This five-feet-long black rat snake was affronted that I had chosen to ignore herps, and remained motionless in front of my car so that I could get out the telephoto lens and get a proper photograph before leaving for the day.
First the rough totals: not counting pit traps, I logged about 80 different kinds of organisms, of which 30 are birds. I estimate the pit traps probably have at least 20 to 25 different things in them plus another ten from the flying insect traps. Of course many of these will not be identifiable to species, and there are likely some duplicates, but I’m still pleased.
I spent an hour in the morning birding on my way to the study plots I’d previously set up in the upland and riparian woodlands. The pit traps were a resounding success. I spent midday photographing fungus, ferns, and wildflowers (because they don’t move), and collecting the odd ant, spider, and fly. Oh my.
After dinner I went back to set up pit traps in an old field planted with winter grasses. I’ll go back on Friday, weather permitting, and look forward to what may be a vastly different flora and fauna. The place is apparently ruled by preying mantids and sparrows; I can’t wait.
Some pleasant surprises from the day were this mystery scat and this gorgeous shiny beetle. And mating downy woodpeckers.
As usual, I am humbled by how much I do not know about the natural world around me.
I’ll post lists and postgame analysis in the next few days. I have a lot of work (and sleep) to catch up on.
[...] the open field stream, then four very frightened adults in the open field) mystery scat (previously pictured, seemed too big to be any of the other mammals and not the right shape for deer) muskrat (track by [...]
Pingback by FieldMarking » BioBlitz Report 2: The rest of the animals — April 30, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
The beautiful shiny beetle is a Bess Beetle. The really cool thing about them, is that they hiss when you lightly bear down on them, (just learned that this weekend!) Do be carefull though, they do clamp down with those big pinchers.
The second i.d, I would guess is very wet deer scat. When they get lots of water in their diet, this is what it ends up looking like, and since is was rainy before your blitz - that would be my guess.
Comment by Martha — May 8, 2007 @ 11:50 am
Deer scat, okay. I knew it had to be something big but I thought each nugget was too big to be deer. Extra water could explains.
Comment by cyndy — May 11, 2007 @ 1:07 pm