Go Directly to Jail

...but only to get fingerprints.

On Thursday we had our first chance to drive a Fish & Wildlife Service vehicle. We had to be fingerprinted so they could send them off to the FBI to get us checked out (seems we've done this before). The refuge had planned to be able to do them onsite, but haven't been able to get it started, so we had to go to the Aransas County Correctional Facility in Rockport. We took the keys to one of the Biology group's pickup trucks and off we went.

The county jail is a large plain concrete block building with a very spare and secure waiting area. While we waited, we chatted with Father Ray, from the local Catholic church who was there to hear confessions (that could be interesting). Finally, a nice woman, a deputy sheriff, came and fingerprinted us. An hour later we were back at the refuge, fingerprint cards in hand.

As it was another cold, drizzly day, we spent the afternoon on an indoor project, cataloging papers in the biology library. This had been started three years ago, but nothing had been done since early 2012. They have a collection of journal articles saved, as well as Master's theses and PhD dissertations from people who have done their research at the refuge. The earliest we've come across so far is from 1967.

It took us a while to figure out how to use Endnote Basic, the online software that had been used to do the cataloging. It is actually software for collecting and formatting citations while doing research, but has been somewhat repurposed for the department catalog. It is not an exact fit, but probably good enough. We probably did a half-dozen documents before the end of the day.

Friday is one of our days off, but Sarah, one of the Whooping Crane researchers, asked if I'd help her exchange SD cards in their remote cameras. They have a large set of automatic wildlife cameras set out through the refuge in spots likely to be visited by cranes. They are just off-the-shelf Bushnell cameras that one can get at stores like LL Bean or Cabelas. They have motion sensors that capture a photo when an animal walks by. Sarah and Matt, the research technicians, have captured, reviewed and cataloged thousands of images, not only of Whooping Cranes, but also deer, alligators, hogs and anything else that walks or flies by. At some point, they will all be sent off to a bio-statistician in Arizona for analysis.

Off I went at 7:30 on Friday morning so help out. It was another drizzly cold day. We decided to wait and see if the rain would stop before going out, so I entered more documents into the Endnote database. By 10:30. it was obvious that it was not going to get any better, so that effort was postponed. It was back to Speedy where Ellen was finishing up her usual friday clean-up and laundry.

After lunch we unhitched Speedy and went back into Rockport, for the fourth time this week, to do the weekly shopping. This is not exactly how we planned it, but the weather has been so wet and raw, that we haven't ridden the motorcycles at all. The H-E-B was pretty crowded on a friday afternoon, so we will try to go in the morning in the future.

Today started out a bit warmer than the rest of the week, the mid-40's rather than 30's, but still a bit of drizzle. We decided to try a bit of morning birding anyway. After four hours on the road and Heron Flats trail, the drizzle had stopped, the temperature had soared to 50, we'd met several other birders and had seen 38 species. Ellen had six new birds on her life list: White-faced Ibis, Great-tailed Grackle, Short-eared Owl, Clapper Rail and Sora.

Weir River Farm steak and blackberry crisp for dinner. We've been making a lot of use of the community building oven.

Some Photos