Day Two: The Alabama Beach Mouse

 

June 5, 2015

            On day two, I once again woke up at the crack of dawn.   This time, my legs were complaining about the abuse I had put them through the day before. I ignored them and once again made my way to work, although a bit more slowly this time. Today I was to go in the field with another biologist in the office, Bill Lynn, who is the lead recovery biologist of the endangered Alabama Beach Mouse (ABM). On the dunes of a stretch of Gulf State Park, we checked on some home-made tracking tubes to monitor the ABM population.

 

 

The tubes are about two feet of PVC pipe with a cap on the end.  Bill places sunflower seeds inside the cap to entice the mice.  A piece of paper with an ink pad on the end is placed within the tube. The mice climb into the tube and have to walk through the ink to get to the seeds on the other side.  As a result, they eat the seeds and leave their tracks behind. Bill then takes the papers and looks for tracks.  This indicates beach mice are in the area.  He has to go out once a month to replace the paper and seeds.

            It was on one of these monthly trips that I was accompanying him along with another biologist, Dr. Tim Mullet. Tim is a soundscape ecologist and new to the office, so he was coming along to get a feel for beach mouse work.  Around 7:30 in the morning, we were all packed up and on our way to Gulf State Park.  We got to the park and immediately went out onto the dunes, trekking through the shrubbery to recover and record tracking tube usage.  I was able to contribute by recording the findings in Bill’s note book, dating the backs of the collected papers and inking the new sheets.

 It was a hot day out on the sands of the dunes with no shade, and Tim who just moved down from Alaska was having a hard time. But with a little help from a case of water bottles, (that I was carrying in my book bag) we all got through it. After all of the tubes were checked and restocked, we took a much deserved break and went back to the car.  After leaving the site, Bill showed us around Gulf State Park which Tim and I had never really been through before.  The air conditioning was nice!

When we got back to the office I once again reviewed my fishes. The list of species was in no way short and I spent the rest of the day looking up fish to acquaint myself with what I might encounter in the Buttahatchee River next week.  After that, it was time for me to bike home, again, in the scorching sun.  My legs complained all weekend!

Despite the heat, it was such a fun day, and I learned so much about the ecosystem of the sand dunes.  We saw ghost crab burrows, coyote tracks, an osprey, and more plants than I would have ever imagined. It was a great way to end my eventful (if short) first week on the job and it got me pumped for what the coming weeks might hold.