Autumn Colours

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with Autumn. I love the season for itself, the colours, the smells and the crunch of dried leaves underfoot but at the same time I can't help but feel that it is a harbinger of doom. It indicates that very soon the temperatures will plummet to minus who-knows-what and we will be layered in ice and snow for months on end. That just takes the edge off all the beauty of Autumn for me unfortunately.

As Busy As A .......................

Well September may have been lousy but we are being blessed with a few beautiful autumn days now that October has arrived. The honey bees from our hives are certainly making the most of the sunshine and gathering the last of the years pollen to tide them through the long, cold months ahead.

Changing Things Up

I am amazed how many of my friends' blogs I have read recently who have either been considering no longer continuing their blog or just feel like they have nothing to say. What is going on? I have felt as if my blog has been in extended death throes for months now but rather than pull the trigger I have been trying to work out why I wasn't spending time blogging any more.
I have another blog which I thoroughly enjoy and, of course, there is also the dreaded facebook. So what gives? Why is 'the rambling' just not happening?
I think I have come up with a solution - I am always posting about work!!! All work and no play............. so a new leaf has been turned. I am going to try to do shorter posts, some photos of something that catches my eye, something that makes me smile during my day and leave it at that for a while. If this involves something at work then fine but we'll see.
And so with that in mind, today's post - fun with fungus.

Fun in the Field

So it seems my resolution of trying to post every week has degenerated to the point where I post once a month! Oh well, it is better than nothing I suppose.
We have been trying for several weeks to schedule our annual department field/collecting trip but it seemed every time we set a date the weather thwarted us. Firstly there were monsoon level thunderstorms, then there was excessive heat which our team member who harks from Alaska couldn't quite face, then there were various vacations to work round but finally, rather like the proverbial herding of cats we managed to all get together on the same day.



The primary objective of the day was to collect some more native fish species to replenish our tanks, on display in the 'Riverworks' exhibit. This is most successfully done using a seine net to scoop the fish gently out without injuring them and then selecting the species we need from the net before releasing the rest.


Another activity that I always encourage is the gathering of crayfish. There is a very aggressive invasive species throughout Illinois called the Rusty Crayfish which is out-competing many native species. We scoop up as many of these as we can because we have lots of aquatic turtles in our collections who like nothing more than hunting and eating crayfish! Boy did they get a big treat - a whole bucketload!



I have been particularly lucky to have some really fantastic interns this year so it's always a great pleasure to be able to give them the treat of a day out in the field. And as you can see they were extremely enthusiastic about joining in with whatever was going on.


Here is Alex proving that chest waders are optional!


And also proving that 'girls rock!!' Because Amy didn't feel the need for them either :)


So who the ones wearing the waders? Our two male interns!!! YOU GO GIRLS!!
It wasn't all water though. We did get the chance to see some beautiful butterflies mud-puddling along the shores of the river.


These are Giant Swallowtails Papilio cresphontes
and this is a Red-spotted Purple Limenitis arthemis astyanax


A little less flamboyant but no less beautiful is this Hackberry Emperor Asterocampa celtis. Drove me crazy trying to get it to stay still enough for a photo though.


And of course, the damselflies were not to be ignored either.


Another highlight of the day? I finally got to 'christen' my new wellies on their first ever field trip :)


What a great day. We all came home hot, sweaty, muddy, tired and happy. What more could we ask for?


Photo Credits - CJT

Sabino Canyon

I downloaded these pictures over a month and a half ago and I never got round to finishing the post - what on earth possible excuse have I got for neglecting my blog for so long? Umm none really. Every time I had some free time I just didn't feel like sitting in front of a computer (I know, lame, but that's all I've got.


Whenever we visit Arizona I have a little personal wishlist of animals I really want to see. Last time we were there I managed to see two that were really high on the list. We were visiting Sabino Canyon. I am not a big fan of hiking when it is hot so my husband had used the incentive of visiting the hummingbird monitoring site at the bottom of the valley to entice me. As we were heading out to it, this delightful little horned lizard scuttled across our path - check one! Somehow I had always thought they were bigger but I was quite entranced. It seemed as though he was so confident of his camouflage on the rocky ground that he just ignored us and went about his business which gave us a great opportunity to photograph him. However with the sun directly overhead and him being the same colour as his surroundings it was surprisingly difficult to get a good shot. Now I will have to pour over my reptile books and try to find out which species of horned lizard this is.

The very top of my wishlist, surprisingly wasn't a 'herp' but a mammal. I love pigs, always have and while this next character isn't actually a member of the pig family it bears enough of a resemblance to pigs to have won my heart. I have so wanted to see a Javelina and when we arrived at the hummingbird monitoring area there it was rooting about in the undergrowth! Perfect.


Ironically the hummingbirds were a bit of a let-down because the only two species that I saw were the two I most commonly see at my own feeders and the light was nowhere near good enough to get decent pictures. (You'll have to visit my other blog to see what they really look like.)



However I was so delighted with the Javelina that it really didn't matter. The classification of the Javelina is that it belongs to the same order as pigs and even to the same sub-order but it is from the family Tayassuidae which is (ironically) the 'new world pigs!' Their outward appearance is obviously very 'pig like' even down to that lovely snuffly snout but the foot structure, digestive process and the dental structure distinguishes them from true pigs.


By now it was really starting to warm up and most wildlife was very sensibly lying low and avoiding the heat, apart from the silly humans of course. The few exceptions were the endless array of beautiful lizards striking the pose as they thermoregulated on various rocks along our path. Again - one of these days I will get down to trying to work out the species of some of these but for now I just want to get this post out!
Check out the length of the toes on the hind feet of this guy.




