Inner Basin

Hiked into the Inner Basin inside the San Francisco Peaks this fall.  Hit the weather and light just right...

Badgers!

I was fortunate enough to see two badgers this summer.  The first live badgers I have ever seen.  The first one was fairly early in the season, we were driving out to do our normal nocturnal surveys and saw this guy running off on the side of the two track trail.  Chased him down to the entrance of his burrow where he smiled for us.... and by smiled I mean snarled, glared, hissed, and threw dust up in the air!  Cute huh?

I apologize for the crappy pic, but all I had was my little point and shoot.  That, and well its hard to take a picture when you are gently reaching as close as you can get with one hand while keeping delicate, tender and painfully exposed toes away from the snarling badger.  In hind sight a video would have been entertaining.

My second badger of the summer came in the middle of the night while walking back to the truck.  We were in an area where the mountains come right down to the edge of the stream we were surveying, so we were crossing in, over, and around rocky ridges and the sandy washes between them trying to get back to the truck.  As we descended down into this draw we were constantly trying to keep a look out for burros.  The last thing I want is to corner a burro on a narrow trail with the only thing to defend myself with being a net.  As we got down into the draw though there was something else I should have been looking out for....
We started across the sand and heard some brush moving in front of us about 20 feet away.  It was close to the ground, and we had seen many jack rabbits in here before, so I didn't think anything of it.  As we passed that area out of no where a group of about 6 javalinas came storming out of the thick brush! There was no time to react, as they ran within feet of us and straight through some of the thickest brush out there.  No stopping them, they just put there heads down and boom straight through, creating holes as they went.  The noise and commotion and proximity definitely got my heart rate up.  I imagine they'd have the same disregard to my legs as they would to the woody vegetation they just ripped a hole through.  As I turned to keep going down our trail, something moved in the hole in the ground ahead of us

With just enough time to get off this grainy picture, he came out essentially saying "umm, what the crap was all that noise???" before turning back into his hole.

Second Half of Summer Recap

So my summer field season working on amphibians is over.  I had a bunch of pictures to go through, so here are few of the good ones!

First of all, did I mention I seriously kick butt at Wheres Waldo?  I found a Sonoran Desert toad, one of the species of amphibians I was looking for! BOOM! Not only did I find one, I found six! BOOM! No leopard frogs this summer, but finding what you're looking for sure lifts your spirits. 

Not only did I find a target species, but Sonoran Desert toads were a new species for me to see.  I was pretty excited.  The story went something like this, walked up to the sight and noticed this large rock was hopping...  Ya, they are that big. I wish there was some scale with these pictures, think small melon :)

 This actually is the species of toad that spawned the toad licking rumors.  Actually, this toad itself is a controlled substance!  You can be arrested for narcotics if you have them in your possession!  I didn't lick, and don't plan to.  The toxin in there skin and concentrated in those big warts is powerful stuff, enough to knock me over for sure.  Just handling them the little bit that I did works up their glands and they get super slick and slimy.  Definitely made sure to wash my hands when I was done.  Plus do you really want to lick this.......

One of the other biologist was working with Sherman traps (rectangular boxes for rodents; they crawl in, trip the trigger and the box closes around them), and a Sonoran Desert toad somehow managed to squeeze into one and was trapped.  She picked it up first noticing that it was unusually heavy, but the light bulb clicked when a slimy ooze poured out of the corner of the trap. :)

Really happy I at least found one of the animals I was looking for, writing zeros got old after a while.  What was really funny about it all, is after searching far and wide for these guys in some nice desert habitat, I found them in this....

Yup, that would be a bathtub with a drippy sprinkler in it.... I can just see it now as I write my report with conservation recommendations "species requires porcelain and leaky sprinkler heads"

Saw a lot of other cool things as well in the second half of the summer.  Not far from where we found the toads, I was wandering around in some thick Salt Cedar corridors, cursing the tree and its fuzz for going up my nose. Then out of no where I found this guy

 California King snake

I have seen this same species many places else where, but that sub-species was speckled, not banded... I think I like the bands, really pretty and stands out against the rocks and brown of the rest of the habitat.

We've been getting a lot of rain in Flagstaff for the last couple of months.  The monsoons don't mess around up here.  I love it. It makes everything look, feel and smell like an Irish Spring commercial.  Surprisingly I found this little New Mexico Spadefoot hopping around outside my house.  I had only ever seen these guys at much lower elevation in the desert!  I guess he can hike up a mountain too.  He is a really young one, this years eggs.



