Back Down South

Following our New Jersey and Delaware sites, we blasted through our three sites in Maryland and Virginia with relative ease. But again I was stung by wasps, twice, at our Virginia site on the Rappahannock River. This time it was by a paper wasp, from the large nest which you can see in the photo below (I took the photo after I was stung). The stings from these hurt nowhere near as much as the one I got the previous day, and look nowhere as bad either. I wish I knew what sort of wasp it was that stung me at Estell Manor, but I only caught a fleeting glimpse of it as it buzzed away!

The paper wasps (Polistes sp.) which stung me!

We had Monday off as Tim, the Park Ranger at Mackay Island Wildlife Refuge, couldn't take us out in the boat until Tuesday. So we decided to go to Kitty Hawk, a small town in North Carolina, famous for being the the town right by the huge sand dunes where the Wright brothers performed the first controlled powered flight. The main attraction there was the memorial to the Wright brothers, which was pretty cool. It was situated on the actual site where they made their first flights, which were marked out by boulders. They made four flights on December 17, 1904; the first three just 37, 53, and 61 metres, respectively, but the final one was really impressive, at a whopping 260 metres! The memorial also had a nice museum with exact replicas of both their glider and plane which made the first flight. We also checked out what is supposedly the largest sand dune on the east coast, which was pretty cool, but had nothing on the dunes at Mason Bay on Stewart Island.

Hangliding off the top of the dune

The next day we were up at 5 am for an early start at Mackay Island, where we have three sites. We had been dreading this day since the start of the trip due to the waist deep marsh water in some places, high humidity and heat, and the strong possibility of close encounters with deadly and agressive cottonmouth snakes. As it turned out it was actually a pretty easy day. We didn't see any snakes, the weather was cool and the forecast thunderstorms stayed away. We stayed in a hotel literally right beside our final site in Georgetown, South Carolina, nailed that site early the next morning and then had a boring thirteen hour drive back home. So the trip was ultimately a success; some useful data was collected for all of our research projects, we arrived back in Baton Rouge two days earlier than planned, and I even managed to add another two states (West Virginia and Pennsylvania) to the list of those I have visited, bring the total now to 21. Classes start back at LSU on August 20, but before then we have our six sites in Louisiana left to do!

Field Work

The research field trip is well and truly underway. Our trip into Canada was fairly uneventful, including both of the dreaded border crossings where we passed through without even having to pull over to have our car searched - quite a contrast to last time! We didn't have a lot of time for anything other than research-related activities, the three days were pretty fully on:
Day 1: Drove north for eight hours, did two hours of field work (one site), then drove three more hours back south to Quebec.
Day 2: A total of six hours driving and six hours of field work (three sites).
Day 3: Four hours of field work (final two sites) followed by an eight hour drive back to Portland.

Big aphid colony with a predatory hoverfly larvae

Thanks to New York City traffic, the seven hour drive from Portland got turned into an eleven hour one, crawling southwards with everyone heading to Atlantic City for the weekend. Sadly we wouldn't be joining them, heading straight to our paired native and exotic Phragmites sites at Estell Manor Park in New Jersey. This is a really picturesque park and would normally be great to work in. However, this time it was littered with debris from recent storms, was hot and humid, and I was stung by a wasp while sweep-netting, my first wasp sting since I was around ten years old. Sadly, as we progress south the weather conditions are only going to become more severe, and we will have more dangerous things to worry about than wasps - chiefly the famed cottonmouth snakes which we will undoubtedly see at Mackay Island...

Estell Manor Park

Acadia National Park - Take Two

The start of the Fall semester at LSU is fast approaching, which means it's time for the second and final big research trip of the summer. This time we are doing our North American transect in reverse, starting with our northernmost sites in Maine and Canada and working our way south to Louisiana. For this trip, Jim, Ganesh, and I are joined by Randee, an undergraduate who has worked on the Phragmites project in our lab over the last 18 months. It's great to have an extra person along for the trip, but by the time we put all our luggage and sampling gear into the truck there really isn't a lot of room, especially for a lanky guy like me!

