 AM is was over 90.  Now, I start as early as I can so that the animals I have caught do not have to cook in their little metal traps.  But when they're already on the verge of death around 9:30 AM and I'm just getting to my second site that is not good news!  Needless to say, this particular day was a very frustrating one for the biologist in me.  It was bittersweet because I caught a total of 31 animals between the two sites, a new record for me. However, by the time I got to the third transect of my second site, it was already so hot that unfortunately all the animals (except one that happened to choose a trap in the limited amount of shade there was) did not survive.  Now I know that many may say, "Oh they're just rodents, there are probably hundreds more out there!"  And yes, I agree that it may not be a huge loss, but I do believe that any unnecessary mortality of any animal is well... unnecessary.  Plus, rodent or not, roasting to death in a metal trap has got to be one of the worst ways to go!  But I started before the sun had risen over the mountains... and can't start much earlier than that since it would be dark!  The stress of finding several mouse corpses in my traps combined with the very high temperature working conditions, losing my pen on the first site and then catching almost 20 animals which I then had to record data on by using the video setting on my camera and record it by hand later, cruising the roads for 3 nights straight looking for snakes practically falling asleep at the wheel each night and not seeing a single snake (until one morning when I wasn't expecting it and by the time I pulled over and got out of the truck it had disappeared!), and then realizing that I never actually turned on one of the trail cameras I had set out for the weekend, made this past weekend a VERY frustrating one!  Sorry mom, I know that was a terribly long run-on sentence - I'm sure you were cringing the whole way through :)

Whew, I thought I was going to stop rambling... anyway, I am hoping that it was just a bad weekend, and the rest of my trapping for this season will go a little more smoothly.  Luckily the Davis Mountains have !TREES! and should be a little cooler than it was in Big Bend.  Alright... sorry for the lengthy introduction!

Here are some pictures!

I'll start off with some scenery photos...

I talked about the Chisos Mountains a little bit.. well this is a view of them from a flatter area of the park, and you can barely see them because of the fog... Still I think this picture is pretty cool and wanted to include it... although like most pictures I put up here, it looked much cooler in person!

This is a photo I took during my first trip to Big Bend back in August when I first came down to Texas.  I wanted to put this in here so that you could see how brown it has become since last fall.  Compared to that first picture this looks like a lush shrub land!

Here is another view of the Chisos in which they are a little more visible!  I took this picture this past weekend when it looked like it was finally going to rain!  Although there were apparently showers in some areas of the Trans-Pecos there were none here... But I wanted to put this photo up here anyway since we rarely get cloudy days like this.  It's usually all clear blue sky as far as the eye can see.

This picture is up in the Chisos Basin (which you can see in the right corner of the picture).  There is a lodge with a restaurant and little convenience store as well as a campsite in the basin.  Of course there are a few different hiking trails that eventually lead to some beautiful views of the surrounding desert.  This picture I took from my study site in the Chisos.

This is a picture of my trapping site in the Chisos.  I am actually standing on the road that leads to the basin, so I'm sure people driving by have seen me working up there.  This is the hardest trap site I have out of all 11 traps sites.  As you can see it is pretty steep.  And when you're carrying 45 traps and a few trail cameras it makes things a little difficult.  I spend most of my time climbing around on all fours and making sure I don't fall!  I have learned to grab on to any of the surrounding vegetation whether is has thorns or not!

Here is a view of the sunrise during one of the more cloudy mornings.  I thought the colors it was casting on the sky was really pretty.

These last three scenery pictures are also from back in August during my first trip to Big Bend.  This is a tunnel that goes through a little hillside.  It's hard to tell from the picture but there are also some pretty impressive mountains behind it!

Here is the Rio Grande River with Mexico on the other side!  As you can see, like I said before it would not be too difficult to walk across at this spot in the river.  But again, not to worry - I haven't crossed international borders since I've been down here :)

Another view of the Rio Grande.  The sun was setting and I thought the way it was shining on those rocks was really pretty.

Here are some pictures of a trail that I walked out one afternoon in between running my traps and re-opening them in the afternoon.  It's called the Window Trail (you'll see why in a couple of the pictures below).

It's not very often that I get good bird pictures with my camera, just because they never get close enough or stay still long enough to get a good picture!  Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a couple good photos of birds from the park. This is a western scrub jay.  There are also Mexican scrub jays, but I haven't seen one of those yet. There were a pair of these sitting in this agave plant a little ways into the trail.  They are in the same family as blue jays, and just about as obnoxious and as loud as they are too! :)

This photo and the one beneath it are just a couple views from the basin of the Chisos.  Basically this whole trail was surrounded by tall peaks like this one.  It was really pretty!

Another view of one of the many peaks along the trail.  I liked this trail a lot because there were some areas of dense trees.  Although they were not as large as the trees I'm used to up north, it still kind of made me feel like I was walking through the woods :)

And here is why they call it the Window Trail.  This is where the trail ends, and if you walk much further you'll fall right over the edge of the mountains.  It was a bit of an abrupt end! I was expecting a ledge, maybe with a wooden fence or a rope, but there is nothing keeping you from continuing to walk right over the edge of this cliff.  It was a really beautiful sight though!

