Rainbow Basin

This is a quick teaser of what will be coming on the blog. I'm wrapping up my last day in California shooting for the Center for Plant Conservation. I'll be posting more photos in the coming days, but for now I just wanted share this picture from this morning.

Joshua Tree, Rainbow Basin, California.

Bat Blitz

After several months without regular internet access, I'm finally getting a chance to update the blog.  I just left an amazing week at the Southeastern Bat Diversity Network's Bat Blitz. For the 10th year in a row scientists and students from around the country gathered for four days of intensive bat counting. This year's blitz was in the Pisgah National Forest in the mountains of North Carolina. Enjoy.

Volunteers at the SBDN Bat Blitz remove a bat from a temporary net trap. The bats are measured and tagged before being released.

Sybill Amelon sets up a mist net for trapping bats.

A tag is attached to the wing of a captured bat.

Anna Zack measures a captured eastern red bat.

After being tagged and measured, a bat is held up for release.

Clarissa Starbuck and Sybill Amelon finish setting up a temporary net for trapping bats over a creek near the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A bat taking off after being tagged and measured.

The blog will be returning to non bat related material soon. I'll be filling in gaps from the summer over the next few days and weeks. Unfortunately for my photo editing, but fortunately for me, the next week is overflowing with photo work with the Center for Plant Conservation in California. Stay tuned for pictures from there and the rest of the summer.

Trapping Bats

Had one of the most interesting nights I've had on a job last week. In addition to the regular bat counts, we spent two nights trapping bats in Northeast Missouri. While numerous bats where caught, the project was mainly to look at the roosting habitats of the endangered Indiana bats. After being caught and measured, the bats were attached with radios and followed for several days to find where they were roosting.

Sybill Amelon trims the hair off of the back of an Indiana bat in order to attach a small radio.

In the Ozarks

For the next two months, I'll be working on some bat research projects around Missouri. This will mean that blog posts are fewer and far between, but so far I've been in some pretty interesting country and hopefully I'll be able to post a few photos every now and then. I'm up on the Missouri/Iowa border now but here are some photos from the last two weeks down in the Ozarks. Enjoy.

Rocky Falls

Alley Spring

Alley Spring. The blue water is in all of the Ozark springs 

New Camera in the Woods

Got a new camera and lens this week (D300s.) Its also been a pretty busy week with finals and preparing for a new job tomorrow but I have had some time to play around with it in the (very wet) woods behind the house.

Honeylocust

The joys of living on the lake

Really, its more of a pond and people just call it a lake. But when the light becomes amazing, like it did at sunset tonight, it only takes a minute to run out and take some fun photos.

Hazelwood Central Marching Band

This weekend was the memorial for James T. Scott, an African American man from Columbia who was lynched near downtown in 1923. On Saturday, hundreds of people came out for a memorial service and dedication of a new monument in Scott's honor. The procession to the monument was led by the Hazelwood Central High School marching band from St. Louis. Before everything started, I got these photos of the band warming up. A video from the event that created with a couple other photographers will be up soon.