I’m guessing since this internship is through the Chicago Botanical Gardens not many of you are avid OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting, Oregon’s NPR station) listeners. If I’m correct this is very unfortunate for you 1. because OPB is great and 2. because you missed the recent segment on planting wocus – a segment that not only included bright orange sunglasses but also the carefully prepared and executed wocus dance.

The wocus, otherwise known as the Rocky Mountain Pond Lily, is a water plant that was once extremely prevalent in the Klamath Basin but is now much less common. ‘Wocus’ as the Native Americans called the plant has been used by the tribes in the area for many generations. A group of employees from US Fish and Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, and the Klamath Tribes have been working to re-introduce wocus to a property owned by the Nature Conservancy that has recently been returned to its historical state as a marsh (another cool story that involves lots of explosives).

I have to admit that I was not part of this re-introduction effort nor was able to wear orange sunglasses or do the wocus dance, so you may wonder why I just told you all of this. After the wocus re-introduction project was complete there were still 9 plants remaining, so the other intern in the office and I took the opportunity to commandeer the seedlings and use them in one of our fish rearing projects. We are raising suckers in two ponds that are essentially like giant bath tubs – relatively shallow and extremely exposed with no vegetation.

While we could have used the method of stapling the wocus to the bottom of the pond, we decided to instead experiment with growing wocus in water that is too deep to plant them. In order to provide cover for the juvenile fish to escape predation and also as an experiment in transplanting wocus, we designed a system to hang wocus from buoys anchored in the middle of the ponds. The idea of growing wocus in coconut fiber baskets came from work on wocus by Dr. Jherime Kellermann, a professor at Oregon Institute of Technology.

We moved the wocus seedlings from their pots to 10 inch coconut fiber baskets and used hemp twine to tie the bundles like small packages. 

These wocus bundles were then suspended by hemp twine from the chain just below each buoy. Each plant hangs between 1 and 2 feet under water and there are three plants per buoy. Another intern in our office, Shilah, bravely donned a dry suit and entered the ponds teaming with algae and zoo plankton to place the anchored buoys and wocus.

In the coming weeks we hope to start seeing wocus leaves reaching the surface and growing larger.

A few side notes:

• If you’re disappointed about missing the OPB story on wocus (why wouldn’t you be?!), don’t fear! You can read about the wocus project and listen to the radio piece here: http://www.opb.org/news/article/bringing-back-klamath-wetlands-one-wocus-at-a-time/
• One day while on the way to the ponds on the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge we were lucky enough to see an adult and juvenile borrowing owl. The juvenile retreated into its hole, but the adult allowed us to drive within about 10 feet of it and get some very close pictures.
• 

I will skip the week of training due to the unspoken excitement that I felt when learning about government computer protocol, how to drive for a second time, and what to do around used needles and chemicals that are prohibited to consume. Nonetheless, it was great meeting my coworkers for the next 5 months in the Shoshone field office.  So far everyone is friendly and gets along with everyone else.

I have not participated in field research before and it sure was a surprise upon first encounters.  I am in the Seeds of Success program, however I was put into the vegetation monitoring unit so I could take a back seat and observe.  I was not ready for the front lines of the battle field to be cannon fodder.

We went out onto the BLM land.  No BLM land in PA, where I’m from (don’t quote me).  Anyhow, BLM land is a real deal.  But, BLM land is just there; it exists.  There are no signs welcoming a visitor to a scenic overlook, no information centers, just signs of land marks in sparse locations to help with navigation.  Luckily, BLM land is public land, which means free camping sites.

Idaho has much more than potatoes, but the potato farms are massive regardless. Instead of corn, there are green fields with little white flowers for each plant.   Surrounding the plots is high dessert climate which is sage brush and tan grasses, especially invasive grasses that are all dried up due to the 90 plus weather every day.  Southern Idaho is called the ‘Magic Valley’.  Sadly there are few magicians or wizards roaming the streets or even children with lightning bolts on their head, but the magic is the irrigation from the snake river into the desert.  What a let down.

