Fun with Triops

 We're starting the New Year with some new pets: Triops. My first thoughts about these creatures is that my parents really should have let us have these when we were kids.

They instantly stop fights because the parent just says, "Look at the Triops."
or
"What are the Triops doing?" 
or
"Are the Triops still alive?"
or
"Have the Triops grown so much that they're going to eat your head off?"
 and the kid is immediately distracted. They're also much more entertaining at breakfast than reading the backs of cereal boxes (which is what we did when we were kids when we weren't throwing dirty looks at each other).

 Every day I wonder if the Triops are still alive in their slightly murky water. Why is the water murky? Maybe because my husband feeds them hamburger. Maybe because I give them a little carrot once in awhile. Maybe because we couldn't resist adding some sand to the bottom, and the water has never been quite the same since.

Fortunately, Triops are quite hardy. They lived when the dinosaurs lived. Whatever killed the dinosaurs, the Triops survived. It probably helped that their eggs can be dormant for up to 30 years. 

 The above photo was taken a couple weeks later than the first two, and the Triops has grown in size, to almost half an inch. It's really cool looking.

 They live in our water pitcher, for perspective. And to future house guests: if you see this water pitcher on the table, DO NOT drink from it unless you ask first. I'm not sure what Triops taste like, but I imagine the sensation of something going down your throat and wiggling its way into your stomach is not pleasant.

 We have one Triops that looks like a classic Triops, and then we have a bunch of these shrimpy-looking things (as my friend Anna calls them. And a million thanks to Anna for starting us on our Triops adventure!). I should do a little research and figure out what they are, but when I did the research before, I didn't get much past the part where you could add sand and feed them carrots on weekends.

Photographing Triops has proven to be a challenge. This one looks like it's ready to jump out of the pitcher and attack.

Don't you want some? We need some Triops penpals!

Random November Photos

 We saw about 70 pronghorn in one of our fields a couple weeks ago. I made my husband stop so I could take a photo of some of them. As you can see by the snow on the mountains, it's getting colder, so lots of the animals are moving to lower elevations. The pronghorn are found pretty low year-round, but it's not often that we see this many of them together.

 I liked the juxtaposition of this well against the dry desert behind it. In many places in the Great Basin desert the only water is underground, so if you want to grow something (or get water for your house), you need a well.

 It was a cloudy day, leading to the bleakness of the landscape as it prepares for a long winter ahead. This photo makes me want to curl up in bed with a good book and a pot of homemade soup on the stove, sending its delicious aroma throughout the house.

It was cold enough for icicles to form on this water trough. The cattle will use it for part of the winter as they're out grazing on the winter range. A small pipeline brings the water from a creek higher up on the mountain to this lower location.

And last but not least. The freezing temperatures at night are creating some wonderful ice formations along the creeks. 

Logan Cave

 This last week I went to the National Cave and Karst Management Symposium in Midway, Utah. It was an excellent symposium, with lots of great information shared, old relationships revitalized, new cave people met, and to top it off, it also included an informative field trip.

We headed up Logan Canyon and after stopping at a couple springs and learning how dye tracing had revealed the water sources to them, we met with a state wildlife biologist and learned about the bats in Logan Cave. This is a fairly large cave with a huge cave opening right by the highway. It has both a maternity and hibernating colony of Townsend's big eared bats, so visits in the summer or winter can impact the bats. About 15 years ago, the gate was put on, and since then the population of bats has increased from about 5 to 250.

 Since we were visiting in the fall and the group was made up of cave managers and researchers, we had been able to obtain permission to visit part of the cave. Several members of our group remembered visiting the cave decades ago and were grateful to have a chance to see it again.

 Large walking passages predominated in the part of the cave we visited.

 Of course I couldn't help but look for cave life. I saw several heleomyzid flies.

 We were a little bit of a parade going through the cave, our group, strung out into a single file. It was interesting hearing the little tidbits of geologic, hydrologic, biologic, and historical knowledge people were sharing.

 A bat with white nose syndrome. No! Just kidding. This was a dead bat with lots of white fungus growing on it, but it had been dead a long time. White nose syndrome is a disease caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans, and it causes a white fungus to grow on bats and then those bats usually die. It was first discovered in the U.S. in New York state about five years ago and now has spread to many more states, primarily in the East and Midwest, killing thousands of bats. No one knows how to stop it, and cavers are taking precautions of not wearing gear from infected areas in uninfected areas. In addition, many caves have been closed, which has been controversial, but I won't go into that discussion here right now.

 Logan cave had lots of interesting sand riffles, mud cracks, and other sediment deposits showing how water had recently moved through the cave.

 We continued in the passage until it eventually got too wet. The stream flowed a few inches deep, with pools sometimes a few feet deep.

 With the advance of point-and-shoot cameras, we had plenty of photographers documenting the cave!

 On the way out, I noticed the water lines in the cave. When I saw this photo, I realized that folks had also lined up rocks to avoid getting as wet when water was flowing in the cave.

 We saw lots of chert nodules in the walls.

 More passage with water lines evident.

 A snout-nosed moth (take a good look at that nose!).

 Someone called this a monarch moth, and I'm going with that right now because I forget the Latin genus name.

 Returning to the entrance, we saw that the skies had opened up and that it was raining hard.

 Shawn had found some items to clean up in the cave--a beer can and a super soaker.

 A large packrat midden was right next to the gate, looking like oil oozing out of the wall (and one participant shared a story of a visitor describing a midden just like that and wanting to know why the cave was leaky).

 Right inside the gate was a box with a sign that said "Warning, this area under video surveillance."

