South Carolina

This is Patrick

animalia7 South Carolina Tags: , Leave a comment

This may be slightly mind-boggling, but Patrick is both a place AND a person.

This Patrick (the place) is located in South Carolina, roughly 17 miles from McBee, which is slightly left of the middle of nowhere South Carolina.

This Patrick (the person) is currently located in Florida, somewhere on Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, probably doing something fun like spraying invasive plants.
He can both talk the talk and walk the walk, and is an expert cogon grass eradicator. Don’t let his mild-mannered appearance fool you, he’ll kill him some cogon grass or old world climbing fern before you can say Bazinga! Although it’s much more exciting if he does it while you say Bazinga!

This Patrick has seen better days.

This Patrick is better days.

The most exciting thing about this Patrick is that the Dollar General is now open on Sunday.
Though I do hear that the Pine Straw Festival is a good time.

This Patrick mingles with NASA astronaut cut-outs. And touches lightning bare-handed. Even the astronaut has to wear gloves. This Patrick is basically a superhero.  Pine straw just can’t compete.

This Patrick has a post office and a church (one of each),

but this Patrick has a USFWS hat (jealous) and a pretty purple passion fruit flower. Pretty purple passion flowers are always preferable to post offices.

The people of Patrick probably think I’m nuts because I pulled over to take pictures of signs around town (which consists basically of what you see here, a few houses, and a gas station). I also get the impression out-of-state plates are not welcome, probably especially when those plates are attached to a car with a Skunk Ape bumper sticker. I received several hostile looks.

I know this Patrick thinks I’m nuts (especially after writing this blog). However, his looks are something less than hostile. (And none of his used parts are for sale).

This blog post is what happens on weekends when you’re slightly left of the middle of nowhere South Carolina, looking through pictures from your last internship in Florida.

Thank you to Meghan for supplying some of the Patrick photographs. This blog would not have been possible without your assistance.

Kalmia Gardens

animalia7 South Carolina Tags: , , , Leave a comment
Yesterday I journeyed to a beautiful quiet part of Hartsville called Kalmia Gardens. I’d driven past it a few times on my way into town for supplies (conveniently, it’s just down the street from Bi-Lo, the local grocery store). After driving past the intricately wrought gates a few times, I knew I had to explore. The drive into the gardens is narrow and easy to miss, hidden behind dense foliage. As with many truly beautiful things, one needs to look deeper in order to see.
Kalmia Gardens are quite unlike Carolina Sandhills. Here we have pines, tall and open, the soil sandy and covered with a thick layer of browned needles. The gardens are another place entirely, reminding me strongly of the tropics. Thick layers all around, the sunlight filtered through dark green leaves, vines holding all the trees together, growing over and in and on top of everything.
There is also water here, streams, rivers, the soil is dark with water. With water comes lush life, bursts of colored flowers growing everywhere they can.
I’ve always liked marigolds, their scent and their sturdiness. Their yellow petals remind me of the ruffles on a dress of a little girl, running in the bright sun after dandelion fluff, in her hair a yellow bow that perfectly matches the ruffles on her dress and tiny socks. The brightness of her joy hides any grass stains on her knees and skirt, the dirt on her face disappearing as she grins and shrieks with happiness.
The gardens have a slightly disorderly feel to them, which I love. In a place like Kalmia Gardens, one can imagine the spirits of the plants, wood sprites and water nymphs, peering from behind the lilies or having a merry picnic on the banks of the pond, cavorting and singing with the robins. The wrens, nimble in the mountain laurel, let loose a tumble of liquid sound before diving away into the shadows, perhaps to find a meal for their young in the nest.
If you’re interested in the history of the gardens, there is the Kalmia gardens website: http://www.kalmiagardens.org
Happy Mother’s Day Mom!
Every flower I see reminds me of you and all of the wonderful ways you have made my life beautiful. Thank you for showing me the beauty in every living thing, and for teaching me how to properly dead-head. Without you, my marigold-self would be scraggly, with all sorts of ugly bits hanging here and there. Thanks for keeping me dead-headed and helping me to grown into myself.
I love you Mommy! You’re the best Mom I’ve ever had 🙂

How to Band a Red-Cockaded Woodpecker

animalia7 South Carolina Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

First, peep the cavity to make sure the young woodpeckers are in fact still in there, and have not had some horrible fate befall them, like being eaten by a snake. They will probably think that what you are about to do to them will be pretty horrible, but they’ll get over it.

