Harlin/Hayley Steele (they/she/ze/he) stayed in a cabin in the California wilderness during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown. Through the window, they observed this member of the weasel family, which they say “looks like a ferret and bounces like a squirrel, but with actual rhythm.” As they describe, “I’d never seen an animal move…
Category: Field Notes
Field Notes: Stepping Over a Cliff’s Edge
When I park the ATV at the top of a hill and the drone of the engine cuts out, a hush settles over the foothills. Removing my thick helmet, I can finally hear the fluting of distant meadowlarks. To my west rises a long, wide ridge of granite cliffs. I’ve been scanning this ridge on…
Field Notes: The Patagonian Mud Fiasco
It was May 2024 and winter in Patagonia came early that year. The truck started to slowly drift sideways, no longer able to grip the once gravelly dirt road that had turned into sticky, squelchy wet clay after only an hour of barely drizzling. We got out and with a shovel or our bare hands scraped…
Field Notes: The Music of Mono Lake
I remember getting the acceptance email, offering me a position as a research assistant, on a late January night. It was the type of silence in the house you only achieve when the world is asleep…until I shouted in excitement and scared my brother who was sitting next to me. That was the first note…
Field Notes: Hot and cold – field work explorations during a gap year and finding your Goldilocks zone
I’m walking on the beach, sun beating down on my head, sweat soaking the back of my shirt. I avert my eyes from the bright sunlight, but even so, my eyes hurt from the glare reflecting off the sea and white sand, and a headache is building. My first day on this job, I was…
Field Notes: Monkey Spit
It’s hard to find a professional way to tell people that I’m a monkey trainer. On paper, I’m a graduate student, but I spent most of the summer and fall of 2024 training monkeys to chew on swabs so I could collect their spit and test it for cortisol, a hormone that can indicate stress…
Field Notes: How Questions Develop During a Field Season from an Undergraduate Perspective
Every undergraduate begins their college education expecting to gain knowledge, but gaining hands-on experience in the field is just as important as learning in the classroom. In the biological sciences, undergraduate access to field research can be limited and highly sought after. It’s a prized jewel that many students yearn for. Reaching my final year…
Field Notes: You Are What You Study
A gray day darkens as the hands of the clock march along. The intermittent drizzles are becoming steady and ever louder. I pace back and forth between frequent stops to look out the window, and my anticipation grows in parallel with the strength of the downpour. It’s nearly time to go. When the last light…
Throwback Field Notes- The Tale of the Pilot Study: Where little goes as planned and not all data fits into a spreadsheet.
Summer is well underway for many parts of the world, and with it, lots of researchers have scurried off to their field sites. Take a break from the heat and hit the coast with us for this week’s Field Notes throwback! We’re featuring Karli Chudeau’s article from 2019 about her Ke Kai Ola pilot study…
Field Notes: A Wonderful Winter with Wolves
Since my first field season last summer, I had been itching to see the behavior of the wolves in a new season: winter. It would be my final season of data collection for my PhD. I said farewell to brutal watch tans, buzzing meat bees, and a lot of sleepy wolves, and welcomed very active…
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