Hello dedicated skunk followers!
It's been a long hiatus. Things have been pretty slow around the Andrews. Following the government shutdown, we welcomed a new member to the skunk crew. Meet Hannah Haeussler from Alaska!
The snow finally arrived at the beginning of February and has halted the majority of our field work. For the past few weeks, we have been catching up on entering data from last summer. It may be mundane work, but I cannot be more thankful that I have technicians who can dedicate themselves to entering the data accurately. So far, we have completed entering telemetry data, vegetation data, camera check data, and rest site data. Hooray! All that is left to enter is the remainder of the bird point count data and tagging camera photos.
After spending the majority of the winter without snow, February has been quite the snow-filled month! With the Annual Meeting of the Oregon Chapter of the Wildlife Society in Bend coming up at the end of the month, Ben and I had been working hard to develop our poster presentation and oral presentation, respectively. With just a few days to go until the conference, we were suddenly hit with boatloads of snow! There was just so much snow that was so heavy and that came down so quickly that it snapped and uprooted hundreds and hundreds of trees. All this disturbance knocked down many power lines and caused power outages up and down the McKenzie River. Reports from the Blue River area showed lots of trees and power lines draping the main highway and blocking the road, which did not bode well for Ben, who would be stuck at the HJA headquarters.
I had gone to my apartment in Eugene for the weekend and had not heard from Ben in a few days. Hannah was visiting a friend in Sisters. Without power at the HJA, there is virtually no way of communicating without going down to Highway 126. But with all of the snow and snapped and uprooted trees, there was no way to get down to the highway. On the third day, I finally got one message from Ben through our InReach device saying that the HJA crew had finally cleared the 15 road to the saddle dam and would be able to push to the highway by the next morning. By noon, Ben needed to send me the electronic version of his poster in order to print his poster in Corvallis in Damon's lab to take it to the conference. A few days after all the snow had fallen, many of the highways were still closed due to debris and power lines on the road. This included the portion of Highway 126 from McKenzie Bridge to the Highway 20 junction and the Highway 20 junction to Corvallis. So, even though Ben had been able to get to the highway, there was still no cell phone reception until more than half way to Eugene and he would have to drive through Corvallis to get to the Santiam Pass. With only an hour left, Ben was finally able to call from the side of the road and email his poster through his cell phone.
Since I had a commitment until 6 pm that night, I sent Ben over to Bend right after he picked up his poster. Earlier in the week, the Santiam Pass had been closed due to avalanches, so it was safest for people to head over to Bend during the day. By the time I was driving to the pass with my friend Emily, an avalanche had occurred, but after talking to the state trooper, he seemed confident that the avalanche would be cleared around midnight. So, we waited patiently for the road crews to clear the debris. Emily had come prepared and had an air mattress and down comforter in her car. We were super prepared! As soon as the crews had cleared the the avalanche, though, we got news that another 2 avalanches had occurred immediately after! So we hunkered down to wait until the road crews had cleared out the other avalanches. Fortunately, just an hour later, the state trooper honked his horn to wake us up that the pass was now clear and driveable! We were the first ones behind the plow and the hardest part of the drive was not being able to see more than 50 ft in front of us because gusts of wind were blowing the snow around. We finally got into the hotel in Bend at 3:30 am! A 2.5 hour drive turned into a 9 hour drive! And we were not the only ones checking in. Others had been waiting behind us for the avalanche to clear on the west side of the Santiam Pass.
The next morning, the conference was very empty. Many of the scheduled talks had been canceled and only 1 of the 4 plenary talk speakers made it to the conference. The conference organizers did a great job at improvising and assembled a panel discussion based on current wildlife topics. Ben did a great job presenting his poster and we made some great connections with other wildlife professionals. By the second day, the pass was open again and many of the people who weren't able to make the first day were finally in Bend. A few of the kegs for the socials had been stranded in Eugene, so the free drink tickets became useless!
At the end of the conference, the HJA was still without power, so we went out to eastern Oregon to help John Dinkin's lab with some field work. We joined Terrah Owens to do some sage grouse trapping. As soon as it became dark and the roads had a chance to firm up a little, we went out in the sage brush fields with a set of binoculars and spotlight and a few fishing nets that we rigged to catch sage grouse. We set out on foot to start searching for sage grouse eye shine. We hiked out to some leks that were identified in previous trapping seasons. But the snow was so sparkly that it was difficult to distinguish the birds from the snow. The only birds we found, though, were a couple of horned larks that were huddled on the ground.
The next morning, we got up before the sun and headed to a bone pit of a cattle rancher to help Lindsey Perry trap some ravens. As the sun was starting to come up, we could hear the ravens cawing, so we hurriedly set a dozen foot hold traps by a newly dug pit and cattle carcasses. We also set a couple of raven decoys to draw some curious birds in. While we were waiting for ravens to check out our bait, we witnessed the birth of two calves and learned about cattle grafting after the death of a calf. Eventually, we also got to witness a raven tornado (a raven-ado), which occurs when a bird is caught in one of the foot-hold traps. Unfortunately, we were only able to catch a magpie and called it a day.
As we returned back to the HJA, we returned to the carnage of trees across the roads and throughout the forest. Over the next 2 weeks, we will be clearing roads and making runs in the sno-cat to try and get the roads functional for when the snow clears.
Next up for the skunk crew, re-capturing and trapping new skunks!