Website: http://www.hastingsreserve.org (for more information)

A Biological Research Station of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Californiaʼs Natural Reserve System

Finch Creek GazetteThe Newsletter for Friends and Members of the Hastings Natural History Reservation

Vol 18:1 Aug 2004-Feb 2005

1 Finch Creek Gazette Hastings Natural History Reservation Carmel Valley CA

Weather

Weather and Other Field Notes

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Air Temperature (°F) Precipitation (in.)

Precip:

83.8°F

0.04"

Aug 2004

50.5°F

Dec 2004

60.7°F

71.5°F

3.93"

Sep 2004

49.4°F

83.3°F

Oct 2004 Nov 2004

43.7°F

60.8°F

36.3°F 36.5°F

0.48" 6.37"0.00"

2004-2005 Rain Year Through Feb Total: 20.0", 1939-2001 Average: 17.69 "

Av High:

Av Low:

86.449.70.06"

Avg. Max.Avg. Min.Avg. Ppt.

67.238.82.21"

61.235.63.57"

84.1148.50.25"

76.944.10.77"

Jan 2005 Feb 2005

59.8°F

37.7°F 40.8°F

59.0°F

4.97"

4.22"

60.235.04.33"

60.936.24.11

Nearly four times the average rainfall was recorded in October, and with the relatively warm days following, the landscape greened dramatically. November and De-cember were dry and with relative-ly average temperatures. Both Jan-uary and February had somewhat higher than normal rainfall. Our creeks were flowing early in Janu-ary, and many small rain events kept them full through early March. Steelhead were absent until late February when several large fish (20") and many smaller fish were seen briefly in Finch Creek near the entrance gate. We had no flooding this winter, but soils were saturated many times. Feral pig herds have drifted through Hastings, but only a few remain resident. People here have seen several mountian lions over the winter. As early as Janu-ary, some shooting stars were out, and it might be a good wildflower year.

In 1989, I can recall Don Pine, a game bird biologist from Cali-fornia Fish and Game. Don's truck would rattle up the dirt road to the Hastings office for a leisurely visit with Jim Griffin. Don always asked the same question, "How are the turkeys doing?" Jim would give his droll reply of "Maybe one or two pairs on the reserve" as he did once each year for a decade. Jim would later laugh about these visits as a futile effort, and indeed Jim was not so sure another exotic

Turkey Research in NATURE

species at Hastings would be such a good idea. Don and Jim have both since passed away, and in their absence, different populations of turkeys were introduced that would repeatedly re-nest following loss to predators. And the populations took off. Where we once had 2 or 3 pairs of turkeys on 2,000 acres, we suddenly had 100. People in mid-Carmel Valley suddenly had turkeys roosting above cars, chas-ing their pets and more gobblers than they could imagine. Curiously, California Fish and Game did not

have to do any kind of Environmental Impact Assessment on this release of an exotic species. Their efforts to provide hunters with some additional targets was a booming success. But, in a few years, variations in the local food supply and predators apparently

reduced the turkeys. Their popula-tions have remained stable but well below the initial levels. Then, in 1999, Allen Krakauer showed up at Hastings for what turned out to be a six year study. Alan is a graduate student at Berke-ley. Alan explained his interest in the turkeys and was able to obtain funding for his studies from the National Science Foundation and several other groups. This March, Alan finished his study and his re-search was published in NATURE,