To get to our start point in Maine we covered 3100 km in three days, a total of around 32 hours driving. As Jim flew in to meet us in Portland on the 30th, he was kind enough to let us have a couple of days holiday before he arrived, so we decided to go check out Acadia National Park again, hoping for some better weather than the dense fog Ganesh and I experienced last time. The first morning there we had booked a whale watching trip out into the Gulf of Maine, hoping to see some humpback, fin, or minke whales. The first hour or so of the cruise was spent bird-watching by various islands around the coast. We saw puffins, terns, guillemots, shearwaters, bald eagles, and even a peregrine falcon, along with a couple of seals. We then headed out to the open water to spot some whales. It was drizzling steadily and a little foggy, so our chances weren't particularly good, and we didn't spot any whales for over an hour and a half. Literally just as the captain announced we were heading back to Bar Harbor, a humpback whale surfaced about 50 metres from the boat. While the crowd was busy rushing off to the side of the boat I was lucky enough to see two more humpback whales breaching spectacularly about 200 metres in front of the boat. It was an amazing sight to see a 30-odd tonne animal launching its whole body out of the ocean! I took a video below of one of the whales going for a dive - it's much better than any of the pictures I managed to get.

Thankfully the next day had the near-perfect weather we had been hoping for, and we made the most of it. We started with a trip up Cadillac Mountain, the highest mountain on the East Coast of the USA, where we took in some pretty spectacular views. Then we headed down to Sandy Beach, which was crowded with people - a bit different to the last time when we were the only ones there. I even went for a quick swim. The water was cold, but I've been in much colder back home so it was bearable. We also went for a walk across the sand bar to Bar Island and checked out the Otter Cliffs walkway. Pretty awesome way to start a field trip really, but now for the hard work, starting with a three day trip into Canada!

Bubble Pond

Sandy Beach

View from the summit of Cadillac Mountain (much better than last time)

Looking onto Bar Harbor from Bar Island

View back to Sandy Beach from Otter Point

Bugs & Music

It's too hot in Louisiana to do much field work at the moment so I've been spending my time in the lab processing insect samples and I now have a start of a collection going on, as you can see in the pictures below. It's a real challenge trying to properly preserve and identify the insects, but ultimately very rewarding as well when you finally manage to identify a sample or when you find a cool insect you've never seen before.

On the other hand, it can be infuriatingly frustrating and such slow progress at times when trying to make correct identifications. So to keep me calm and stop me losing my mind over whether the hind trochanter is elongated or not, if the pronotal lobe is adjacent to the scutellum, whether the hind tarsi has four or five segments, or if the front tibia has two or three apical spines, I often listen to chill music. Top of the list is almost always Hammock, and they released a new song and music video a couple of days ago, called Tape Recorder. At the same time they also announced that their new album will be a double album entitled Departure Songs, to be released in October. Judging by this song along with snippets the band has posted on Facebook, this album should be impressive (and I have a suspicion they will be releasing a video for every song as well)!


Off on our lab's second east coast census trip of the summer on July 26, can't wait to hit the road again...

Travelling With Mum & Dad

My parents came to visit me this June, and it was so great to see them after 10 months of living away from New Zealand and only having contact through emails and Skype calls. There is only a certain amount of time you can spend in Baton Rouge before you run out of things to do, so we decided to meet up in Boston, where Mum and Dad have friends, and make our way back down to Louisiana.

I had a day in Boston with Mum and Dad which was a good way to start the trip. I managed to see a bit of the city, including Beacon Hill and Harvard, but I definitely have to go back there again. The next day we took a bus to New York, arriving in time to get out in the early evening and see the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, Times Square, and to go up the Rockefeller Center Tower and check out the stunning views of the city at night. The next day we packed in a lot of sightseeing in the city - walking the Brooklyn Bridge (great view of the city), visiting the 9/11 memorial (really good), taking the Staten Island ferry past the Statue of Liberty (and right back again), and biking around Central Park (which was huge).

Looking out at the Empire State Building and NYC

The Statue of Liberty

Phragmites in Central Park!