We drove through some tiny towns in Idaho, probably around a 1000 each.  Just a highway as the main road with a gas station and a small restaurant as the only buildings visible.  On either side of the highway there are several interest signs sprawled: signs for state parks, caves, and fossil beds along the drive.  I need to check those out.

Once we passed the towns we took a right onto a unassuming road.  Just a paved country road.  We soon left civilization!  Houses were no longer in existence, sedans did not exist, and it was rare if we saw any other species in the genus Homo.  The farms were the last to disappear and we headed into BLM territory.  The road took a turn and the asphalt disappeared, transforming into dirt.  We took a gradual incline up the road and soon a rim appeared as we reached the top of the plateau.  This was a picture worthy formation as the black rock face jutted out from the tan grassy surface.  The road continued forward into the now visible rolling hills. The dirt road became choppy and we trudged along at a slower pace, but our route soon led us to a road, but was it actually a road. 

At the intersection, the driver, another CLM intern, held out his/her arm to locate our position with our yellow GPS.   The devise is not too quick with its calculations, however we were in the correct position somehow.  I felt unsure of where I was and I had no information of where I was supposed to be, luckily I was the only intern in the truck on day 1 out in the field.  The truck shifted itself into 4 wheel drive and the blue vehicle grew another foot.  The extension rose, the tires increased in size, the tread became more defined, and the truck purred as the driver stroked his/her fingers across the now velvet steering wheel.  The truck let loose a somber meow as we turned onto a two track covered in cheat-grass and rocks.  We drove at a whopping 5 mph with high caution.  I rocked from side to side and back and forth, getting airborne and bumping into the sides.  I was indeed wearing my seat belt, since I am a safe and reliable employee, nevertheless the ride was bumpy.  I had trouble just keeping my head still and could not tell the direction of the path.  Some rocks were covered in grass so I could not prepare for a large jolt of jump.  I could hear some grinding as the truck’s cabins grazed over rocks and exclamations flew out of the drivers mouth.  “Always hit rocks with the tires dead on.”

We finally reached our destination.  The GPS was taken out of the car with the rest of the supplies.  I had no idea what our goal intended.  I put a few binders in my bag, massaged some sunscreen on my cheeks, secured my Phillies hat, and followed the leader.  We walked across the assortment of grasses, sage brush, and flowers/forbs.  The GPS did not have a constant directional path as we changed our alignment every couple minutes.  Sadly, I had left my boots back at home and decided the best alternative was mesh running shoes.  The seed heads from the cheat-grass jammed into the opening, stabbing my soft skin.  It hurt.  A mistake made only once.  We continued walking across the terrain until a pink flag was visible fluttering in the stinky hot breeze.  We pulled out the 50 meter measuring tape, found north, and I unrolled the tape.  I was directed to go left because I kept on wondering to the right when unrolling the tape.  I got to the end of the line and realized I forgot a stake, so I put a rock on top to secure the line.

I recorded the pin drop data for the first 15 meters, writing down codes for species I had not heard of, and measurements for the height, checking to make each column was accurate, but also precise.  I started to pin drop every 0.5 meters (5 cm, 50 mm, 500000 um).  We carried the meter pin in a protective PVC pipe. I dropped the pin vertically and watched what it hit.  “This grass and dirt.  What is this grass?”  “15.5 meter.  Rock.” “16 meters. A bush, a flower, and dirt with Herbaceous Litter.”  I was soon told what plant I hit and the correct code to write down on the sheet.  I also measured each plant’s drooping height.  I got the hang of the shtick, but I was bending too much at the waist, instead of the knees.  I got a little dizzy, and drank my warm refreshing tap water to recover my balance.  Afterwards my partner for the drop took measurements for sage brush cover and the third member of our group finished up the forb diversity check.

It was lunch time.  I reached into my bag, but no lunch bag was present.  I had to run back to the truck.  I ran, then walked.  I still was not use to the dry heat nor the elevation.  I grabbed my lunch and an extra water bottle and rolled back down to where I came.  I actually forgot what the true direction I came from since there are not too many outstanding landmarks.  I walked in a direction, looking at a tall sage brush for guidance.  I was wrong.  I walked over some rocks I had not seen before and knew I had misinterpreted my surroundings.  I did a 360 spin and a backflip and noticed my coworkers waving their hands and lunch boxes at me from about 2 football fields away.  I hustled on over and enjoyed my delicious gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwich on multi-grain bread.  What a day.

