Our first week in the field was scheduled at Ayers Sand Prairie State Nature Preserve and the Nachusa Grasslands in northwestern IL. This coming week, Maddie and I will be going back to these sites to recapture some telemetry turtles that we will be following over the entire active season this year, until they go back underground around October. Due to our upcoming trip, we wanted to share a few memories of one of our first outings in the field!
At Nachusa, we get to stay in a beautiful farmhouse and set up our field lab in the garage. On the second day, Erika was alone at the house and setting some things up for the lab in the garage before everyone else arrived. We knew there were quite a lot of turkeys on the land, but Erika was still very shocked when a flock passed right in front of the house!
Nachusa also houses a herd of bison on the land. When searching one of the bison units for turtles this year, there was a lone bull in the unit. He was far enough from where we were going to search that we were given the ok to go on our hike with the turtle dogs. The hike was going great and the dogs were able to stay focused even with turkeys, pheasants, and woodcocks roaming around. We were all insanely surprised when we got back to the lab trucks to work up the turtles, as the bison was standing about 10 feet from one of the trucks. Luckily, he wasn’t looking for an altercation and was just a curious fella who wanted to see what we were up to! It was an extraordinary sight for all of us, and I’d like to think the bison felt the same way!
Come back for the next blog to learn about telemetry and how we are tracking our ornates! See ya soon!