Apparently there is usually some water trickling over the edge of this cliff.  There was none the day that I was there, but the rocky ground was so smooth and slippery that I assume what I was told about the water was true.  There had obviously been enough water flow to wear down the rock to such a smooth surface.  I am not afraid of heights, although the thought of slipping off the edge of this cliff almost kept me from carefully inching closer in order to snap this picture.  Luckily there was a little "bowl" among the rocky floor that I kind of slid into to take the picture, and then had to carefully climb out of on all fours.  Definitely enough to get your heart pounding and adrenaline flowing!

I was also lucky enough to have a very nice elderly couple arrive just a few minutes behind me and asked them to take my picture.  At least now I can prove I was there :) It's hard to tell in the picture, but you can kind of tell where that little "bowl" was that I slid into on the left side of the window.  It looks like it goes right over the edge, but it doesn't... at least not for about 2 more feet :) It was a short hike, but very rewarding with the view at the end!

Now some animal pictures! (Personally, my favorite part)

The many frustrations that may occur during the process of actually gathering the data are usually forgotten once I come back and find that I've captured some great photos on my trail cameras.  This was one of those times!  The first weekend I was there during this trapping season I was working on that site in the Chisos that I have a picture of earlier in this post.  I caught 2 GREAT bear pictures on the trail cameras! Look at those HUGE ears! Ha! It cracked me up the first time I saw it.  This is obviously a little bear - but who cares! It's a bear!

Here is the second picture I captured.  I am assuming this is the same bear.  If you look at the times the pictures were taken you'll notice they were both around 7pm.  So when I went back this past weekend I drove up there a little before 6:30 and stopped at a place where I could see that area of the mountain to see if I could see the bear in person.  And sure enough, around a quarter to 7 there he was making his way across!  I was so excited! Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures, but I did get some pretty good views of him through my binoculars.  So I have now seen 2 Texas bears in person :)

Another better moment of this past weekend (actually during the horrible morning that I described above), I caught a new species!  This little guy is a spotted ground squirrel (Spermophilus spilosoma).  When I first picked up the trap and felt how heavy it was I thought it was another woodrat, but then this came shooting out of the trap when I opened it into the bag!  I took my measurements and a few pictures, like this one, through the bag before I tried to get him in my hands, since I wasn't sure how well I'd be able to hold on to him!

As you can see he was not too happy (notice the one hindfoot pushing against my hand), but he let me hold on to him long enough to get a couple more pictures.  What a cutie! I also (rather unceremoniously) "tossed" him on the ground when I let him go since I wasn't sure if he'd try to turn around and bite me... but he just shook it off and looked at me for a couple of seconds before running off... hehe)

This is by far one of my favorite trail camera pictures I have captured so far.  Those of you who are friends with me on facebook have probably already seen this, but I wanted to include it on here too.  Although the bear pictures are always exciting, it is not everyday that you get to see a picture as candid as this one. This fox was making his way off with a woodrat that he had captured for a meal that night.  Good for him!  It's one of those photos that gives me goosebumps when I look at it!

This picture may be a little grainy because I cropped and zoomed in on it a little.  This is a Wilson's warbler.  Although it is not a particularly rare species, I still took a picture of it because it was just hanging out in a bush nearby the trail entrance to my site in the Chisos.  Looks like he even posed a little for me :)  Another grad student came to help me out one morning and she is the one who told me what species of bird it was.  You can't see it in this picture, but Wilson's warbler males (which this one was) have a little patch of black right on top of their heads.

Well that's all I have for now as far as Big Bend goes.  I'll be heading up to the Davis Mountains Preserve this weekend and then have a week off because Bob is coming down to visit!  I'm so excited :) I can't wait to see him.  He'll be here for my birthday which will be really nice and he'll be helping me move into a house that I'll be renting at least for the next year.  It will be SO nice to have a yard and some privacy after living in this dorm-like apartment for the past 6 months.  It will also be nice to have a new place to settle into to distract me again from missing everyone at home once Bob's leaves after the week. It's a little ways outside of the busy part of town, down a dirt road.  It will be a little more expensive than where I am living now, but I know it will be worth it.  There is a house on either side of the one I will be living in that are also owned by the same person.  One house is occupied by a boarder patrol officer (who apparently is rarely there), while the other is unoccupied, so the peace and quiet will be nice!  That is until the trains come through since the tracks are practically in the front yard!  Oh well, a small price to pay for a little bit more comfortable living.  I'll post pictures when I can!  I'm going to try to get a couple more blog posts in before I move since I may be without internet for a little while until I see what I can afford!  It's tough being a grownup!  But I like it (although sometimes I feel like I still have a long ways to go before I'm a real grownup)  :)

As always thanks for reading... I'll try not to wait a month before my next post.  I got pretty busy with school work the past couple of weeks, but had my last final this morning!  I can't believe I'm already done with my first school year down here! One down - two to go!

Love and miss you all!

Laura :)