Don’t worry.  I made it back to the field office.  We hiked a mile and a quarter to another pin drop site.  Saw some yellow bellied marmots.  Traversed some small gorges with small streams.  I had no expectation of seeing water in the high desert.  We got lost on the way back.  We should have marked the truck with a GPS dot but found the truck after wandering.  We drove back and called it an 11 hour day.  Enough was enough for one day.  Slept like a babe that night.  A fun day, and a day that I had not imagined.

Hey world, greetings from Southern Idaho. I’ve been up to far too much to fit into the blog, but let’s take a stab at a recap anyways (I’m no J. Chappelle-loved the drones bud). My highlights have been: spending a day botanising with the BLM (super hero-legend) Roger Rosentreter, he was state head botanist for 35 years, is an exceptional lichenologist (and has written many books on the subject) and from that couple generations of crazy mountaineer, super fun, cool as courduroy botanists-folks like Dr. Ken Robertson who inspired me to do field work. I always love learning from people like this, so many pieces of information they take for granted and have never bothered to write down that may otherwise be lost.  Another social highlight was seeing the lovely Kendl Winters and extraordinary Palmer T. Lee play a show as the The Lowest Pair near Boise; after my banjo fix, I got to drive far into the Owyhee desert listening to someone play Dead on the community radio as the stars danced in a moonless night.

My trainings were really incredible and I’m very grateful for the opportunities. My first training was the Idaho Native Plant Society meeting, where I was able to explore the high precipitation refuge populations in central Idaho. These communities are very similar to the plant life of Western Washington and Oregon. The second training was the Idaho Botanical Foray.  The premise of these are that folks from each of Idaho’s four university herbaria show up to an underrepresented area in their collections and collect everything in sight. This was very fun and allowed me to study the local flora with a ton of incredible botanists. What I really loved about this is that I was able to meet a ton of botanists whose vouchers I have been staring at in Digital Herbaria for the last few years. Highlights were botanisng riparian zones with Mike Mancuso, collecting at a breakneck pace on mountain wind-swept slopes with Prof. Jim Smith. As well as talking the Owyhee flora, Onagrads, and Lomatium’s with Prof. D. Mansfield. It was fun to see everyone’s collection methods and philosophies, especially as I have been collecting largely from three groups here, the Onagrads, the Apioids, and the Boraginaceae for various projects.

pressing with co-worker Sam West, Scott Montgomery and Prof. J Smith in the background working on those waist high hay-bales. Idaho Botanical Foray 2016, Pahsimeroi Valley

Our field district was ravaged by several fires over the last decade and has been struggling to re-vegetate. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about restoration protocols for re-seeding and what physiological parameters of taxa may allow for quick re-colonization and prevent cheatgrass invasion.

Another project I have been working on aside form LEPA searching is adding content to a photo field guide of the plants of our district office. I have been working on writing dichotomous keys for Erigeron, Castilleja, Eriogonum, Crepis, Penstemon, Lupinus, and a couple others. Writing keys and making line-drawings has been a highly educational and challenging task. Part of my ambitions are for the keys to be usable by folks without formal botany training, as well as making them aesthetically interesting to the forthcoming generation of millennial botanists-they are both tough curve balls to try and address, but I’m on the homestretch. At the same time I have been working on reviewing the advance copy of Flora of the Pacific Northwest- I have dozens of notes in my old version about errors, but none in the new one! Giblin and all his associates are doing incredible work on this one (and inspiring me to step it up on my own keys!).

One of the great things about focusing on a singular plant in a season is learning, and conjecturing about the ecology that allows the plant to survive in its niche. The inorganic chemistry of slickspots gives us a lot to think about, and really drives home many themes of soil science, nutrient and moisture relations, population genetics, as well as temperature and climate dynamics.

