Bird Banders in the News Again!
We caught a kingfisher! And I got to hold it! This is serious stuff. Hence the serious expression on my face.
Last week we had a group from the Martin Meylin Middle School (which is located somewhere in Pennsylvania) visit the banding station. They were such a great group! They were very engaged, and asked great questions. Continue reading
A few weeks ago we had a reporter and photographer from Wyoming Public Radio come out to visit our banding station. They were gathering material for a few different pieces, both about bird banding and also about Teton Science Schools education programs. There might be something more about banding coming out in the future, but for now here’s a radio segment they did about one of the summer camps. You can listen to (or read) the radio segment here: Continue reading
A while ago I went to City of Rocks to climb some rocks (I’m a bit behind in blog posts, too busy doing things outside. Sorry. Sorta. But not too much). It was awesome. I’m pretty sure I kept saying that about every five minutes, how cool it was.
Because it was really cool.
Really.
Except it was actually pretty hot, as being out in the scrub in July generally is. Continue reading
A few weekends ago I hiked up Sheep Mountain, more commonly known as Sleeping Indian. I’ve never heard anyone call it Sheep Mountain, actually. According to Wikipedia, Sleeping Indian is 11, 239 feet above sea level, and is located in the state of Wyoming. It is in the Gros Ventre Range, which is in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, which is the 3rd largest national forest outside of Alaska, which I think is cool. Continue reading
Mikayla is my best friend’s little sister. She is 12 years old. She is also my (non-legally) adopted sister*, as I live with her and her amazing family every time I go to Boulder. (One time, we made penguins. They were awesome). Continue reading
Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal.
On Sunday last week I decided to go for a short hike.
First though, I slept in til 8 a.m. (that’s super late for a bird bander, we normally wake up around 4 a.m.), then spent a leisurely morning over my coffee and Annie Proulx’s book Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2.
“They made a trip out to scout around. Mitchell was stunned by the beauty of the place, not the overphotographed jagsof the Grand Tetons but the high prairie and the luminous yellow distance, which peased his sense of spatial arrangement. He felt as though he had stumbled into a landscape never before seen on the earth and at the same time that h had been transported to the ur-landscape before human beginnings. The mountains crouched at every horizon like dark sleeping animals, their backs whitened by snow. He trod on wildflowers, glistening quartz crystals, on agate and jade, brilliant lichens. The unfamiliar grasses vibrated with light, their incandescent stalks lighting the huge ground. Distance reduced a herd of cattle to a handful of tossed cloves. HIs heart squeezed in, and he wished for a celestial eraser to remove the fences, the crude houses, the one he bought included, from this place. Even the sinewy, braided currents of the wind, which made Eugenie irritable, pleased him.”
(I apologize for the massive paragraph, but that’s how it was written in the book.)
After my coffee and reading, I headed out to Grand Teton National Park and the Taggart Lake Trailhead.
At first, the trail looked like this:
Blue skies, sunny warm day, trail meandering through the aspens along a babbling stream, birds singing… eh, I guess it was okay.
I wore my usual hiking shoes:
My trusty orange Crocs haven’t failed me yet!
I saw some flowers:
Then, the trail looked like this:
And then I was there:
Taggart Lake, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
It was such a nice day, I decided to hike on the mile and a half to Bradley Lake.
On the way, I saw a pine cone and some moss:
I might have taken a number of moss/pine cone pictures. I also might have taken a number of fungi pictures, but unfortunately they didn’t end up looking nearly as cool on my computer as they did in real life. So if anyone wants a bad picture of a cool fungi on a tree, let me know.
And I saw another pretty flower:
However, after a short while the trail started to look like this:
Good thing I wore my postholing Crocs:
The view through the trees of Bradley Lake looked like this:
I wasn’t that impressed, and the trail was knee-deep in snow in some places, so I turned around.
And then I saw a marmot:
I actually almost stepped on the marmot, who was about 2 inches off the trail. He/she/it was not at all concerned.
After the marmot excitement, I braved my way back through the snow to Taggart Lake, where I could kick back, snack on some carrots, and take in the view.
It was a pretty good day.
To commemorate the day, I took a selfie in front of this giant log. Definitely wasn’t trying to get the mountains in the background. Because who wants a picture in front of the Tetons when you can take your picture with this awesome log?
