I Spent My Vacation to Florida in a Dark Windowless Room, and it was Awesome!

Six months ago I posted a blog called "And So Begins a Beautiful Summer" in anticipation of my research internship at University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs.

Really, I should have titled the post something like, "And So Begins a Beautiful Year," because the beauty did not end with the summer. A couple weeks ago I got to present my research at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) Annual Meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Me standing next to my poster, "Comparative Functional Morphology and Evolution of the Feeding Apparatus in Sculpins (Cottoidea)," during the undergraduate practice session.
Photo credit: Lisa Truong.

Dark windowless rooms might sound like a funny place to spend my January escape to sunny Florida, but there is nowhere I would rather have been!

I did occasionally step outside -- long enough to find this lovely (but invasive) brown anole, Anolis sagrei.

I recall one moment in particular. I am standing in the Convention Center hallway torn between two talks: one is on gecko foot-pad clinging forces; the other is on the immunology of sea urchins. People stride all around me. Some click in beige pumps and stride within the confines of tight pencil skirts. Others clomp in hiking boots and cargo pants. I stand in the middle, dressed in blue skinny jeans and a black, pleather-collared blouse decorated with prowling leopards. A silver chain around my neck supports a silver replica of Darwin's original tree from On the Origin of Species.

I think to myself, "I am never going on a cruise." How could any vacation be as fun as this: a party of scientists, a celebration of nerdom, a professional conference where leopard-pleather is in style and anyone who is anyone recognizes the obscure reference of my jewelry.

Photo credit: The Shapeways Blog.

Or maybe I should have titled my original blog post, "And So Begins a Beautiful Family." No, I did not get married or discover any long-lost great aunts!

But I did make some incredible friendships, the kind that can drop off and pick up anywhere -- like maybe you said goodbye to everyone on a ferry in the San Juan Islands, and then meet up on the Atlantic coast of South Florida like it's the most natural thing ever.

The best part of the SICB meeting? The fact that it was a giant summer-camp reunion. Every fifteen minutes between sessions I ran into one, two, or sixteen of my favorite people.

Reunited with my sister-in-science and partner-in-crime, Anna Conrades! She is the one and only Chondrichthyes connoisseur for me. <3

Joe presents his excellent (and enormous) poster about the burrowing behavior of dungeness and red rock crabs.
Photo credit: Lisa Truong.

Presenting a poster to the very scientists I cited was nerve-wracking, but nothing beats a horde of great friends waiting to give a hug or a high-five (or take a stealthy photo) because they've been there too.
Photo credit: Lisa Truong.

It was a tearful goodbye among the Puddle Crew. We didn't want to lose our grasp on the summer's memories -- of laughing and swearing our way through a chronically flooded lab, of crab-pot dungeness dinners, of traumatic stick-shift lessons -- but  I would rather smile because it happened than cry because it is over.

Somehow through it all, we learned a little more more about the natural world than we knew before, and little more about ourselves. I can't thank you guys enough.

Puddle Crew, 2015.

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Tri-State Birding in Washington, Oregon and Idaho

I got to bird-watch all autumn long with my mom, my old friend Amanda, and my new friends at the Whitman Outdoor Program. I've whittled down my photos so you can enjoy the BEST of our tri-state birding adventures.

(And remember, you can watch a high-resolution slideshow by clicking on any photo.)

Washington

A great horned owl watches us at Bennington Lake.

Two frogs were left high-and-dry at the edge of the low lake.

This noisy northern flicker lives in the tree outside my bedroom window!

A northern flicker was also our Outdoor Program trip's first sighting at McNary National Wildlife Refuge.

A white-crowned and a golden-crowned sparrow show off their different head wear.

A western grebe repels water like Gortex.

She caught a fish!

A murder of crows heads... somewhere.

Amanda and Mom look out over the Snake River from Chief Timothy State Park. Could the lighting be any more perfect?

Every clump of brown grass was crowned with a voluptuous black lady in her web.

This spider had a minuscule suitor on her blade of grass!

Take a moment to admire those pin-striped eyeballs...

Wait a minute... these aren't birds anymore! I digress.

A yellow-rumped warbler shows off what its mama gave it.

A prairie falcon or a male merlin?! The topic of hot debate!
Update: thanks to iNaturalist we have confirmation that this is a merlin!

Can you pick out one of these things that doesn't belong?

A snow goose among the Canada geese!

An old steamboat passes by a grain elevator.

Amanda and I overlook the Snake River.

Oregon

A red-breasted nuthatch picks at bark in the Blue Mountains.

A mystery bird! A off-color American robin? A Townsend's solitaire?
Update: this has been identified as a female western bluebird!

A varied thrush peeks out from the boughs of a Douglas fir.

Mother and fawn white-tailed deer.

I had to balance my camera on a signpost and set a timer... I was terrified the wind would knock it off!

Idaho

A red-tailed hawk displays that red tail as it soars over Mann Lake.

They have beautiful wings, too! 

One killdeer and two pectoral sandpipers.

Canada geese take flight.

A woolly bear on the muddy bank of Mann Lake.

A Bonaparte's gull herds his sheep... I mean his long-billed dowitchers.

A flock of female common mergansers.

We took a tumble in the mud! Like mother like daughter.

Amanda to the rescue! Just like that time she pulled me out of the salt-lick mud in the Amazon. <3

Dozens of large freshwater snails were burrowed in the exposed mud banks.

A small flock of American pipits flitted along the railroad berm.

Tri-State Birders conquer Mann Lake!

Thanks to all the birds and birders, and the occasional bug, too. It wouldn't have been any fun at all without you!

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Images of Johnston Wilderness Campus

Today we strolled through the Johnston Wilderness Campus, a piece of wooded land owned by Whitman College. The handful of cabins, and the astonishing number of bunk beds they house, are open for use by Whitman students, faculty and staff.

Amelia tests the cold water of Mill Creek.

Steep rocky cliffs rose on both sides.

I felt like I was home in a western Washington coastal forest as I wandered among evergreens and squishy moss through a persistent grey drizzle. The Doug firs were particularly familiar.

The grand firs, with their flat needles, reminded me of the absent western hemlocks. The turquoise Engelmann spruce, small and lonely in its deer cage, substituted for the Sitka spruces I was expecting, and the majestic western red cedars seemed prehistoric as usual.

Our professor, Bob, points out a stand of aspen.

Bob's 11-year-old dog Kili is still as spunky as a puppy.

One color stood out as discordant: the lime-green needle tufts of the western larches. Those trees are utterly foreign to me: a conifer that loses its needles?!

The five larches we could see from our resting spot on a steep mountainside meadow reminded me I wasn't in a coastal lowland forest at all; I was in the strange misty peaks of the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon.

  

Hiking across an ecotone into a south-facing subalpine meadow.
Notice the lime-green larches in the background.

Our resting place had a very steep grade.

I tried to capture the steepness with a photo facing up the hillside.

I love exploring this new habitat, and I hope I'll find a way to get back out here over the next two and a half years after my environmental studies course ends -- maybe as part of Semester in the West!

... Stay tuned for that dream.

Even in hot pink pants, Yidi blended right in with the fall foliage.

The identity of this cone had us stumped.

My botanical samples: ponderosa pine, cottonwood, grand fir, western red cedar, maple, Douglas fir, yew, alder, and a non-native Port Orford cedar.

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