I’ve been able to explore the mountains and deserts of Idaho in my space time. No pictures can do justice to the areas I have been. I’ve been infatuated with the Owyhee desert and the high mountains of central Idaho, as well as the ranges of Northern Nevada

Group shot! notice Evan of CBG fame leaning low. :-). i’m that kid back right with a press.

“Desert Dawn, rise up early, lift your song….
Smell the scent of flowers dancing on the wind,
dancing on the wind!”

-Michael Kang of the string cheese incident

sorry loose, format and essentially devoid of original photos (both above photos taken by (Steve Martin, just as funny as the one your thinking of), but if you’re in the west you understand that pictures can’t do justice to anything you want to snap one of.

In Salmon Idaho, one endemic plant species is the Salmon twin bladderpod (Physaria didymocarpa). This unique plant is in the Brassicaceae family, and there are only 8 known populations of the species. Many of these populations have not been assessed since the early 2000s, as the office hasn’t had an official botanist since 2010. So it the job of me as a CLM intern to perform population monitoring and Seeds of Success collections for the field office. The first populations monitored have been the Salmon twin bladderpod because it is so identifiable. All of the populations are in small geographic areas, as the plant requires specific environmental conditions and minor disturbances. Some of the populations are in a very robust shape, containing many hundreds of individuals. However, unfortunately, two of the eight known populations contained zero observed individuals during the field assessment. One of those populations may have been taken out in a large rock slide on a steep mountain face. As genetic diversity is so important for conservation, it was disappointing to see that some of these populations no longer exist, as it greatly increases the chance of species extinction.

It has been incredibly fun to do population monitoring and SOS collecting, but I am still only really now beginning the adventure. I love hiking up mountain faces, jumping over creek beds, finding caves, stumbling across antlers, and gazing out at the mountains and valleys that surround my “office.” The internship so far has been amazing because I love spending time outside and exploring new areas, and many of the places I am going to have seen very little human activity. I can’t wait to see what the next four months have in store for me!

Signing off,

Austen, BLM, Salmon Field Office, Idaho

I’ve just wrapped up my first month working for the BLM at the Casper field office.  It’s been an excellent experience learning a variety of land and wildlife management techniques!  We were thrown straight into field work on our first day, where we learned the new AIM (Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring) protocols alongside the permanent staff members.  The aim (ha ha) of implementing these new protocols is to standardize procedures across departments, so that data from different projects can be consolidated and used to inform future operations.  It was a very unique experience because the permanent field staff were also learning the protocols for the first time, which allowed us all to get to know each other while we worked through each activity.  The techniques learned included characterizing soil horizons, evaluating soil stability, determining vegetation cover and density, and estimating plant diversity.

A snapshot of typical sagebrush steppe ecosystem.

One of the primary management objectives of wildlife biologists in Wyoming is the preservation of the Greater Sage Grouse.  The Sage Grouse is an indicator species for the deceptively diverse sagebrush steppe ecosystem, meaning that a regular abundance of Greater Sage Grouse indicates that the surrounding ecosystem is stable and healthy.  Part of the work of the BLM is to monitor cattle grazing on public areas of sagebrush steppe.  The wildlife biologists can then make recommendations on whether those areas are available for additional grazing, or if the cattle should be diverted elsewhere to allow the environment to recuperate.  I was able to assist in completing these range-land health assessments.

The Casper Field Office manages over a million acres of public land.

Additionally, I have been aiding wildlife biologists in monitoring a number of nearby raptor nests.  These include both natural nests as well as artificial nesting structures.  Any active nests are protected by a buffer zone that prevent any kind of oil and gas development within those areas.  We were able to observe a variety of different species including golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, and burrowing owls.

Finally, I was able to participate in Environmental Education day, a public outreach event with a local boys and girls club.  We spent some time planting trees and discussing ecosystem health before I gave a brief presentation on the wildlife of the sagebrush steppe.  I exhibited a stuffed sage grouse and a number of different game animal horns/antlers, which the kids were very excited to interact with.

Bighorn National Forest is only a couple of hours away, perfect for a weekend trip!