I made a trip out to Tuscon area for a meeting late in the summer.  There was a large group of us and a bunch of co-workers, so lots of good banter. Ya know the kind, "what you only found 6 toads???"  "Ya, that's six more then you would find!"  We took a field trip out to Sabino Canyon, really just a few minutes outside of the city.  The main objective of the trip was obvious, and guess who found it?!?! I told you I was good at Wheres Waldo.

Gila Monster!  He's like a big lizard tank.

Found some other really cool reptiles down there too.  Check out the colors on this earless lizard.  I chased him around for 45 minutes or so trying to get him to pose. 

We also found some desert tortoises.  This was the second time I had found tortoises this summer.  The first time was randomly in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, with absolutely nothing else around him.  This was also the same night I was stranded :)  Alternators sure do like to crap out on you in the most inconvenient times don't they?  Like when you are 30 miles from anything, without cell phone reception.  At least it was night so I didn't have the sun blazing down on me as I hike the five or so miles out to get cell service.  It was fine, I had my water, I had my bag of potato chips what else do I need?  It was just me and the tortoise.

Long summer, with long hot days. But all in all not bad. Flag is already cooling off, well into the 40's at night. Hmm, so this must be what Fall feels like. I'm not sure Texas has ever had a Fall.

Bat Trapping

Went out last night to do some bat trapping just north of Flagstaff.  We are looking at the species and population characteristics in different forest composition types (ie burned, thinned etc).  Just a few pics of some of the lil guys we caught. I've missed working with these guys.
<colored bands are used to mark individuals>

Measuring ears...

Smile :)

Hope to post some things from my second half of summer soon!

Middle Fork of the Salmon (Frank Church III)

Some quick parting shots from the crags. (Thanks Henson)

After hiking out of the crags we drove around to the campsite on Marsh Creek right on the edge of the River of No Return Wilderness.  Salmon were supposedly seen running up the river and up the creek.  We fished the creek a little the evening we arrived, but didn't see much and didn't catch anything really over 6 inches. 

The plan was to break camp in the morning, bust it the 5 miles down Marsh Creek to the middle fork, fish the middle fork until late afternoon, then fast pack out before dark.  A full day for sure.

The trail down the creek was nice.  For the most part we stayed right on the water giving it a fairly gentle grade the entire way. A nice change of pace from the crags. Pushing hard, we made it to the middle fork in around an hour and a half (light packs are a blessing!).  More trees and understory at this lower elevation.  It looked like a good spot to spot some large mammals, but only saw a single mule deer.

Saw only one salmon and he wasn't particularly interested in anything.  Totally focused on getting upstream.  However, the trout fishing was outstanding.  It seemed every hole held fish.

I hooked into a couple of heavy 14+ fish in some holes as well, this is when I regretted not having a net.  Trying to land a large fish, with light line, while standing on a rock with little bank, in heavy current, is difficult.  I would work them in, get a hand on them and they would make another run every time.  Both fish broke me off right next to the bank as I tried to land them.  This was quickly followed with lots of swearing and rock throwing... followed by bargaining with the fish and assuring them I would release them quickly, depression as I had to tie on a new fly, then finally acceptance.  After all there was plenty of biting fish. 

Even generally bottom feeding whitefish were hitting dry flies off the surface! They had super tiny mouths, but would hit the large flies.  Fun to catch.



The fishing was spectacular and we eventually did have to pack up and head back.  Great day of fishing and a great trip too.

Frank Church II

The fishing at Heart Lake was decent but not fantastic.  The lakes seemed to be a little fished out.  It was the first really good place to camp on the trail and fish so the pressure here must have been higher then else where.  What fish we did catch here were solid though.  Just had to work a little harder for it

We spent the day fishing Heart and the smaller lake adjacent to it.  We decided tomorrow we would day hike north and check out Bird Bill Lake and a couple of lakes nearby it.  Bird Bill was rumored to have golden trout.

The trail around to Bird Bill traversed around a large peak then switchbacked down it.  In places we had to negotiate the snow pack still across the trail, and erosion leaving the trail nothing more then a sandy foot path traversing a steep slope.

Bird Bill kept with the theme... stunning

It was in the 70's, but we were fishing in the snow in places.  Needless to say I had no complaints.  No Golden Trout out of Bird Bill, but lots of good Cut Throats.



We worked our way to the other lakes that we separated from Bird Bill by small streams and marshes.  The fishing at these other lakes was almost silly.  The fish weren't huge there, but almost every decent cast resulted in a rise at least.  The small streams and marshes had a surprise for me too. Amphibians at 9,000 feet! 



Columbia spotted frog

 Western Toad

We fished the rest of the day in this area before hiking back to camp.  We made the decision to hike out tomorrow and head for Marsh Creek on the other end of the wilderness.