You’re about to snatch them from their home, the only place they have ever seen in their entire lives, jostle them around, pull them out into the bright light and put some colored bits of plastic and aluminum on their tiny legs. You will then put them back into their cavity without eating them, but they don’t know that yet.

Peeping the cavity with the peeper, a camera on a telescoping pole. 

 

Next, you assemble your equipment: a climbing harness, short lengths of rope (to go around the tree), ladders, and your banding vest with a nestling pouch, gloves (to keep your hands from becoming encrusted with sap during the climb up), and corn starch (to de-stickify your hands so the baby RCW’s don’t adhere to your fingers). A hat or bandanna to keep the sap out of your hair is also a good idea.
Set the ladder against the tree, put your rope around the tree and attach it to your harness, and begin climbing. If the cavity is taller than 10 feet (the height of one ladder) you will have to use multiple ladders. This can be done by climbing to the top of the first ladder, and then having your ground crew (or your boss, who is watching you from the ground to make sure you don’t mess up) pass you up the second, which attaches to the top of the first. Each ladder has a chain that is wrapped around the tree and secured, so there is no danger of the ladders getting tired and deciding to head down to the ground without you.
Climbing up the tree.

 

The rope is attached to your harness and is wrapped around the tree. As you climb the ladder, move the rope up the tree with you.
At the cavity, getting ready to take out the nestlings.

 

Climb to the cavity and remove the nestlings (easier said than done. Let’s just say it’s like blind fishing). Put them in the nestling pouch around your neck. Be sure to sling it over your shoulder for the climb down so you don’t accidentally bump the nestlings against the ladder.
8 day old red-cockaded woodpecker nestling. 

Once safely on the ground, let the banding commence! On the left leg, each bird gets an aluminum band with a unique number and a colored plastic band. On the right leg, each bird gets a unique color combination of plastic bands (such as striped, dark green, orange– not a combination I’ve used so far, but I’m sure it’ll be used someday). This allows for identification of the individual without having to catch the bird and read the tiny number off the aluminum band. It’s much easier for both observer and observee if the biologist can use a spotting scope to read the color combinations from a distance.

Making sure to put the correct combination of bands on the chick is important, because those bands are not exactly easy to remove if they’re on in the wrong order.
Putting on the colored bands.
Banding. 
Climb back up the tree and plop the nestlings back into the cavity. Then climb back down, un-chaining the ladder as you do. Then gather up everything, put it in the truck, and head off to the next tree to climb.
Left leg with dark green colored band and aluminum band. 
Putting the babies safely back into their cavity. 
Oh yes, and don’t forget to have someone take lots of pictures of you during the whole process. That’s the whole point of this process, to have pictures of you doing something cool. Studying an endangered species is just a minor detail. 

Getting Buzzed by Common Nighthawks

animalia7 South Carolina Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Common Nighthawks are all over the place here at Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, and I see them just about every day while I’m out peeping RCW cavities. They’re neat birds to see, and they have a fairly distinct, simple call:

Contrary to their name, Common Nighthawks are not hawks, but instead are in the same family as Whip-poor-wills (another really neat bird). These birds are generally most active at dusk and dawn, flying around snapping up insects while on the wing. I find that quite impressive, as my hand-mouth coordination isn’t always very good. Sometimes I have problems getting food to my mouth while seated at a table, and my stir-fry isn’t trying to fly away from me. I think I would starve if my broccoli and quinoa made me chase them down every day for dinner.