The next morning we caught a bus again to Washington, D. C., where we met and stayed with Jim Close, a really distant relative from my Mum's side, and his wife Alice.They were great hosts and with their help we were able to see a lot of D. C. in just one day. We spent the entire day just walking down what is called the "mall", a central area housing all the important US political landmarks (Capitol Building, the White House, Supreme Court, etc.), Smithsonian Museums (Natural History, Air and Space, American History, National Gallery of Art, etc.), and impressive monuments (Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Korean War, Vietnam War, World War Two, etc.). The buildings were really a sight to behold, with magnificent architecture and the weather was perfect (as it was the entire trip - we were so lucky), making for an excellent day. With sore feet, which we were now accustomed to, we headed back for a delicious dinner and to try some excellent Breckenridge beer brewed by Jim's son in Denver. That Saturday night I was also lucky enough to meet up and have a drink with my mate Sean, a dude I studied with at Lincoln University back in New Zealand, and who is now finishing up his Master's here at Virginia Tech.

Where Mr. Obama lives

Inside the dome of the Capitol

After Washington, we rented a car and headed for the more laid-back south, stopping in on the way to visit Garth, an old work-friend of Mum's, and also at a small town in Virginia called Colonial Williamsburg, which is essentially a town set back in time by 200 years where you can walk around and see how Americans lived back then. We arrived at Myrtle Beach later that evening to visit more distant relatives from the same family, Peggy and her husband Frazer. Myrtle Beach was a nice beach town, a bit touristy, but it provided us a good chance to relax after so much sightseeing the previous few days. We went swimming a couple of times in the really warm Atlantic Ocean, and also enjoyed a marsh walk and lunch beside a river.

Early morning fisherman having a go while we swam

Atlanta was a really fun city as well. which was our last major stop on the way to Louisiana. On the way we visited Charleston, a historic city in South Carolina, which was cool. We made it to Atlanta too late to do much, but walked around the park built for the 1996 Olympic Games, and checked out our amazing hotel, which also happened to house the entire CNN studio! The next day we were up early to check out the famous Atlanta aquarium. It was the best aquarium I have been to so far and featured many amazing displays, with Beluga whales, African penguins, sea otters, Japanese spider crabs, and many species of frog. But by far the most amazing attraction was the huge tank housing four whale sharks (the biggest fish in the sea) and also a number of giant manta rays. After a couple of hours at the aquarium we moved next door to see the World of Coca Cola, appropriately located in the birthplace of the drink itself. The highlight of this was taste-testing all the different drinks that Coke produces from all over the world (Coke is sold in over 200 countries).

River tank at the Atlanta aquarium

Finally after a nine hour drive we made it to Baton Rouge, where we would be spending the next couple of days. I gave Mum and Dad a tour of the city, where we checked out the Mississippi, State Capitol Building, Old Capitol Building, and Magnolia Mound Plantation, before I gave them a long walking tour of the LSU campus. A tour of everything cool in Baton Rouge only takes a day, but it was definitely cool to show them around where I've been living. The next day we headed west into the Atchafalaya Basin to take a swamp tour. I still hadn't been on a swamp tour myself and it was a great experience, speeding around through the beautiful old swamp on an airboat - you can check out a video below. We got to see a couple of alligators right beside the boat. The guide had been feeding them for about five years - not chicken, not beef, not fish, but marshmallows!

The next day we arrived in New Orleans, where we stayed the night before Mum and Dad flew home the next day. Our amazing hotel (nicest I have ever stayed in) was right on the corner of Orleans and Bourbon, in the middle of all the action of the French Quarter. We wandered around town for a while before taking a cruise on the Natchez, the famous steam boat of New Orleans, followed by a couple of drinks at the hotel bar on Bourbon Street, and a walk down the famous party street itself. Being a Sunday night it was pretty quiet though.

It was a great experience to travel the east coast at a more leisurely pace than when on a field trip, and it was even more special that I was able to do it with my parents. It was great to see them, and hopefully we can travel some more again soon!

Friendly marshmallow-loving alligator

Out for dinner in New Orleans

Independence Day

I knew about the importance of the fourth of July in America since I was young, entirely due to a Will Smith movie I owned on VHS with the same name as this blog title. In the movie aliens invade earth on Independence Day (July 4), with the movie ending with the sort of fourth of July fireworks you would expect from Hollywood.

