John Arnett

הצטרפ.ה ב:אוג' 21, 2021 פעילות אחרונה: מרץ 28, 2024

MS & BS Wildlife Ecology, U of Florida. "Almost" AAS in Biotechnology/Molecular Biology.

I welcome suggestions/corrections with helpful, informative comments! I'm here to (re-)learn.

Born in Florida, grew up and became a childhood naturalist/birder in western North Carolina thanks to a supportive family and the Highlands Nature Center. After spending 15 years in Arizona, I again reside in Florida and am enjoying getting back to my swampy, flatwoods, coastal, Appalachian and Piedmont roots.....except for the cottonmouths, I really don't like cottonmouths... too many close calls.

Worked/lived in 4 countries (USA, Brasil, Chile, Mexico), birded the hell out of 7 others.

While working for Ken Meyer in 2006, I was possibly the first person ever to put a VHF transmitter on a bird (swallow-tailed kite) in North America (Florida) and subsequently (about 5,000 miles away and 5 months later) find and photograph the same bird in South America (Brasil).

Initiated several LeConte's Thrasher survey projects and co-founded the Desert Thrasher Working Group (Jan 2010). Led collaborative surveys that identified previously-unknown overwintering areas of Gray Vireo (co-located with Bursera microphylla) in Arizona, including 3 mountain ranges visible from Phoenix. "Discovered" the Bendire's Thrasher population that led to designating the Joshua Tree Important Bird Area. Helped design the Coordinated Breeding Bird Monitoring Plan for Sonoran/Mojave Desert.

With/For others or independently, I have studied the following taxa: Masoncus pogonophyllus (a subterranean spider symbiotic w/ Florida harvester ant), Centruroides hentzi (Hentz's striped scorpion), Sceloporus woodi (Florida scrub lizard), Neoseps (Plestiodon) reynoldsi (Florida sand skink), brown-headed nuthatch, swallow-tailed kite, crested and chimango caracaras, chucao tapaculo, Oncifelis guigna (the smallest cat native to the western hemisphere), reddish egret, white-crowned pigeon, southeastern US pineland bird and vegetation community structure (MS thesis), Sonoran pronghorn, kit fox, gray vireo, LeConte's and Bendire's thrashers, southwestern willow flycatcher, yellow-billed cuckoo.

I may be the only person (or just the first?) to have seen 2 Booby spp. in Arizona on the same day - Brown at Lk Havasu and Blue-footed at Patagonia Lk.

Skills: unsurpassed at finding nests or radio-tagged animals that elude everyone else, off-road driving, bird taxidermy (I made Bernie the BETH lure), SCUBA, gardening and small-scale agriculture, landscaping with native plants, motorboat captain extraordinaire, fishin', big ranchin', for a while I was nearly fluent in Portuguese and spoke without a gringo accent.

Fears (in Nature): bitey sharks, flying cockroaches, large grasshoppers, the afore-mentioned cottonmouths, crazy folks who are still complaining about "the war of northern aggression" [sic].

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