Eventually even the lizards realised that it was too hot to be out in the sun and as they disappeared into the undergrowth we made our way back to the car and to a long, cold and much needed, drink. But hey - I got to see two new species on my wishlist so the sweating was worth it.


Photo Credits - CJT & DominickV

SAVE THE FROGS!

I am rather fond of frogs. I even share my home with one rather splendid Ornate Horned Frog called Winston.


So a couple of years ago when I was asked to organize something at the Museum to recognize Save the Frogs Day, (Yes I am blogging about work again :( ) it wasn't too much of a stretch. We have several species of frogs as a permanent part of our living collections


and it provided us with the perfect excuse to sneak an extra couple of days of field work to go out and collect the remaining species so that we could display all thirteen species that are native to the Chicago region.


Well now Save the Frog Day has become a permanent fixture on our calendar and each year we try and change things up a bit. This year we decided that as well as displaying all the native frogs we would also show some exotic species too. In my totally unbiased opinion Winston stole the show!


As well as having over 25 species of frogs on display, we had an information table for visitors to find out about all the threats that amphibians are facing and what they can do to help.


We had representatives from the Frog Monitoring Network recruiting volunteers to partake in their citizen science program.


And we had numerous art and craft activities and games that children could partake in, all frog related


We got some great coverage from local TV channels too, here is the clip of the WGN Coverage


And here is a cut down version of the NBC Coverage and Winston won over everyone at the studio and ended up being friended by a couple of the presenters! (Yes, Winston Packman has his very own facebook page!!) They even used him at the end of the program when they were running the credits too :)


Hopefully we got our message out that many amphibians are facing a lot of threats in the modern world and they are an enigmatic and delightful group of species that are well worth protecting and conserving.



Photo Credits - CJT

TURTLE TIME.

So much for my New Years Resolution of posting something on my blog every week - hah! I never was any good at New Years Resolutions that's why I don't usually bother making any. I must confess I have been seriously thinking over the last few weeks of just not doing my blog any more. I never seem to find the time to sit down and write well and I end up being dissatisfied with my posts, especially when I read other peoples wonderful blogs. I also seem to write too much about my work and not much about anything else, god what a dull person! But then I speak to my parents in England on the phone at the weekends and they tell me how much they enjoy reading it and miss it when I don't write and I remember the reason I started the blog in the first place. So here I am again, trying to catch up with myself and yes, I am blogging about work again :(
As some of you know, I am involved in Blanding's Turtle Conservation. Last fall we began what I hope will be a long term survivorship study of turtles that we have been headstarting and releasing. We release somewhere in the region of 200 young turtles per year but we really have no idea if any of them are actually surviving, hence the need for the study. Our headstarted turtles are two years old when we release them, at that age they are about four or five inches long. In order to track them we have to equip them with a radio transmitter. Because they are so small the transmitter has to be tiny in order not to hinder their movement at all and because the transmitters are so tiny, so are the batteries that power them. These batteries last for approximately six to seven months. We release the young turtles in October, they go into hibernation, usually until late March, early April and then we begin tracking them. Of course with the winter we have had, everything is running a little late this year and so it was late April before we could get out to track them and then we are up against the end of the battery time for the transmitters.
Anyway, we finally got out. The weather was great even if the water was still frigid! But hey that is when neoprene chest waders really become your best friend. 'We' consists of yours truly and my two partners in crime, Jamie and Dan.


We met up bright and early at an 'undisclosed location' (one of the plethora of protocols involved with working with an endangered species is not discussing specific site locations) and waded off into the marsh to begin searching for radio signals transmitted from the young turtles we released last year.


It is always good to start the day on a positive note and we were very fortunate that the first few individuals we tracked were found alive and well.


Each individual was thoroughly checked over for injuries and the GPS location it was found at recorded.


One of the reasons that this project was started in the first place was because when the Blanding's turtle habitats were surveyed there was a reasonably steady population of adult turtles that would appear annually but there was never any hatchlings, juveniles or sub-adults found and it became very apparent that they were falling victim to increasingly heavy predation. So we knew that we were not going to only find fit healthy turtles. The first casualty of the day that we found was something of a mystery because it appeared as if this little turtle had literally died five minutes ago.


It had no marks on it that suggested a predator attack, it was in water and yet showed no signs (or smell) of decay and its transmitter was still intact and signalling strongly. We kept it to conduct a necropsy but I suspect we will never know what happened to that one.
More common casualties were victims of predation, the primary culprits being raccoons and mink. Sometimes we found a twisted and chewed transmitter, minus the turtle


And sometimes we found a twisted and chewed transmitter attached to a shell, minus the turtle! Which is always a very sad moment but, of course inevitable.


In amongst tracking the young turtles we checked in on some of our resident females who were also just coming out of hibernation. We will be monitoring them over the coming weeks and when they are found to be gravid we will put them into laying pens so that they can lay their eggs without fear of predation.


All the females that we found seemed to have come through the long hard winter in good health which is always positive news as they provide us with future generations.


In amongst tracking the Blanding's Turtles we did happen upon a good size Snapping Turtle and I just couldn't resist checking him/her out!


Now in case you are wondering, for those of you not familiar with this species, there is a very good reason why these turtles are so named and with an individual of this size there is really only one really safe way to pick them up if you value your fingers!!!


With most turtles you can hold the edges of the shell between the front and back legs quite safely. Lets just say the Snapping Turtles have extremely long necks................


Having returned the snapper to his basking spot and kept all ten of my digits we returned to the business in hand and continued tracking the young hatchlings.
We had a great day, nine hours out in the sun wading about in a marsh isn't a bad days work and from initial findings we seem to be currently getting a forty percent survival rate for our newly liberated turtles which is a huge improvement on zero percent.



Our next task will be tracking the survivors again and equipping them with new radio transmitters to last them through the summer.


Photo Credits - J. Forberg & CJT