Wednesday, while Darin prepared to leave for her "weekend," Geoff took me on a tour of the many Hopper landmarks. Silver Tanks. Wayne's Pad. Freezer Pad. Hopper Peak. Condor Ridge. Lone Tank. Green Tanks. I programmed my radio receiver while Geoff and I sat in the car, sheltered from the raging winds outside. Basically, my job as an intern will be to drive (or hike) around to different observation points, where I then stand and take sets of signals to get a condor head count.
Taking signals looks a little like a strange dance, or perhaps Tai Chi. You wave your yagi antenna around slowly in a circle, first angled horizontally, then vertically (if a bird is flying, its wing transmitter will be parallel to the ground; the signal it broadcasts will be stronger if the receiving antenna is in the same plane).
In the early evening, Geoff had me fix condor kennels in the flight pen down below the ranch house. The flight pen here currently doesn't house any birds, since it's still semi- under construction.
Just as it got dark, we grabbed out headlamps and knives, picked up the half-a-bear and rabbits that had been defrosting in the thaw box down by the road, and headed up to Lower Pinnacles Feeding Site. It was all very surreal: the wind practically bowling us over ; dragging this massive carcass over to a chain staked into the ground ; the tiny patch of light offered by the headlamps ; Geoff cutting into the dead animals like poking holes in a package of frozen food before you put it in the microwave.
That night, dinner tasted like rotting bear flesh.
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