However, the males make another, much more unusual sound (as males are wont to do). It’s part of a display they perform during the breeding season, which is going on right now. Instead of having fancy plumes like a peacock or doing a special little moonwalk dance like red-capped manakins, Common Nighthawk males impress the ladies with aerial exploits, or by diving. Starting from what Cornell’s All About Birds refers to as “a moderate height,” the males dive straight for the ground, pulling up when they are about 2 meters, or 6-ish feet, off the ground. That’s pretty close to the ground, if you think about it. I’m 5’9″, which would put that just above my head. If one was diving at me, I would definitely cover my head and duck.

Not content with just an impressive dive, the males also have to make a weird noise, described as a buzzing or booming sound. This noise comes at the bottom of the dive, and is actually made by the air rushing through the male’s wingtips. Male nighthawks dive to impress the ladies and youngsters and to be macho and threatening to intruders, be they avian or human.

Most of the time the nighthawks are diving far enough away from me that I don’t mind or notice, but I’ll admit the other day one did make me jump. It was fairly close, though I couldn’t see exactly where because of the pines all around. Being startled while holding a very expensive piece of field equipment is never a good idea, especially when that field equipment is extended up 20+ feet in the air as you are pulling the camera out of a woodpecker cavity… However, this story ends well and nothing bad happened, except I decided to write a blog post about it. Which I tend to think is good instead of bad, though you are entitled to your own opinion.

Here are some cool videos I found on YouTube, after much time spent in diligent research. There are actually more nighthawk videos than I thought there would be, and of all those videos I chose two that I thought were quite good.

Enjoy!
This video doesn’t show the Common Nighthawks in diving action, but it does have excellent pictures and recordings of their calls. (The video is from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, so what do you expect?)
Voices: Common Nighthawk
And here’s another video that someone took of a Common Nighthawk buzzing by.
It got pretty close!
Common Nighthawk Dive Bomb
Aren’t birds awesome?

How to Peep a Red-Cockaded Woodpecker

animalia7 South Carolina Tags: , , , , , , 5 Comments

Currently, I am an intern at the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, located near McBee, South Carolina. I spend my days working with the biologists to study red-cockaded woodpeckers, an endangered species. These are pretty awesome birds, and it is very exciting to spend every day running around in the pines looking at a bird species that many people have never seen.

A bad picture of an adult Red-cockaded Woodpecker.

Here are step-by-step instructions for how to peep a Red-Cockaded Woodpecker (RCW for short):

1). Assemble your equipment. This includes a peeper (see picture) and battery, a massive 4-wheel drive government truck, a map, a compass, a notebook and a pencil. Water and food are also advisable, because you will be out all day. Also a radio or cell phone so when you get lost you can call someone.

  • Note: everything will become covered with sap from the pine trees. Everything. It does come off, eventually.
A peeper. It is leaning on a RCW cavity tree, marked with white paint and a numbered metal tag. There is another RCW tree in the background.
This thing is a beast. I have yet to come up with an appropriate name. I have also yet to get stuck, though not for lack of trying. Apparently I am not very good at choosing places to turn around. 4-wheel drive rocks. Hard.

2). Using your map, locate and drive to your first cluster of RCW cavities.