The city of Casper is located in central Wyoming, very close to a number of amazing natural places.  On the weekends I’ve enjoyed hiking and exploring these areas, which include Medicine Bow National Forest, Bighorn National Forest, and Grand Teton National Park.  Overall, the first month of the internship has been a very positive experience and I look forward to learning a great deal more!

I’m getting over the “what should I be doing” phase.  For the benefit of future interns or those that are still figuring it out, this how I got organized.

Like many others, my internship is focused on the Seeds of Success program; collecting “workhorse” species for research and restoration. Like many others I relocated for my internship and was/am unfamiliar with the native flora.  Before deciding what to collect there are a few necessary resources:

1. Previous SOS collection records in your area (you can’t repeat collections from last three years, older collection sites might be helpful)
2. A map showing land management (you can only collect from BLM land)
3. ID books/keys/online resources (to learn and ID plants)

I am organizing our previous SOS records and herbarium vouchers at our office for next year’s intern.  Maps and books should be relatively available at the office but if interns wanted to get one ahead of time as an intro, I’d recommend Sagebrush Country, by Ronald Taylor as a great introduction to and resource for common plants and communities.

The other main challenge that I’ve come across is deciding what to spend my time trying to collect.  Initially my “plan” was to collect anything native and abundant, assuming that it was a workhorse species that would potentially be useful.  The problem with this is that without prioritization and past records for reference, the same few dominant species risk being collected each year.  I suggest that early in the season interns talk to both their local mentor as well as their state botanist.  By doing this I came up with the following set of priorities for my office:

1. Whatever my office wants to collect for local purposes (fire restoration, sage grouse feed, etc).

2. POSE for USFWS project. This is a great basin wide effort where we will be collecting POSE across ecoregions and seed zones. Goal is 5-10 population collections per ecoregion and per seed zone. Each of these will get processed as SOS and the extra will be available for this project.

3. Statewide priorities species for restoration. Again the goal is 5-10 per ecoregion per seed zone. Process for SOS and collect extra seed:  POSE, bluebunch wheatgrass, great basin wildrye, idaho fescue, indian rice grass.

and

-Pollinator forbs: Three nesting and three nectar plants per season (spring, summer, fall). Some plants will be nesting and nectar plants.

4. Finally, target species that are on the long “target” list that have never been collected in our area before.

Obviously priorities will change from office to office, and may change by next year, but in each specific context, priorities allow the collector to focus their efforts on what will be most productive.  Instead of choosing native plants randomly or even randomly off the “target” list of 150 species I now know to focus on certain species that will go towards existing projects.  I am also organizing maps of seed zones and ecoregions for the following intern, as well as putting together a list of pollinator species to use alongside the more comprehensive target list.

I hope this, in conjunction with the indispensable SOS training in Chicago, will serve to cut down on the confusion/learning curve before getting out to start collecting next time around.  There’s a lot to catch up on for a new person and because of the time sensitivity of seed collection this can mean missing out on some species or wasting resources more generally.  There’s only so much time in the season so I’m hoping to use it well.

