Week 7- The Wild West

Monday 6th October-

Just had regular classes today and a revision lab for our Vertebrate Design practical exam next week.

View from my window

Tuesday 7th October-

Shannen and I had a field trip today with our habitat Conservation class today. We all met up and a few students drove the minivans to the Blackfoot Valley, which is about an hour drive Northeast of Missoula. The Blackfoot valley is more like the Wild West  you would expect in Montana, with rolling hills of grass and sagebrush. On our field trip we met up with the founders of an organisation called the Blackfoot Challenge, a community based conservation effort. They focus on providing wildlife habitats on private ranch lands while still retaining viable farmland. It was a very interesting project that seemed to be working. They had restored a 500 acre crop field to an almost natural state of sagebrush habit in twenty years. This provides habitat for jackrabbits, sage grouse, coyotes, bears and the occasional wolves. They also talked about how they collect dead livestock from farmers for free to prevent conflicts between bears, wolves and people. That night our downstairs neighbour Bridget called up with presents for me and Shannen. She's from Hawaii and met her family in San Francisco that weekend. She got them to bring presents from Hawaii for us and also brought famous sourdough bread and chocolate from San Francisco. It was such a lovely surprise :) It's great having such awesome neighbours!

The sagebrush restoration site

A restored fen

Big sky country

Presents from Bridget

Wednesday 8th October-

Today we had our lecture exam for Vertebrate Design. I think it went ok but I was working right before it so we will see. That evening myself, Shannen and Kate headed to the costume shop to get ideas for Halloween. When we got home we watched the last episode of Frozen Planet with Elliot and Dave. I got the results of my mammalogy exam back, got 86% which I was delighted with. :D

Thursday 9th October-

We had a special class this evening for our module on Hunter Check Stations. We learned about how the Montana Fish and Wildlife Services must check all of the animals that hunters harvest every season. They explained why this information is so valuable in forming population estimates and showed us how to age deer and elk based on their teeth. Shannen and me will be stationed in Darby in November and hopefully we'll get to see something interesting like a moose, bear or wolf. 

Friday 10th October-

After work, me and Shannen had our group research project at the Bird Field Lab, along with Sadie and Nathan. We met our bird, diamond dove 17 who co-operated throughout our experiment. We used force plates to see how much force a bird uses on take off and landing and also high speed video so that we can watch the action. It was really cool being allowed to use such high tech equipment in a  lab. That evening we met up with Elliot and went for Five Guys Burgers, which are apparently "the best burgers in America" according to Shannen. To be fair they were pretty good but it's no KC's! After, we went to 22 Jump Street at the University Center cinema with Kate and James. I'd seen parts of it but it was still pretty funny.

My huge Five Guys burger!

Saturday 11th October-

I started my term paper for my Mammalogy class which is an account of coyotes. I spent most of the day working on it because it's due in two weeks. I also studied for my lab exam for that class which is Tuesday morning. This exam will cover the shrews, bats, hares, rabbits and ungulates of Montana. We asked a few friends over that night for a horror movie marathon. Turns out our downstairs neighbours Bridget and Brittany are big into horrors. They brought up only a few of their DVDs are there were still loads. We watch The Cabin in the Woods (which was funny), The Others (with Nicole Kidman, brilliant movie with an unreal twist) and Grabbers (an hilarious Irish 'horror' movie). It was after 3am by the time we went to sleep. We had a great night and must have more movie marathons soon.

 Sunday 12th October-

Had to study for my Vertebrate Design lab most of the day. Had an outdoors study session with Shannen and Joe, who bought pumpkin bread that his Mom had made. It was lovely and not too pumpkiny. :P Joe's friend Alissa joined us and got a phonecall about an explosion in the University Villages. Apparently someone was trying to cook hash oil and it blew up.. feckin eejit! Headed off to work at 7.30 and made it back for just after 10pm.

Hope you enjoyed this week's post. Sorry it's fairly short but I didn't get up to that much- Fiona