Pat, Allison and I recently participated in the 2nd annual Black Squirrel Triathlon in Kent, which involved a 2 mi canoe down the Cuyahoga River, 2.5 mi run and a 10 mi bike. I don’t know our times or our place… but if I find out, I’ll post it. Here are a few photos from the day, including some of Emma-Lisa, who is a former graduate student and office-mate of mine at Kent.
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As is likely the case with any photographer, I have discovered a large back-log of photographs that have yet to be processed – they lack names, tags, geographic positions, general descriptions. And, this log has now reached over a year; I have photos from teaching last summer’s Vertebrate Zoology lab and this Spring’s. Since I like to keep this blog as a log of my somewhat recent activities, it’s easy for these photos to pile up if I don’t immediately process and publish them. But the other option might be to delete them… So, in an effort to process some, below are a few photos from a Spring trip to Triple Springs Creek in West Branch State Park. I don’t even remember the student’s names…
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Here, Ken from West Virginia University and I make small talk in our comfortable, button-down, Kohl’s bought t-shirts. I did shake Ken’s hand, but Connie wasn’t able to get her camera out in time to take a photograph of the two of us.
The only turtle I saw my entire trip was one of the last days in Palo Verde. Here, I hold a Painted Wood Turtle Rhinoclemmys pulcherrima. The family has recently changed from Emydidae to Geomydidae and the species as been split into three distinct species - only R. pulcherrima is represented in Savage, but now Costa Rica supposedly has R. annulata and R. funerea as well. I guess I’m not positive on the identification…
After finishing another transect to monitor wetland plant species, I hung my camera and took a photograph of the two of us. The vegetation was incredibly thick – in some spots, it took nearly a minute to travel 1 meter.
| My hair and beard aren’t quite as crazy as last year, but it’s still bothering me. |  |
I don’t know how to spell her name (maybe it’s Arelli, Arelly, Arely or something completely different), but she’s a Nicaraguan women assisting Mahmood with his frog traps. She’s currently away, but will be returning next week for more work. I believe she wants to go to graduate school, eventually, but that’s also hard to tell because all of my conversations with her have been in Spanish. I’m still learning, but she’s been helping quite a bit.
Here’s a big post illustrating a decomposition assay I recently set out in the wetland. I created bundles of dead, dried macrophytes in various mixtures, attached them to 3-m of nylon rope and tied the rope to posts in the wetland. I’ll be collecting a sample soon and may post another sequence.
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| Rubén, an ornithologist from Valencia, Spain, helped me collect Neptunia one day. He’s currently here to characterize dry forest wetlands using a variety of limnological techniques; consequently, I got to travel around with him on my birthday to a few local wetlands – beautiful wetlands at higher elevation, with cooler temperatures and without mosquitoes. Pictures will come.
When we play soccer, Rubén is usually on my team, along with any other gringos at the station, so the contest is Ticos contra El Resto del Mundo (Costa Rica versus the rest of the world). We lost the other day 5 –15. Sad. |
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