Some like it hot

    This summer we've been extra busy with field work. We have a few high profile jobs that require us to be environmental monitors for construction for a variety of reasons. It's making sure that trees that are threatening power lines are safely removed without disturbing rare turtles or their habitat or making sure that a major construction operation doesn't injure any rare turtles.   Both of these operations continue no matter how hot it gets even when it's record breaking.  Above is a pic I took of my mobile weather instrument taken in the shade one day.  It did get hotter but I didn't feel like doing much of anything aside from snapping pics.  I was surprised to see a couple painted turtles fully basking on the hottest time of the hottest day. I guess they don't mind short spans of the heat as much as I thought.

Most of the time it's pretty boring work out there.  You have to find a way to pass the time until you are needed.  Plus you have to keep out the way of the massive construction equipment that are swinging around large trees into massive dump trucks. Last time I was out there I was checking between the two silt fences to see if any critters needed rescuing.  Low and behold I spotted this guy.  I suspect that he came from the very close river and somehow climbed the fence.  I ended up babysitting him for a couple hours in the hot sun.  I tried to block him from direct sun, gave him some baths in the river, and came home burnt even after applying sunblock. Long story short is that he's now free albeit with a radio transmitter and seems to fancy the area he was originally found.

Fast forward to summer

It seems that someone has pressed fast forward on the seasons and that we're fully in summer. I am already dreaming of already with this heat and humidity. I'm not meant to work in this heat. Tomorrow will be another scorcher of a day. It's tough to do a turtle survey when you and the turtles both want to escape from the heat. They are hunkered down in dense shrubs trying to hide and you are desperately trying to find them.

But here's some critters that I've recently encountered. There's a box turtle in the top pic. It seems every shot of him he's looking away from the camera, which is a shame since he has such pretty eyes.

Then there's this hatchling painted turtle that I found that has a shell defect. I probably spent way too much time worrying about it and giving it a pep talk that I lost my coworkers for a brief period of time. Then I had to find the perfect spot for it so that we didn't trample it on the way out. No matter. They didn't find turtles in the area they were while I found a wee one on our brisk walk in.
Here's a green snake, which is a pretty rare find. I even held it (not my hands in pic) where it promptly pooped. Gee thanks.
I found these frog eggs on sultry afternoon. The sun was hitting just right in the tall vegetation and I spotted them. Looking forward to the wee tadpoles when they hatch.
Finally...this is possibly a home for ????? Too small for a bear. I certainly can't fit in the hole, but who knows. Looks like a perfect spot for something to live in.

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.

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.