When we were visiting a salmon hatchery, we spotted a fish out of water: a coho salmon leaped out of the water tank and was slowly suffocating on dry land. Unable to find help, my youngest sister hopped the fence, picked up the salmon, and threw it back over the wall into the water tank.
So to kick off #Inktober , here’s a drawing of my sister, the Salmon Savior. 😀
When I went to visit my hometown a couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of shadowing my youngest sister, Lauren, a wildlife biologist. She’s spending her summer surveying piping plovers, an endangered bird, along the NJ coast. Every day, she visits different beaches and counts plovers and their eggs, which are found among broken shells and sand.
We went to Barnegat Lighthouse State Park, known for “Old Barney”, the historic lighthouse that’s on the northern end of Long Beach Island. Originally, I was going to paint the lighthouse while Lauren worked, but I realized this is an amazing opportunity to record a “day in the life” of my sister. She pointed out shorebirds as we walked together.
Later, Lauren met up with 3 other biologists to put up an exclosure, a wire mesh fence that protects plovers’ nests from various predators. They had a small window to set this up, as setting up the exclosure prevents the plover from warming their eggs. I was so impressed by the whole process I couldn’t help myself from trying to capture it.
We ended the day with chicken wings at Chegg, an awesome way to end “Take your Ate to Work Day”! Thanks again, Yowen, for a fun day at the beach, much needed for this Seattle transplant. 😉
For the 4th of July week, I went home to NJ to visit my family. My youngest sister, a wildlife conservation major, took me to Sedge Island, her workplace. (She kayaks to the island as part of her “commute”. How cool is that?!)
She was checking her trackers and annotating each time a bird would fly by her cameras. One tracker listed 600 times! Needless to say, I got a lot of sketches of her.