Hot enough for you!

Say that in a smirky old man voice. Even before this mini heat wave we are in, field work was generally boring aside from the discovery of a baby woodpecker nest. Sorry kids. No good photos. I discovered that the flash on my new work camera doesn't work at all. I just have a pic of a dark hole in a tree. No peeping baby woodpecker pics.

To recap our local weather, it's been 90+ degrees fahrenheit each day since saturday. Tomorrow will be more of the same. I got home and the temperature outside was 95 degrees at 6 pm. Plus add in the humidity. Thankfully what makes my place so cold in the winter keeps my place reasonable during the summer even without the air conditioner on. But rest assured, it's going full blast now.

Even with this ridic weather, I attempted to go turtling early saturday morning to my local wetland. After parking in a questionable spot (I thought I was going to get the cops called on me and I'll leave it at that) and hiking over a quarter mile in, I arrived at the location. I was immediately disappointed. It was a sea of cattails and this invasive grass (which i am also quite allergic to). There was a lot of water and the smell that surfaced with each step was something beyond my experience....like no human has stepped here in 100 years. Then I found the floating bog section. That's the area where you don't step on solid ground but are rather walking on a floating mat of vegetation. I half circled around the perimeter and it was total frog nation. So that was a good sign. Then I heard something big fall into the water. I heard a gurgling noise and the vegetation was roughly moved around. Must have been a large snapping turtle. There was no way I could get to it quickly considering I was tentatively walking on the floating part. I gave up pretty quickly and decided that it will have to wait until next year for a real attack. I decided to try to visit Cashew and by 9:30 am most turtles were already in the mud since it was so hot.

So by this time tomorrow night, we should be fully engulfed in some t-storms that will hopefully bring us some relief.

Some like it hot

I was back out at the big estate doing a long wetland delineation. It was a wetland delineation along a major NJ river so we did a LOT of walking rather than circling around in a small area. Add 94+F heat and humidity to the mix. Luckily we spent most of the time in the woods so it was cooler. But we survived and I'm back home slowly slipping into zombie relaxation mode.

When you are in the floodplain of a major river, you see all sorts of things that have been picked up by the floods and then deposited. Like this picnic table. Somehow it managed to stay intact and upright. But usually you see a sea of logs, fallen trees, thousands of twigs, random floatable garbage such as shoes, balls, bottles, etc. Like in the picture below with my co-worker lurking on the left. I try to avoid walking in these piles because my latest paranoia is bee/wasp nests (and apparently rightfully so). I had almost stepped on a ground yellow jacket nest last week which my co-worker had pointed out. They make a hole in the ground and their hive is underground. I now survey the ground each step I take. Although I think I would be fine as long as I don't block the hole too long or cause the ground to collapse and crush the hive. Since last week, I spotted another ground yellow jacket nest and managed to avoid it. Then today I spotted a hornets nest which I unknowingly was standing right next to. Luckily I spotted it before my presence was fully known to the occupants. My co-worker identified it and said that type of hornet would follow you for miles if its nest was disrupted.

Throughout the day I keep seeing smalls thing scurrying in the brush. The first thing was real speedy but I managed to stalk it to the river. It was a small bird and it clumsily flew into a low branch and then fell into the water. Swimming was not it's forte since it wasn't a water bird but it managed to get back to shore and I left it alone. It probably was a baby bird. Then I found some American toadlets. They were all over the ground. So cute and small that I couldn't get a focused camera phone shot.

Dog days of summer

I've had my fair share of field days during the dog days of summer. I think the hot days of NJ are far worse than the hot days of CA. At least in CA, it wasn't as humid. Granted it was like 100+ degrees, but you could hop from tree to tree. In NJ, when it's hot and you are working hard, it's just brutal. Just as soon as you wipe the sweat from your face, it's starting dripping immediately. Your face turns beet red and you become real stupid and irritable. Then cue the dehydration headache that comes when you get home.

The past couple years I've managed to avoid the real hot days. Like 2 years ago, when our company was working on Staten Italy. The site was huge and there were no trees for shade. There were out a bunch of days in a row during a heat wave of 95+ F. I wouldn't have survived and they knew it because I was never out there. There were four guys and the pairs took 30 minutes shifts. The off 30 minutes was spent in the air conditioned truck. They were sweating so bad that they got poison ivy everywhere since it bled through their clothes.

As anyone who's lived in Brumfus can tell you, the days of summer there are unreal. I lived in a house where the candles in the 3rd floor melted during the day. You know it's bad when as a sleep obsessed college student you wake up at 8 am because it's too hot. Or you take a shower at night and don't dry off but just jump into bed hoping to cool down enough to fall asleep.

I'm really looking forward to the break in this heat wave. The ozone is starting to get to me. If you have that random tickle in your chest that makes you want to cough, it's the ozone. I just love that thunderstorm that comes through and cools everything down. The steam rises from the pavement and all is well again.