My fourth of July experience didn't feature alien motherships blowing up entire cities and being fought by space-jets, but it was a holiday, and it was definitely an experience to remember. My friend Pradip had just moved to a new place and his new roommate Whitney had invited him and a couple of friends (one of which was me!) to stay at his holiday house just out of New Orleans. It turns out the house was part of a really cool little fishing camp situated on a bayou in John Lafitte Preserve, which could only be reached via boat.

The camp in John Lafitte Preserve, just south of New Orleans

It was such a unique experience to stay at this camp. Some of the houses were just holiday houses, but others live there permanently and made their living off the land and bayou. Whitney took us to meet his friends who live, fish, and hunt in the area and introduced themselves as "swamp people" (as in the TV series - VIDEO). They showed us their soft-shelled (blue) crab tanks and we grabbed some which had freshly shed their shells, fried them whole in fish-fry batter, and ate them between two slices of bread with hot sauce. A true Louisiana delicacy apparently!

We packed a lot of fun into the two days we were there. We messed around on the water a lot; cruising around in the boat looking for alligators (we saw a couple), canoeing, kayaking, fishing (no luck), and the most fun of all - being towed behind the boat in an inflatable tube! We also relaxed in the cool of the house to escape the heat, had a BBQ and beers to celebrate fourth of July, and watched fireworks from afar. In all, I couldn't ask for a better first Independence Day. Now, back to doing a bit of hard work instead of travelling - at least until August when we redo our east coast Phragmites field survey!

View from outside the house

Nice bit of swamp, no gators though

Soft-shelled crab - you fry and eat the entire thing

Good Year For Music!

So much music by some of my favourite artists has been or will be released this year but there's a few bands in particular which have either impressed me with a new album or that I'm particularly excited about:

Jakob
Probably the best New Zealand band of all time, these guys are slowly getting the international recognition they have long deserved. It's been six years since they last released their last album Solace, but they have a new album in the works which should be released late this year. Below is a teaser of snippets of demo tracks they recorded a while back, which sounds great. Having heard three of the new songs live in Auckland last June I know this album is going to be killer!


Sigur Ros
These guys are one of my all time favourite bands and have been around since 1994, releasing a number of quality albums in that time. They're well-known around their world for writing hauntingly beautiful music and the incredible singing in Icelandic, Hopelandic (an invented language), and even English of their chief vocalist, Jonsi.

They released a new album this year titled Valtari which a return to form for them and bit of a departure from their previous album Með Suð I Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust, which was their weakest effort yet. To accompany the release of Valtari they came up with the awesome concept of commissioning a music video to accompany each track from different artists all throughout the world, giving them a small budget and giving them complete creative freedom to produce whatever the music inspires from them. Three of the eight videos have been released and the one below, by Inga Birgisdottir, is my favourite so far. It's a really simple, clever, and well-executed video and the song is probably the best on the new Sigur Ros album as well, combining for an awesome visual and auditory experience.


Mono
Mono are another well-known stalwart of the post-rock genre, with a number of epic albums under their belt. They are one of the greatest exponents of the post-rock crescendo and are going to be releasing a new album on September 4. From the looks and sound of the trailer they recently posted to YouTube it's going to be epic!


Hammock
Tied with Jakob for the title of best band ever, Hammock will also be releasing a new album sometime this year, which is currently being mixed in Australia. I'm super excited about this as pretty much everything they've ever released has been 100% quality!

Lights Out Asia
A very recent release (June 5th), Hy-Brasil follows in the tradition of this band to release huge-sounding and sonically-appealing songs of electronically influenced post-rock. All of their previous albums have been awesome and have got a lot of listens from me, and this one sounds like it will be no exception after the first few listens. They also released a music video to accompany the song They Disappear Into The Palms, which you can check out (and try to make sense of) below.


I'm really loving the frequency with which bands are releasing music videos to go with their songs, and not just boring old videos of them playing. When an accompanying music video has some sort of artistic quality to it, it really can draw the listener deeper in to the music and provide a whole new listening experience.