Photograph by David Gubernick

2 Finch Creek Gazette Hastings Natural History Reservation Carmel Valley CA

one of the most prestigious journals of science. An account of Alan's paper was reported in the March 3 edition of the San Francisco Chron-icle. Many scientists have long and successful careers and never get their work accepted by NATURE. Indeed, we are very pleased for Alan. So, what prompted these articles? Alan is interested in the

social behavior of animals. And among the most important animal behaviors are those involving mate selection and which animals in a population are actually breeding. Often animals breed in pairs, and often the male-female pair is the breeding unit in a population. How-ever, in Texas turkeys, small groups of male turkeys form coalitions and if a female selects a displaying male, it then allows the dominant male to mate. The groups of males clearly had some kind of domi-nance; some males mated more frequently than others. Alan wanted to know about these groups. Were they brothers? Was it true that only

one mated with most females, or did everyone in the group get mat-ing opportunities? Do singleton males ever have a chance to mate? To answer these kinds of ques-tions, Alan trapped turkeys. Alan had a group of stout field assistants; anyone he could talk into helping. They baited traps, and shot nets over groups of turkeys at bait, they filmed turkeys at bait stations, and

devised ever more complex ways to catch the wily turkey. Alan put radio transmitters on the birds to follow them to nests. Amazingly, at least one turkey banded on Hastings and released unharmed was found 9 miles away later the same day. The assistance of Paul Kephart and the Rana Creek Ranch ownership was critical as they allowed access to some of the far-ranging birds. Eventually, Alan tagged 126 turkeys, includ-ing 51 males and 75 females. Tissue samples allowed Alan to study DNA to determine related-ness of the birds in each group, and establish paternity of the eggs in

nests. Alan found that the groups of males were in fact, kin. And, the most dominant of the male kin in each group was able to do most of the mating. Where subordinate brothers helped display around a dominant brother, the dominant male was more successful mating with females. Subordinate males in the group did relatively little breed-ing. However, compared to single males, the subordinate males in a coalition were better off, because their genes, as present in the broth-er they helped in their breeding co-alition, were far more likely to be passed on in female matings than if they were singletons. On average, if a solitary male was able to breed, it fathered only one offspring. If however, a male was part of a co-alition of related birds, each domi-nant male produced on average 7 offspring. Helper males rarely, if ever had a chance to breed. Alan was able to confirm that cooperative courtship behavior is in fact very important in these birds. There are clearly benefits of coop-eration and altruism in passing on genes in this species. Alan is writ-ing his thesis and has accepted a post-doctoral position at UC Davis

In December, our neighbor to the east, John Boekenoogen, donated about 175 acres to the University of California and the Hastings Reserve. This land is formerly part of the Bell Ranch. Jimmy Bell worked for many years at Hastings as a maintenance work-er, and his wife Lois survived on the Bell Ranch until several years ago. John's gift includes the first complete watershed on Hastings.

A Gift of Land....

3 Finch Creek Gazette Hastings Natural History Reservation Carmel Valley CA

Gift (continued)

This watershed, although small, is just the right size for studies. It was known as the "South Ravine" on the maps of the 1930's. The gift will allow researchers to instru-ment an example watershed of the Santa Lucia mountains and monitor soil nutrients, water infiltration and water runoff into Finch Creek. This is a significant, new capacity that the Hasting Natural History Reser-vation can offer to visiting scien-tists. In addition, the steep hillside includes north-facing coast live oak forest, grassy openings, and some south-facing chaparral hillside. These expand the habitats included at Hastings. This generous gift of land by John is the latest in a series of changes to the outline of Hastings. These are shown in the map in red, around the original central Hastings reserve. They include the northern addition of BLM lands in 1972, the Robertson House and lands gift from Fanny Arnold in the 1990's, and the latest gift by John Boekenoogen to the south. We look forward to extending to this land the legacy of Hastings' quiet study on relatively undisturbed open landscapes. Thank you, John.

Over the winter, under the watchful eye of our steward, Jaime DelValle, several visits by the CDF Gabilan crews from Soledad result-ed in the final grading and clear-ing of roots from the new trail up Poison Oak Hill (blue). The crews did an excellent job and the trail is gently graded out from the hillside. Thus, the rainfall this winter only drained a few feet across the trail and then down the hill. Even with

the heavy and persistent rains of January and Febru-ary, the trail did not erode. It has settled down and packed into a gentle approach to this habitat. This winter, several studies expanded up the trail. Dick Hemmes of Vassar, will be studying woodrats and their insect parasites along the lower stretches. Kate Horjus of UCSC will be studying the spring flower, Litho-phragma and its moths (Grayia) in the lower forests. Thanks to Tom Gray, MPRPD, and Chris Reed for

the use of the SWECO trail bull-dozer. Chris designed and laid out the trail and Dean Cordrey was the machine operator. Thanks to all!

