The first rule of Gopher Tortoise fight club is…

So this evening when I was driving out on my ATV to get in 2 last nest checks, (I had come in early to hear one of the plant lab, and one of the invert lab interns give their final research presentations), I saw what can only be described as Gopher Tortoise fight club.

Well, not really. It was merely a territorial boundary fight between two males. But it was still pretty cool. Travis, the Schoech lab’s resident herp expert, spotted them on the way out. I guess a fight ends when one of the tortoises manages to flip the other onto its back. The larger of the two, who I will call Brad, almost managed to do this a few times to the smaller of the two, who I will call Edward. I always root for the underdog, so naturally, I was a bit disappointed when Edward backed down and trundled away. (Trundling really being the best way to describe the way they move.)
It was a bit surprising to see how aggressive they were during the encounter. Most of the time I see them they’re either trundling, or grazing on grass. So naturally, as Edward moved off, Brad trundled about 3 feet and began to graze. Like nothing had just happened.

In other strange, (and slightly creepy), news from Archbold Travis found a single grave stone out in the scrub while nest searching at ERRX. Finding the stone is not really too surprising as the section of the station in question used to be a very old town, which has now been reclaimed by the scrub. (I’ve actually found a few interesting little glass bottles out there while wandering around myself.) What makes the gravestone creepy is the following facts: The gravestone has been burned multiple times, presumably from the prescribed burns used by the land manager at the station to keep the scrub in optimal shape, and next to the gravestone is an unburned clay pot… you know, the kind that people plant flowers in. So… There’s a grave out in the scrub, that we cannot make out any inscription on, that has obviously been there a while, either forgotten, or unknown to most, and someone may know about it and feel the need to place flowers by it. Creepy? I think so. I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that field biologists must have one of the highest recovery rates of dead bodies of any profession. This incident just brings to mind Aaron saying that he found a body out in the sagebrush of Wyoming a few years back, and mine and Viddy’s hesitation at recovering a large white tarp out in the sagebrush of Sheldon for fear of what it was hiding. (Nothing, by the way.) Tomorrow Travis, Michelle and I are making the trip out to the stone together to attempt to make a rubbing… because none of us really wants to do it alone.

And in more lifelike news… I have seen my first fledglings! They are incredibly cute. See the little guy sitting on the branch?


I have yet to hear the characteristic begging squeal, but I’m sure that will come soon. I’ve already gotten to hear its approximation, complete with gratuitous wing shimmying, from a few demanding females of their male partners… and once directed towards me when I refused to feed a hand tame bird while trying to nest search. (How am I supposed to observe nesting behavior when all they want to do is eat and cache peanuts?)