  • Note: the scale on the map is not what one would call accurate. Nor are the trees placed on the map in their exact locations in relation to the road or the other trees in the cluster. Sometimes the trees will not be on the map at all. All of the cavity trees are marked with a stripe of white paint at about chest height, but this does not necessarily make them easy to find, especially when the turkey oak has grown up to exactly the height of the stripes. In this instance you will make an educated guess as to what direction to go in and head that way. You will probably be wandering around in the woods searching for trees for at least 20-odd minutes. You may not find some of the trees until you have given up and decided to head back to the truck. Also: It is helpful to remember where you left the truck, so you can find your way back at some point. The compass comes in handy for this.
This is compartment 9. There are 21 total compartments, with usually around 12 clusters (the red circles) of RCW cavities in each compartment.
  • You will not find all of the trees, even when you are standing exactly where the tree should be according to the map. As previously mentioned, the map is occasionally wrong about tree placement, or omits trees altogether. Frustration levels directly correlate with the humidity/temperature and blood sugar levels. Foul words will emit from your mouth.
I hate cluster 7. Hate. With a passion.
I was searching for tree 109, which it turns out is not in front of tree 64, as shown on the map, but instead a good quarter-mile behind it, right next to tree 98, which was also not on the map. I penciled them in after I eventually found them on Friday. When you stand in front of tree 64, where tree 109 should be, you can see all the other trees, but not 109 (because it’s actually a quarter-mile behind you, hidden in the pine plantation). The first time I went looking for tree 109 it was late in the afternoon, I was hungry, and I was this close to kicking a tree or throwing myself on the ground and having a minor temper-tantrum. But that would hurt, and I’m not a fan of poison ivy, so instead I went back to the truck, turned on the A/C, and blasted the radio. Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas does wonders.
  • Also note: foul words will frequently emit from your vocal chords, so perhaps it’s a good thing that you’re sent out alone to find the RCW trees.

3). Once you have arrived at the first tree to peep:

  • First bang on the bottom of the tree with a stick, so that if a RCW is in the cavity it will vacate so you can stick in the camera. As the agitated RCW parent flies out of the cavity, assure them you will be quick and not hurt their babies/eggs. Continue talking to RCW’s in area for duration of time at tree. Again, it’s perhaps a good thing you were sent out alone in the woods.
  • Next, extend the telescoping pole with the camera up to the cavity and stick the camera in the hole.
  • Note: if the hole is 20 feet or lower, it will be relatively easy and you will feel overconfident of your abilities to peep. If the cavity is 20 feet or higher, it will be much harder to get the camera into the cavity. It will also be windy, especially if the cavity you are trying to peep is 30+ feet. The sun will also be shining directly into your eyes as you look up at the tree to direct the small, fist-sized camera into the woodpecker cavity. If you are really lucky, it will be both windy and sunny, and the cavity will be slightly higher than 35 feet, which is the total length of your telescoping pole, so you’ll have to lift the whole thing to get it up that few extra inches.
  • Also, the higher and more difficult the cavity to reach with the peeper (i.e., branches in the way you have to maneuver around) the greater likelihood the battery in the camera will die by the time you get it into the cavity. The battery will only run out of juice once you’ve extended the peeper, not while on the ground when it would be easy to change. Some of the batteries will last a day and a half, others will not. They all look the same, and there is no way to tell how long the battery will last. However, it will always run out at an inopportune moment.
  • Also note: the peeper is a $3,000 piece of equipment, which costs more than all of the possessions you brought with you, including your car, laptop, and rock climbing/camping equipment. So while you are stumbling around in the woods looking for RCW trees, don’t hit it on anything, or drop it, or let it get wet when it rains, and when you’re driving around on the bumpy “roads” on the refuge, make sure it doesn’t jostle around in the truck. The $1.87/hr you make ($75/week, 40hrs/week) for this internship will not go very far towards a new one. So be careful.

4). The wireless camera on the end of the pole will transmit an image to the LCD screen at the peeper base, where you are. You will probably have to jiggle the antenna around in order to get a clear image of what is in the cavity.

5). Write down what you see in the cavity (chips, eggs, nestlings, flying squirrels, RCW’s, nothing) in your notebook.

Adult RCW on eggs, refusing to budge out of the cavity so I can see how many. Not cool dude, not cool.
Three RCW fledglings. Baby woodpeckers are not cute, they are featherless little blobs with giant heads and they flail about helplessly, trying to hide under each other when you stick the camera in.

Below is a video I took of some flying squirrels all piled up in a RCW cavity. I’ve only ever been able to see three at a time, but I’m sure they pack themselves in pretty good. I guess the ones on the top are the low guys on the totem pole, because they’re the ones that would get picked off first if someone tries to reach in there for a flying squirrel snack during the day.

