Wednesday was our first day of actually going out and checking our scent stations for tracks. My partner and I spent the day in the Badlands of Riverside County. As you can see, they are similar in appearance to the Badlands of South Dakota, but they have their differences. Regardless, the term "Badlands" is definitely justified. In the second picture you can see San Gorgonio in the background (with snow), which is a nearby mountain peak that is over 11,000 feet tall.
Along the way on Wednesday, we managed to go down a road that was supposed to bring us to a main highway. The road brought us to the highway, but there was a gate around which we were unable to pass, so we had to turn around. There was a nearby house that had been abandoned long ago, which was an interesting find, so we decided to stop and look around before having to back-track down a long dirt road. Wednesday turned out to be a 10-hour day because we had to go about one hour out of our way to get some coworkers and their vehicle out of some mud they had gotten stuck in, but it was a pretty easy fix.
We actually had some scent stations that we had to visit on top of the mountains in the above photo, and fortunately there was a dirt road the entire way. Some of the scent stations showed signs of coyote activity (see below; note the wet spot that my field partner is smelling - he is just goofing off for the photo, but smelling a wet spot is a good way of telling if the urine belongs to a cat or a dog). One of our points on top of the mountain even overlooked Gold Base, which is the International Headquarters for the the Church of Scientology. 
Friday was another rain day, which meant it was spent doing office work. Hopefully next week will be drier, but anything can happen this time of the year.
day doing Engelmann oak work today. We set up some new transects in a section of the Cleveland National Forest near the Tenaja Trailhead. The area was closed to the public until recently (i.e., within the last few days) because of fire risks. Ours was still the only vehicle parked in the trailhead parking lot, so it was a nice (temporary) escape from the hustle and bustle of the rest of southern California.
Today was another day of conducting Engelmann oak surveys for me. Engelmanns are very rare in Western Riverside county and we are interested in keeping track of survivorship and recruitment of individual trees from year to year. Our points today were at the Santa Rosa Plateau, which consists mostly of oak-grassland habitats. Unfortunately, our points were along a creek bed that was in a canyon full of poison oak. So in a few days I may be itchy.
I'm looking forward to next week because we start training for conducting carnivore surveys at work. From what I understand we will be clearing out plots of land (several meters squared in size) so all that remains is a patch of bare dirt or sand. We'll probably then smooth out the dirt (with a rake?) and come back the next day to look for signs (e.g., tracks, scat, etc.) that mammalian carnivores have passed through. Some such surveys will bait the plots with attractive scents, but placing the plots along clearly used game trails will almost guarantee that carnivores will pass by. The species we will hopefully get some tracks from include mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, weasels (including badgers), and gray foxes. Hopefully I'll get some pictures of tracks once the study starts next month.
