Week 5 (yikes! how did that happen? I feel like I just got here!) was extremely long. Not entirely sure why, but it just seemed to drag on and on. The majority of the week was spent building nest barriers, and fixing nest barriers and other such physical work, rather than biology stuff. By wednesday it was getting pretty tiring. Both Ingrid and I just wanted to work with the cranes again! The nice thing was that Lauren understood that and she apologized that we had been doing so much of the same thing for days and that we hadn't really done anything with the cranes directly. But she also stressed the importance of the nest barriers and I get that. If they can help to save the lives of more of these precious Sandhill crane ... read more

This week started out well. After a frustrating time last week attempting to triangulate this one fake crane, I FINALLY successfully triangulated it and was able to home-in and find it. It was a little pathetic just how excited I was. =) Tuesday we worked on putting out posts around an area called Duck Pond, so that we can build a nest barrier there. It went pretty well, except that while trying to get the posts into the ground, both Ingrid and I popped holes in our gum boots. =( Now those are permanently our post-putting-in boots, and they are going to have to order us new ones to actually use most of the time. Whoops. Other than that it went well. We got a fair bit accomplished, although at the end we did go in ... read more

INFINITELY better than Vegas. Let's just get that out there right off the bat. :) Saturday Ingrid and I drove to New Orleans to explore for the day. Lauren gave us directions and told us the general areas to go (and not to go) which was good. We got there a little after noon. Walked immediately to Jackson Square. It was just like I remembered it from when I went there with band in high school. Went straight to Cafe Du Monde and got beneits, at the recommendation of practically everyone (including AC). O.M.G. It was heaven. Sooooo delicious. And cheap! They give you a lot of hot, powder sugar covered delicious doughiness for only around $2. Amazing. Ate them overlooking the square. Then watched a pretty entertaining group of street performers. Then just walked around. ... read more

Another physically exhausting day. It was overcast in the morning so I didn’t bother putting on sun screen. The plan was to work on clearing the weeds near the fencing of one of the pens since it wasn’t supposed to rain until the afternoon. Took a while to find the weed-eaters and be shown how to use them, etc. Keep in mind my arms and legs were already sore from our day in the swamp on Tuesday lugging the fencing around through the water and constantly bending down to tie zip-ties. So the prospect of lifting a semi-heavy piece of machinery to clear away weeds was not so enticing. But we set to it. Had such trouble with the weed-eaters. Couldn’t get the one to start. Neither of us could get them to feed the thread ... read more

Monday was a pretty easy-going day, so not much to report. 5:30am start... went to a different blind (no wet feet this time!). It was 15ft high so twas a bit precarious to get into but I succeeded without falling lol. I got to watch the sunrise and that was quite lovely. And I saw 12 cranes! Got to watch them for a few hours and was able to see most of their bands (I hope!). I feel that I am making progress. :) Late morning/early afternoon was spent working more on the fencing around the nesting area. It was so gorgeous outside! Realized pretty soon I will need to put on sunscreen. We found our rhythm last time so we were able to move quite quickly today, got a fair bit done Visiting retired Japanese ... read more