Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Travels

Archaeological Site Steward monitoring has some interesting turns!

Last week Fran spotted a desert tortoise (Gopherus morafkai) under a rocky over-hang on the trail.

I managed to get flat down on my belly and took a picture of the tortoise with a size scale next to it.

I attached the picture to my site report to the land manager (LM).

Yesterday, the LM said a biologist, who is primarily interested in Leopard frogs, was all excited, as he had just seen a desert tortoise upon leaving the Davidson canyon area of the Cienega Preserve.

The LM emailed him the picture I sent of ‘our’ tortoise.

Now the biologist really got excited.

He emailed LM saying he is sure it is the same one he saw - 1/2 mile away!

Our two tortoises match up in size and ‘ding’ in left rear carapace!

He plans to do time travel study etc.

As the LM said “all those scientific things that we dirt archaeologist don’t do!”

To follow up I sent a reminder photo to the LM of a tortoise we saw in 2011- about ½ mile west of the present sighting.

Good heavens!

What if it is the same fellow?

I would say, “That tortoise sure travels around!”




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