Pile-up of flying squirrels in RCW cavity
Four RCW eggs in a cavity.

6). Pull the camera down, and get your hands covered in sap. Somehow throughout the day you will get sap on your hands, shirt, pants, shoes, notebook, pencil, water bottle, steering wheel, and sunglasses. Periodically worry about it getting into your hair and having to cut it out/shave your head. Then decide that this might be the way to go, as it’d probably be pretty cool (temperature-wise, not in any other -wise) in the summer.

7). Drop your pencil in the poison ivy/oak growing everywhere around base of tree (this step is optional, and highly probable).

8). Gather up all your things, variously forgetting the battery, maps, beating stick, and pencil at different trees.

  • Note: the peeper is not exactly heavy, but throughout the day starts to weigh more and more. When you have extensive hikes, it is recommended to switch shoulders, unless you prefer to cultivate a permanent bruise on just one shoulder. Your shoulder will most likely be tender for the next 10 weeks of the internship.

9). Once in the truck, buckle in the peeper for the ride to the next cluster.

10). Forget you probably have poison ivy all over your hands and rub your face/eat lunch without washing hands.

11). Repeat until 4 p.m., when you’re done for the day.

This is pretty much how I spend my days. Even when I’m lost, hot, sweaty, covered in sap and being bitten by flies, I still can’t get over how lucky I am to get to do things like this. Being a field biologist (or intern) is the best job ever!

Dave Shealy’s Gorilla Supplier

animalia7 Florida, South Carolina Tags: , , , Leave a comment

I suppose that’s inaccurate, because I don’t know for sure that Dave got his gorilla here, but if you’ve ever wanted a giant concrete gorilla just like the one outside of the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters in Ochopee Florida (and I know I have), then I know where you can get one: Bethune, South Carolina, conveniently located just 7 miles from McBee, South Carolina, which is not conveniently located near anywhere.

If you ever happen to journey to Ochopee FL, the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters are a must. I can honestly say that conversing with Dave Shealy was one of the more interesting conversations I’ve had, and I’ve had some pretty interesting conversations. If you’ve ever talked with my little brother or my friends Max, Patrick, or Meghan, you’ll know what I mean. Also, let me just mention that I’m the only one who actually talked with Dave Shealy, as Meghan and Patrick were both suddenly attacked by the shy bug, the poops. Yes Meghan and Patrick, I just called you both poops. On the internet, where it never goes away. So HA.

The Skunk Ape website:
http://www.skunkape.info/

Bethune, South Carolina
Ochopee, Florida
(the one in the middle is the gorilla)
Outside the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters
(and campground, reptile and bird exhibit, $5 per person, 5 and under free).
Not a Skunk Ape, but we love it anyway.
The place to get your very own genuine concrete products, including gorillas, giraffes, giant roosters, fish, bears, elephants, pigs, palm trees, and an intriguing variety of fountains and statues. Not sure if they ship, but I could be convinced to rent a UHaul and drive your concrete giant rooster to you (in the continental US, of course).

They also have giant giraffes, like the one I saw on the side of the highway at a fireworks store near Pioneer, Tennessee. And giant roosters, and a hugging Jesus, and palm trees, and a lighthouse, pretty much anything you could want made out of concrete. If they don’t have it you don’t want it!

I know what I’m putting on my Christmas list this year: giant concrete rooster.
It’d look lovely in our garden at home, don’t you think Mom?

Bethune Pottery. I like the giant roosters (they have more than one out front, in different colors) and the Jesus under the palm tree.
Outside a fireworks store off I-75 in Pioneer, Tennessee. They don’t have pink elephants at Bethune Pottery, but they did have grey ones.
I took this photo on a road trip in early 2010, when my trusty road-tripping companion and I drove from Ohio to Colorado via the Florida Keys.  It was a long drive.