I was about to leave when I was notified of a millipede just a short ways back.

 I couldn't resist checking it out. Even though it wasn't a white cave-adapted millipede, it was still really cool and I was glad to see it. Somehow invertebrates are so much more interesting to me when they're found inside a cave!

 Then it really was time to leave, out past the thick chain and padlock. I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to go back in, but hopefully these photos give a glimpse of what's back behind the bars. I hope the bats are able to keep living peacefully in their home. They've lived there a lot longer than us humans have been around, and it's quite sad that humans nearly destroyed them there. (The cave was ultimately closed after some stupid, irresponsible people (yes, I wanted to use much stronger language here, but resisted due to the family nature of this blog) set off firecrackers under the bats. How could they be so stupid?).

We hiked back down to the highway, next to the spring cascading down the leaf-covered rocks.

Next stop: an even larger spring, with a surprise right in the middle of it. Stay tuned...

Bat Flight from Rose Guano Cave

One evening this past week I had the opportunity to go to Rose Guano Cave in eastern Nevada to watch the bat flight. This cave is an important migratory stop for Brazilian free-tailed bats (also called Mexican free-tailed bats; Tadarida brasiliensis), with over a million using it each year. They usually stay for one to four nights, heading out to feed on insects that are especially prevalent over the nearby agricultural fields.

From the highway, the cave can be seen, near the base of the cliffs (left-center of photo above).

The road towards the cave is rough and definitely requires high clearance and four wheel drive. We parked next to a trailer that is being used by graduate students to study the bats (more on that later), and then hiked the old road towards the cave.

The late afternoon sunlight was superb against the limestone. The first attraction we noticed was a huge limestone arch. Then we could see the gaping mouth of the cave. The old road ended at the base of a tailings pile. This was from an adit built in the 1920s to mine guano out of the cave. The guano is rich in phosphates and nitrates and was used to make gunpowder. Because the adit upset the natural airflow in the cave, it was sealed in the 1990s.

Inside the cave mouth it says "Positively No Trespassing. Rose Guano Mining Claim."

It's steep to get up to the cave, and a rope was installed as a handline to make it a bit easier. We could smell that guano as we got closer to the cave.

On the way we passed a thermal-imaging camera. This was installed earlier this year to record the bat flights so more accurate counts can be done. The bats in the cave have received a lot of attention in recent years due to nearby wind farm proposals.

A sign outside the cave entrance provides more information about the bats (click on the photo to enlarge it).

Below the cave entrance, sitting in a chair with a camera by his side was Peter, one of two field technicians helping two graduate students learn more about the bats. The two graduate students had spent the previous summer counting the bats every night, and they liked it so much that they decided to do further studies and return again. They work closely with the Nevada Department of Wildlife and the Bureau of Land Management to not only count the bats, but also find out where they go. One hundred transmitters were attached to bats over the past couple of years to track where they go and how long they stay in the area.

Even though there is a camera that records the entire bat flight now, they are continuing to count the bats nightly to compare the past method counts to the new counts.

We climbed up to a rock next to the cave entrance. From there we could see that the cave entrance had some special lights in it (that we couldn't see when they were on) to help the camera images.

Jason, an NDOW wildlife biologist, came out to explain to our group more about bat biology and their use of the cave. As he was talking, we saw the first bat come out of the cave--and then turn around and head back in, presumably to tell the rest that it was time to start heading out.

Then more bats started coming out. They looked a little like a stream, flowing by quickly. Then the number of bats increased, and instead of flying straight out, some swirled a bit--the stream was bigger and had some whitewater.

As it got darker, we found that our vantage point was a bit high because the bats blended in with the rock behind them. So we moved down next to Peter and saw the bats silhouetted against the sky.

Jason pulled out a camera and showed us a video of the bats from inside the cave. They come from a deeper chamber in the cave and swirled around twice to gain elevation before they flew out of the cave. It looked really neat.

He also had a thermal-imaging camera with him. Using that, I thought the bats looked like fish swimming in a fast current in the ocean. Jason estimated that about 2,000 bats per minute were flying out of the cave.

By 8:20 p.m., it was too dark to see the bats with the naked eye. Jason said they would continue until about 11:00 p.m. The bats primarily use the cave from July into October.

I couldn't get a photo of the bats flying out, but you might be able to see them in the video below. They are really amazing animals, and with such strange life histories. I can't wait to learn more about them.

Caves, Frogs, Snow, and a Train

 I wanted to share a few more photos from my friends' visit to show what else is here in the Great Basin Desert, including some things that might not normally fit the stereotype of a desert!

 My friend Andrea accepted the challenge route in one cave. Visiting caves reminded us of the fun times we had while we were in graduate school and the great caving friends we made there.

 A good snow melt has left extra water in some of the area caves.

 Stopped by the sump! The kids did really well in the cave.

 Afterwards they went on a search for more caves and found one! Okay, it was really just a different entrance to the same one we had been in, but they enjoyed "exploring" it and naming it.

 A quick visit to a wetland provided an opportunity to see some frogs.

 We don't see frogs often out in the desert, so they're a fun treat.

 And who could resist walking over the old, dead tree? I couldn't--I followed them!

 Frog watching turned into frog catching--almost. Desert Boy couldn't quite catch a frog, which is probably a good thing.

 We went up to 10,000 feet and took the sled, which was used frequently on the snow patches. There's something special about sledding in July.

 We also had a special stop at the Nevada Northern Railroad to ride the train. The steam engine was pulling the train that day, which gave us an added taste of history and embers in the hair.

Oh my goodness, what a great visit!