by Alexandra De Sousa, of Ithaca College
This week we jumped from Ruby, to the Galiuros, to Klondyke, and to Arivaipa! We had a very fun, hot, and a busy week planned. On Friday, we visited Kathy, who has a PhD and has published many papers on birds, detailing about their behavior, calls, habitat, diet, and more. We got to experience her enthusiasm about an animal she has dedicated her life to. During our visit, she taught us how to write down different bird sounds, how to listen to our surroundings, as well as some facts we didn’t know! Shortly after, we set out a misnet to go catch some birds, to check for ticks, parasites, and band them. It was extremely exciting to be able to hold and feel the feathers of a common ground dove, braid-tailed hummingbird, as well as a yellow breasted chat. Later that day, we had a webinar with Craig, who spoke to us about flat-tailed horned-lizards. Craig is receiving his masters at UCLA and is studying this flagship species. It was incredibly interesting to learn about his passion and his field of study. On Sunday, we made the 4 hour drive to the Galiuros and set up camp. During that night, we got a good look of a few scorpions as well as a huge sun spider, and a very hairy tarantula! On Monday, we set out to do our very first spring seeker in this area, and unfortunately, our last for the Galiuros. The hike and view were gorgeous, especially all the point-leaf manzanita and the mountains that surrounded us. Our trip in the Galiros shortly ended after that, when the weather changed and the rain went from a 20% chance to an 80% chance in the span of a few hours. Shortly after we got that news, we packed up, and left the for 4-mile campsite, which was in Klondyke (that had a population of 5). At 4-mile campsite, it was extremely hot, but we set up camp for the night, as well as had class, dinner, then a big storm rolled through and we had to quickly put all the cookware, food, and electronics in the truck, and make a bee-line straight to our tent to take cover from the very windy storm. On Tuesday, we packed up camp, which at that point, all of us had become experts at putting up and taking down our tents since we’ve had so much practice over the last 3 weeks. We then headed to Aravaipa, somewhere we were all extremely excited to visit. We headed in and smelled the trees, looking at the huge trees towering over us, which is something we haven’t really seen this low in elevation in Arizona. There is a flowing river which we all enjoyed for a bit. On Thursday, we got back to the grind and woke up at 5 am to help Aaron plant coyote willows on the edges of where the creek was flowing, it was tough, but extremely exciting and rewarding to know all out hard work will eventually help control to the creek, stop erosion, as well as plant more native species in the canyon. Later on, we had our conservation biology mid-term and then had dinner and a huge dance party!
We have quickly come to learn the unpredictability of Arizona weather and have all agreed that it is the most crazy and fast changing weather any of us has experienced. We have all learned to roll with the punches as Arizona keeps us on our toes and does not allow us to get complacent. We got some upsetting news this week, not being able to back pack into the Aravaipa Canyon wilderness, but we are still excited to be here, learning and having fun, as well as contributing to conservation.
