Duck, Duck, Goose

Monday and Tuesday were awesome, the biologist and I did a brood survey - driving around counting ducklings and goslings (say it with me now: "awwwwwwwwwwwww!"). Basically we hopped in the biologist's truck as soon as we got to work (we're late, for a very important date!), since we were technically supposed to start at sunrise...oops. It was pretty cool, and fairly low-key; we couldn't get out of the truck lest we scare the babies, so we basically just drove around in the truck all day. It was tiring just to sit around, not to mention that I'm used to being outside all day, so it was a weird change of pace. We saw everything from "teenagers," that were nearly all grown up - had almost all their feathers and whatnot - but just couldn't fly yet, all the way down to the itty bitty fuzzy guys. I'll admit, I was a total dork and kept exclaiming at how cute they were...poor biologist man, having to deal with that! haha. Really though, it was a blast.

We finished up the brood survey Tuesday afternoon, so we drove around while he did inspections - we're cutting down and/or spraying a bunch of trees that need to go (prairie and all, trees are not welcome here!), so he was making sure that everything was going according to plan. Then he took me to one of the restoration fields, where they plant the seeds of native plants on a once-farmed land, in hopes of returning it to a prairie. This one was really successful, there was a huuuuge variety of plants there, the biologist was really impressed. Our main objective was to uproot some Queen Anne's Lace (nasty invasive!), but once we saw that there was hardly any out there, he took to quizzing me on the plants, since we'll be doing some vegetation monitoring sometime this week. He tried to trip me up (say, by asking about a plant when the flower is gone, so it's just green), but I managed to do pretty good!

Today was rainy, so I didn't do too much. In the morning, a YCC crew from another refuge came by to take a tour, and I somehow got nominated to lead it! It was kind of intimidating, but the kids were pretty cool so the whole affair ended up being pretty fun. In the afternoon I mostly helped out around the office, putting stuff away from the festival this weekend, organizing cupboards, filing away all our surveying crap, that sort of thing. I went out with the big boss - aka the refuge manager - to talk with some people from the Army Corps of Engineers, because apparently a man owning neighboring lands is trying to drain water from his property onto the refuge, so that he can farm it. We were basically out there trying to decide whether he should or not, and what to do about it. That was an experience...ugh, I do NOT want to go into management.

Tomorrow: veg, hopefully!