Poison Oak Trail Opens

4 Finch Creek Gazette Hastings Natural History Reservation Carmel Valley CA

Research

Top: Andrew Tucillo, Danika Klieber, Bottom: Sara Rockwell, Kiellor Kyle, Jay McEntee.

Our winter field assistants (photo) kept the Robertson House busy. Jay and Andrew worked in the field monitoring acorn wood-peckers and in the lab identify-ing the leaf galls on Hastings oak trees. Danika worked in the DNA lab, and with Kiellor and Sarah in the field monitoring western blue-birds. Janis Dickinson continued to supervise the bluebird research, write research papers, and started a series of natural history notes for the local Carmel Valley News magazine. Walt continued his woodpecker research, published another acorn survey report, wrote proposals to NSF and published several journal articles. We had a generally average acorn crop this year. Yuan Yao (UCLA) spent a month making digital recordings of individual acorn woodpeckers to be used in new voice recognition motes she is developing as a part of CENS. Dick Hemmes (Vassar) spent a week preparing a shed with devices to extract insects from litter in woodrat nests next summer.Singing Mice Dr. Matina Kalcounis (U. North Carolina, Greensboro) and Dr.

SFSU Plant Ecology Students; Tom Parker Class

September classes included Rosie Gillespie's graduate field methods class (UCB), a seminar on oak research (Walt Koenig, Victoria Sork), a bat identification workshop (UCB, Wildlife Society), and Gordon Frankie's Conservation Biology Class (UCB). October's groups included Tom Parker's Plant

Maarten Vonhof (Princeton) visited Hastings for 3 weeks in December. After trapping all the mice on the Robertson Creek grid, they put out an array of ultrasonic sound detec-tors generally used to listen for bats. They found that some mice make these amazing, long whistles in frequencies above human hear-ing. This is very exciting as no one had a clue that mice sang at night. Matina is planning an extensive research program to elaborate on this novel discovery. We are writ-ing a proposal to build an array of electronic listening boxes that could detect both radio tags on the mice and their vocalizations. These would be tied into a system of wireless internet coverage that is now largely in place on Hastings.

Ecology class (SFSU), Cal Tech and U. of Ariz. geologists, and two weekends with Bay-area high schools (UCB, GK-12). November saw two more weekend visits from the UCB GK-12 program. Craig Moritz's lab met here over a De-cember weekend, and in February we hosted the UCD Entomology graduate student retreat and Walt's Behavioral Ecology class (UCB). Our new classroom is being used many times each month and is a great addition to Hastings.

Jaime worked to remove a lot of low vegetation along the buildings and roads. In January and February, we burned over 25 large piles of vegetation. Jaime finished up some plumbing and water tank removal. Jaime also worked over the Hastings Cabin and Red House, replacing windows, cleaning, and doing some minor carpentry to get ready for summer researchers. With the recent budget cuts at UC, we could use some help. If any of our readers can help us, we have a wish list for the facilities: - 4-wheel motorcycle - functional washer, drier - clean double beds/frame - clean twin beds/frame We installed a network of wireless internet access points on Hastings. There are now access points at the Schoolhouse, the office, Hastings Cabin, Hallisey House and Classroom. Funding from CENS allowed us to start a contract with our local phone company for T1 lines. After many months, we finally found our SBC wires cannot sustain such a con-nection and we are exploring more dependable, faster satellite connec-tions.

Classes and Groups

Facilities and Stewardship