Thursday, January 17, 2008

First day on the river

I posted a (close similarity) to this in the comments below, prompted by Tate's question: "so how was the sea lion counting and watching?????"

This is the early season, so our down-the-river locations for observation had nothing going on. But we got up by the dam and saw one Stellar [the Endangered type] dinking around a bit, dam they're big.

The best sighting of the day was an immature bald eagle tag a 2' sturgeon and head off with it. Very cool.

The seals and sea lions won't be in in force for another month or two, so right now we're basically providing "0" slots for the data, which is important for the timing of arrival information.

The wind cut right through me, I'll be adjusting my gear. It was about 35 degrees with approx. 25mph steady wind to the East. I.E. pretty fucking cold.

Was great to be outside, getting school credit, on the lookout for animals, and getting fieldwork experience.

Pretty quickly I fell back into "Fire Lookout" habits from back in the day, it was funny to notice. I did the whole "open eye scanning" where your whole field of vision is fuzzy and you only focus on movement or details that needed clarification, this certain timing I had when I was doing the lookout came back to me as well. It's almost a robotic head turning-without-thinking-about it thing.

This should be another post in and of itself -- I'll repost it above.

Thanks for asking Tate, apparently I had a lot to say.

10 comments:

Catherine Just said...

Nice chatting with you while you were out there today. The only thing missing. A camera. Don't you need a photographer with you to document this adventure. I'm open...

Iciyapi Tate said...

sweet, sounds like it was fantastic.

Bpaul said...

A mega telephoto would rock so hard out there. I have my little digital with it's 6x digital zoom or something -- inadequate to say the least.

I have good binocs tho, thanks to my Uncle. Hand-me-downs rock.

I'm not sure I could get the funding to support you in the matter to which you are accustomed tho, madame.

hehe

Catherine Just said...

all I need is a trip to cup and saucer for a #1 and some oregon chai and I'm good to go!

Iciyapi Tate said...

wow this is all over the news now.. front page oregonian

Bpaul said...

I heard that. It's because the season is starting.

I'm going to have to STFU, as it's only going to get hotter politically.

Stu Farnham said...

Ctheg,

Fossil, Oregon is a little town out in the middle of the John Day country of central Oregon. We found ourselves out there one Sunday morning and went into the local greasy spoon for breakfast. Everyone in there was either a farmer (overalls and caps with the names of heavy equipment manufacturers) or a farmer's wife dressed for church.
On the wall: a sign advertising Oregon Chai.
A sign of the coming end of days, for sure.

BP, I can come over and be your photographer. I have a 400mm telephoto, and can prolly borrow a 600mm. What day is the class (this week is bad, but I can do it next unless something comes up)

Bpaul said...

Why thank you sir. Let's wait a month or so til there are more animules about -- right now it's pretty thin pickings. Then we absolutely should do it. I'll email you.

"Will photograph for chai," Nice C nice.

Stu Farnham said...

I may be working in a month...

two weeks?

Bpaul said...

Hell you could come this week, I just wouldn't want you to be bored :-)