For some reason, it seems like a lot of my sign picture collection comes from Canada. Maybe I just paid more attention to signs because I was traveling alone, and I had the freedom to take the time to stop and take pictures. But I also think that there was a greater number of interesting signage.
Whatever the reason, here are a few more signs for your sign-spotting enjoyment.
What does this mean?
I think it has to do with emergency procedures, in the event that the ferry has technical difficulties and starts sinking or otherwise becomes unusable.
As far as I can tell, this sign is instructing you to do the following:
I’m confused by the order. Gather and then run? Shouldn’t you maybe run outside and gather at the lifeboat? The gathering of people and the lifeboat are seperate pictures, hence the confusion with the order. And aren’t you not supposed to run in case of emergency? Don’t they always tell you to calmly walk to the nearest exit? And in that running picture, are you running inside or outside? Though you can’t tell from this picture, the way out to the deck was actually to the right, not the left, as the arrow is indicating.
Confusion.
Anyway, here is where I believe you are meant to gather, in case of an event necessitating such measures:
At one of these fun-looking lifeboat pods. Well, I’m assuming that these are lifeboat pods, based on the pictures on them. To me they look like giant barrels, but apparently they open up into lifeboats.
Which, if you follow these instructions, turn into life boats. Not sure how that happens, but I guess it works.
Somehow this goes from being a white barrel to a giant orange lifeboat (See steps 5 to 6, 3rd row down). I guess when you pull the cord magic transformation happens.
These seem to make more sense than that first sign at least. However, I’m not sure where you go to get the green suit which all the people in the diagram are wearing.
Luckily, we didn’t have to test this on either of my trips on the ferry.
One last picture, also from Canada, a tiny town outside of Fundy National Park, in New Brunswick.
The sign reads:
Free email?!?!?! Whaaaaat? No way!
I’m definitely stopping there!
(note: I didn’t stop there. Other than to take this picture. I didn’t want to be the one to them that you can get free email from anywhere with an internet connection.)
Look, there’s my face! And my hand, holding an owl. And most of the rest of my upper torso. That would be awkward, if it was just my face and my hand and nothing in between.
Since you may be wondering “What is Paperblog?!?!”, I pulled this from their website for your edification (and edited it a little).
You’re welcome.
Paperblog helps you find quality articles from the blogosphere, providing a participatory media site where talented experts and enthusiasts can share their knowledge and experience.
The best and most relevant articles are not easy to find amongst all the blogs online. Paperblog identified the need to find the best blogs around, offering quality articles to a growing readership.
In the first trimester of 2011, Paperblog International received 10 million regular visitors from throughout the world.
We call on the skills and collaboration of internet users [like the fabulous Lauren Smith], whose efforts are supported by our editorial team. Using certain criteria, we select great articles and organise them by theme. Through navigation and actions (votes, ranking, key-words) Paperblog users then help us with initial selections and classifications.
The Paperblog editorial team then moderates and carries out a further classification in order to showcase certain articles and select Editor’s Picks. Certain Paperbloggers can also request moderator status and participate more actively in selections. We also establish partnerships with Press Groups and other publishers in order to publish the largest possible amount of articles and achieve our objective of providing quality articles to an increasing audience.
In the future, we even hope to produce this content in print!
In the meantime, we hope to offer the best service possible, and will endeavour to make Paperblog your indispensable source of the best articles from around the web!
Oh, and you can read Paperblog in Brazilian, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. Which is cool.
If you ever want to check out Paperblog but don’t remember how, there is a button on the bottom of every page on my blog. It’s the one with blue lettering, that says Paperblog, and looks like this:
I got this in the mail the other day:
This is what the back says:
Smithy,
How’s Boulder? Cambodia and Vietnam are HOT! but the trips have been good. Seems like we got a good bunch of guests on this one (you never know what you’ll get). I’d write more… but I’m too lazy. I’ll think I’ll play some more Plants vs. Zombies 🙂
Max
To summarize:
My friend Max, who works as a naturalist and photograph guide on tours around the world (this trip was up the Mekong River, stopping in Vietnam and Cambodia) sent me a postcard with an old woman smoking on the front to tell me he’s playing a game on his phone.
He always sends the nicest postcards.
At least one of the stamps has a cool bird on it…
Tales From A Wandering Albatross 