Never a Dull Moment

There is more to putting equipment on a tree than meets the eye

By Catherine Berchok

One of the best perks of being part of the acoustics team for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker search was that we got to see many different parts of both the Cache River and White River study areas, alternating between the two areas every other week. Our assignment was to deploy the autonomous recording units (ARUs) in as many promising locations as possible, so we usually did not pass by a particular deployment site until it was time to go back in and retrieve the units. This gave us a unique time-lapsed perspective on the swamp and its changing water levels. It also made it very challenging to get back in to retrieve some of the units.

In particular, the Prairie Lakes region of the White River never seemed to be the same between visits. One week we could drive down the road to Alligator Lake; two weeks later we were cruising the same road by johnboat. Quick 200-meter walks turned into day-long expeditions requiring a johnboat, a canoe, and chest waders. Luckily, by hauling a six-foot ladder to each site, we managed to tie the units high enough on the trees: out of 153 units deployed, only one took a swim when the waters came up.

Catherine Berchok stands on a ladder in the swamp to reach an autonomous recording unit attached to a tree.

Photo by Russ Charif/CLO

At retrieval time, however, we were lucky to find a little intermittent stream deep enough to get around into the lake, because the water had dropped and the banks of the Big Creek were now very steep. Our "Holy #%$!" moment came when we arrived at the site and could not find the unit--that is, until we cranked our necks back and looked above the tall bushes. The water was now ankle deep and we were staring at our unit 11 feet up in a tree!

The Cache didn't escape these fluctuations either. The worst, though, was in the Dagmar swamp. Our big plans to systematically march units every 300 meters through the area came to an abrupt halt when the units we had easily deployed from canoes became arduous to retrieve through the hip-deep mud left behind when the water drained away. In Bayou de View, we found a different retrieval situation for an ARU: a certain cottonmouth was not at all happy to return to find team member Lauren Morgens up in its tree deploying the unit.

For the most part, though, the wildly fluctuating water levels were incredible to see and kept our job interesting. I also feel fortunate to have gotten the chance to see such a large part of both study areas. There are a lot of beautiful areas in the Big Woods of Arkansas, and they are only going to get better.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu