Category: Workshop Adventures

And maybe a bunch of naturalists? We were certainly enthralled!

That’s the hand of Nelle Jenkins, one of Dr. Kim Tolson’s biology graduate students, who is doing her thesis research on turtles in Bayou Desiard. This awesome critter wandered into one of her live traps. Note that she is firmly grasping the carapace right behind the turtle’s head. Does anyone doubt that those jaws could snap off a carelessly placed finger in a heartbeat?

Today was our Herpetofauna of Louisiana workshop with Dr. John Carr. We were graciously hosted on the ULM campus by the Museum of Natural History and its director, Dr. Kim Tolson, who opened the Museum for us so we could explore before the workshop proper began and again on our lunch break. What a fantastic resource for our community!

So… after exploring the Museum, learning herp taxonomy, meeting this impressive snapper plus a bunch of other turtles on Bayou Desiard, and observing graduate students in action capturing, measuring, tagging and releasing turtles… we went out to Black Bayou Lake NWR for more field work.

To be honest, I lost track. But I’m certain that at least three cottonmouths were sighted, two broad-banded watersnakes, two broad-headed skinks and several little brown skinks, a southern leopard frog, probably a dozen cricket frogs and one green tree frog.

All in all, it was a most rewarding day. Thank you so much, Drs. Carr and Tolson and ULM Museum of Natural History.

It’s been almost a week since our fungi workshop. It was a busy one, which is why this report is so late. But it has also been a delicious one, featuring eggs scrambled with black trumpets, stir fry veggies with chanterelles, and mushroom soup–some of which is still marinating in the frig!

That’s the reward for doing a workshop with a guy who is highly skilled at foraging delectable mushrooms. Thanks, Todd Maggio, for the great information and for taking us to some of your “secret” sites in Lincoln Parish Park.

The truth is, I’m not very confident I will ever find a black trumpet in the wild again. They are definitely hard to see! I think it was halfway through our field work before I saw the first one on my own.

Here’s a fun fact: Todd says black trumpets love hurricanes. Well, that we seem to be able to provide. So.., after Delta moves through… 🙂

Chanterelles are a good bit easier because of their distinctive bright gold color. However, this is not the time of year for them, so we found only a few. I’ll be out there with a collecting basket come spring.

The only downside of the day was that we accidentally left Suzanne Laird Dartez behind. She got to our rendezvous point in the parking lot about 10 minutes late. No one noticed that we were going into the woods short one person. Folks, we need to do a better job of exchanging phone numbers and counting heads! Suzanne will get a free workshop, but I really don’t want that to happen again.

Mason bees (genus Osmia) do not sting! They also don’t make honey, and in spite of their name, they do not drill holes in wood. They occupy already made holes, and they pollinate. Like crazy. So, you want more pollinators for your flowers and vegetable garden? Get or make yourself a mason bee hotel!

This is just one of the tidbits of interesting and valuable information we got from Stacy Blomquist of the U.S. Forest Service at our Saturday workshop. It was a very hot day, so we spent just a short time outside netting and examining bugs, but Stacy’s presentations kept us enthralled. I am deeply grateful to Erin Cox for allowing us to use the Conservation Learning Center for the day, and to Jim, the volunteer who unlocked for us.

Stacy’s presentation of taxonomy was one of the clearest I have heard. We all came away with a better understanding and handouts that provide a framework for us to continue to learn on our own.

The critters we tend to call “bugs” comprise the phylum Arthropoda, in turn comprised of 30-32 orders, of which we learned a bit about 24. The critters that make up all of these orders range from tiny “springtails” of the order Collembola that live in the dirt and are mostly unknown to us, to much more recognizable Lepidoptera–moths and butterflies–which we know and love.

Now here’s what I found most helpful. These scientific names that many of us find so confusing, in fact have meaning. “Lepido” means “scale” and “ptera” means “wing.” Did you know that the beautiful colors and patterns in the wings of moths and butterflies are created by tiny scales of different colors that cover the wings? Hmmm. Makes me think we need a workshop on taxonomic Latin!

In fact, it is challenging and often impossible to get to the species level of identification when dealing with many of the orders of Arthropoda. One reason for that is sheer numbers. For example, the order Orthoptera (ortho=straight, ptera=wing), which includes grasshoppers, crickets and katydids, contains 20,000 species worldwide. Ooops! I can’t image learning that many.

Another reason is that sometimes the differences between critters that determine species identification are too small to see with the naked eye or cannot be seen without dissecting the critter. But we also learned that Arthropoda have open circulatory systems with pumped blood–that is, bugs have a heart! So we really weren’t in the mood to take any apart.

As always, so much more could be said about a great workshop. And so will the next one be. Yes, the Oct. 3 fungi workshop is on. I am currently making plans with our instructor Tod Maggio, so stay tuned!

For scientists tracking climate change, a weekly observation of one tree in one yard for 5 years is worth more than 50 unique observations of different trees in different yards. So says Dr. Joydeep, our certified phenologist who taught us so much in our March 14 workshop.

And who can’t do that? Sunday after the workshop I established a phenology trail in my yard. I’ve now made weekly observations of two trails, the one at BBL around the Education Center I wrote about in the earlier post and the one in my own yard. Here’s a smidgen of data from the “My Yard” trail:

Interpretation: My willow oak tree went from tightly closed leaf buds March 15 to a full canopy of mostly full grown leaves by April 7. When I compare it to the same data for my buttonbush and American beautyberry, I see that the two shrubs are much slower. Indeed, they both still have breaking leaf buds and lots of leaves not full grown.

But the true value of this data is, again, in the long haul: How will this year’s timing compare to next year’s and the next year’s and 5 years down the road? That’s what the climate scientists need to know. And Dr. Joydeep also emphasized, there’s a real data gap for northeast Louisiana.

So… welcome to Northeast Louisiana Phenology Project, NLP² for short. This is Dr. Joydeep’s vision: That we Master Naturalists will join in filling in the data gap for northeast Louisiana. I’m still learning, but I’ve started. Hope others will join me.

Be assured, I did not set up a spreadsheet and enter this data by hand. Rather, I entered and uploaded the data via the Nature’s Notebook app on my phone while walking my phenology trails. Here’s a screenshot of my dashboard for my Nature’s Notebook account, which is connected to the National Phenology Network website:

Notice the “How-to-Observe Module” and the link to click to take it! These two interconnected websites, the NPN and Nature’s Notebook, are a treasure trove of information and instruction.

BTW, I have also signed up to take their online course this summer. But… don’t wait for me. We’re kind of confined to home, right now, right? So get your learning on….!

And not just fun, but inspiring, compelling, highly educational. I knew phenology was important, but… now it’s a mission!

So… rather than try to summarize my extensive notes from Saturday’s Phenology workshop with Dr. Joydeep Bhattacharjee, I’m going to cut to the punch line: We learned to make sound phenological observations using “Nature’s Notebook,” a smartphone app available from your app store. It’s free.

Setting up an account for yourself is also free. Then you must create a “site” for observation. I created a site called “BBL Education Center” and picked 5 trees to observe at that site. The screen shot from my phone (below, right) shows most of them:

Once you have created a site and selected plants (or animals) to observe, click “go to observe.” There you will find a checklist, like this one (below) for my observation yesterday of the pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) directly behind the BBL Education Center.

Notice that we estimated the number of “breaking leaf buds” on the tree, the percentage of the tree’s expected total leaves that were present at point of observation, and the percentage of leaves that were full size at point of observation. There’s a learning curve here, but it was less difficult than I expected. Nature’s Notebook offers sufficiently broad category choices that even an amateur can feel confident estimating.

For pawpaw, Nature’s Notebook offers 10 “phenophases” to rate. These include flower buds, open flowers, fruit and more. But it took just 3-5 minutes to make the observation and upload the data.

And here’s the coolest thing about this: The moment you upload, the data you have just created becomes part of a huge database used by scientists to track climate change and many other things important to the well-being of our Earth home.

Dr. Joydeep emphasized that consistency in observation is important to the quality of the database. That can be achieved in a couple of ways. Obviously, I can go back to this site on a weekly basis and observe each of the selected trees again. And I would love to be able to say I’ll do that, but I know better. However, YOU can download the app, locate the “BBL Education Center” site I created, go make a set of observations of those same trees, and Voila! We have another set of data points and are building consistency.

Watch for Phenology Phun! (2) in which I will introduce the Northeast Louisiana Phenology Project, whereby we will participate in closing the phenological data gap of northeast Louisiana!