What’s a memorable work moment for you?
Ask a Biologist Monday 12/4/23
Answers from Biologists:
Hearing the metal clanging of elephants smashing my camera trap cases and turning around.
A bolt of lightning exploded directly ahead of us and everything went white.
Seeing a tick larvae for the first time. So tiny!
Hearing a grunt above and turning to be 2 feet from a lemur you’re tracking in the dense undergrowth.
Snorkeling face to face with a deadly irukandi jellyfish.
Actually finding the turtles we were eDNA slurping for.
Seeing my first wild endangered Black-footed ferret after weeks of wondering if they existed.
Assisting in barn owl research in the sandhill prairies of Nebraska.
Getting stalked by a mountain lion.
Recapturing a little brown bat 28 yrs after its first capture (1993-2021).
Saved a 14 yr old bison cow that was stuck in the calf chute.
Trapping the first bobcat of the season (my first bobcat I’d ever seen/handled).
Finding cougar kittens in a huge thicket of vegetation after a grueling hike.
Banding a sandhill crane.
Rearing and caring for a red wolf puppy as part of their SSP.
Snorkeling with a 6 ft long Atlantic sturgeon.
Watching a black bear come down into a river canyon and effortlessly swim across the river we were on.
Collaring and tagging wolf pups.
Checking tern eggs pipping and having an adult land on my head.
Working with one of the rarest crayfish species in North America.
Waking up to a moose nudging my foot through my tent.
Crawling into a Mexican wolf den to vaccinate the mother of the pack. Beautiful brown eyes.
A cow elk ran up on me when I finished doing a northern goshawk call.
Got slapped by a Chinook tail.
Hearing a female mountain lion screaming from less than 100 yards away.
Almost stepping on a very large and venomous Fer-d-lance snake in the tropics.
Seeing a bobcat run across the road.
Having a Black footed ferret try to nip my ankles.
Catching the biggest lake trout I’ve ever seen on my first remote field trip.
Hearing a whizzing sound over my head and looked up to see a CA condor soaring.
Hearing a Sprague’s pipit sing in a reseeded grassland.
First time encountering a tiger shark on a shark tagging expedition.
Finding my first rusty patch bumblebee after many surveys.
Finding my first bank swallow colony in habitat I identified.
Seeing my first spotted owl of the season after having a really rough month. I cried.
Finding a weed grow in a reforestation site.
Downstream snorkeling survey with thousands of Chinook returning to spawn.
Garibaldi coming up to bite my pencil eraser while I was trying to record its behavior.
Almost stumbling into a weeks old bear cub sleeping in the shrubs of FL.
Got nibbled on by a chamois while waiting for an eagle owl on a rock wall. Almost fell down the cliff.
Releasing a black-footed ferret at a reintroduction site.
Releasing baby lake sturgeon into the wild and watching them swim en mass to their new home.
First time seeing a sea turtle nesting on a beach. Childhood dream come true.
Having a spotted owl survey interrupted by a curious mountain lion.
Our wildlife dog Athena found that pangolins bury their scat. No one knew this before.
A bear passing right by me as I did a bird count survey and how it bolted when it saw me.
Driving up to a site that was on the cliffs above the Llano Escatado. Beautiful country.
Finding a turtle that had been poached and we rescued ten years later nesting in the wild again.
Doing seabird surveys and a huge beluga pod of 150 swam below the cliff we were on.
Seeing two mountain lions playing on a trail camera.
Watching a bald eagle fly over the smolt trap with the second salmon it caught of the day.
A salt marsh black bear encounter in North Carolina.
I got to assist with a Mexican spotted owl capture. It was such an incredible experience.
Seeing 5 black footed ferrets in a single night and capturing zero.
A common loon swimming right under our canoe in shallow crystal clear water.
Walked up on a fresh pair of fawns doing my MS field work. Mom was still cleaning them.
Running across a beach, avoiding all the T&E nests and eggs, in order to grad a trapped RTHA.
Watching the Mojave desert come to life during the superbloom.
Seeing 30 or so elk crossing a snowy field and white mountains in the background.
Working at a local shelter to help do research on a feral cat population.
Seeing an owl’s ears for the first time.
Watching the silhouettes of Paddlefish dancing just below the surface.
Seeing a moose down the trail as I was setting cameras in the rain. Beautiful and majestic.