Good luck,

-Alejandro Brambila

• Visiting many of the wonders of the desert! My trips included Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam, Joshua Tree National Park, the Las Vegas Strip, Valley of Fire State Park, !!Death Valley during the SUPERBLOOM!!, the Mojave National Preserve, the Colorado River, and more.
• Further developing my botany field skills. Prior to this experience, my field botany background was largely Midwestern. I have learned so much about desert ecology and gotten much better with a dichotomous key.
• Learning what it’s like to work with a federal agency.
• Collecting seeds in Amboy Crater with the other interns, our mentor, and Sarah De Groot– botanist extraordinaire from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. It was the first collection I had helped with, and that combined with the thrill of collecting seeds inside a volcanic crater made for a pretty memorable day.
• Tagging along with Sierra Club volunteers who were repairing Mexican Hat Trail in the Turtle Mountains. It was inspiring to hear all they have done and continue to do for desert conservation.
• Driving off pavement. There are some pretty dicey roads out here, and there was always a certain amount of thrill in that. Plus, we didn’t even get a single flat tire!
• Attending the celebration of the new California National Monuments– Mojave Trails (part of which is in our field office), Sand to Snow, and Castle Mountains. We even got to meet Sally Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior!
• Jess and I getting surprised by a thunderstorm in Picture Canyon. At the time I was admittedly a little nervous, but looking back now it was certainly one of the more memorable field days!
• Traveling to Chicago for the CLM Intern Workshop! I loved getting to know the other interns, botanizing in the Midwest (felt like home), walking the trails of the gardens, and gaining more skills to apply to my internship.
• Experiencing smell of the desert after rain. Incredible.
• Improving my ArcGIS skills and exploring the spatial data for our field office. It was a great way to continue familiarizing myself with our field office while continuing to develop my own technical skills. If you’ve ever used ArcGIS, you know that sometime it just doesn’t cooperate, but that was part of the fun, too!
• Ice Cream Fridays with my fellow interns! Although it sometimes turned into french fry Friday or ice cream Thursday, it was still a fun tradition to try to stick to.
• Eating lunch in a different beautiful spot everyday.
• Reading desert literature in my down time.
• Listening to podcasts in the truck on the way to the field. Jess and I listened to every single episode of Dear Sugar, which made the miles fly by.
• Helping with projects around the office. I created a trail map and brochure for the Mexican Hat Trail in the Turtle Mountains, which will soon be published and distributed!
• Thinking deeply about public land.
• Participating in a bighorn sheep survey with members of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Clambering over the Marble Mountains at daybreak, scanning the mountainsides for glimpses of the sheep– I learned about the desert in a whole new way.
• Getting to know such a completely beautiful and unique part of this country that few people ever get to see. I feel so fortunate for this.

Since my last post we have still been very busy. We were required to attend the MOCC (Motorboat Operator Certification Course) in Stockton, CA for a week. Having never driven a boat before, I was not surprised that I did not pass.  I for sure need a good amount of practice before I feel confident being responsible for everyone on a boat I would be driving. They will be coming back later in the summer so I will get another chance.

Myth Dispelled! You will not sink when wearing waiters. During PFD section of class and water retrieval of people in trouble

Prior to this training week, we had been going out at night to catch larval suckers using a drift net over a private bridge in Chiloquin, OR. We did this for multiple nights and before leaving for the trip we had a total of 2,427 larvae. The net pens/ dock were also brought out into the bay and anchored down. When we returned from the training there had been a mass die off of the larvae most likely due to very high nitrogen levels and the fact they hadn’t been brought out to the net pens the previous week because our boat had been broken. With the help of the BOR our remaining fish were brought to the net pens. More night collection of larvae was done for a couple more nights and those were added as well.

Net Pens in Upper Klamath Lake. Fish were put into two of the pens.

Using a drift net off a bridge to catch larval suckers

We have started working on a few more projects in these last few weeks of June: Night collection of larvae was done one final time after memorial day to begin my co-intern’s larvae raising project in Lower Klamath Ponds; We began performing surveys of an endangered plant in the Pea family (Fabaceae), the species name is Astragalus Applegatei, or Applegates Milkvetch as it is commonly called. We have done surveys for this plant in 3 different locations, one of which is a newly reported population and has required more time to complete than expected (already 4 days and still not completed), but this abundance in the thousands is great news; We have been helping another fish biologist in our office with habitat surveying for good potential pools in streams in Modoc County, CA for the Modoc Sucker to be found in the next coming field season; We have also been assisting in electrofishing surveys and in pit tagging the fish in streams on Gearhart Mountain to determine the presence of and monitor native species such as Bull Trout and Red Band Trout as well as those that are non native like Brown Trout.

Modoc Sucker potential habitat beneath this large undercut. Marked tree above to survey in next year

Applegate’s Milkvetch, Astragalus applegatei

Myself and one volunteer still surveying newly found site, in this section alone there were 1,638 plants

In the most recent week we have been able to further progress in getting data on our larvae. We have figured out how to work our data sondes and calibrate them correctly to capture water quality data. As of yesterday we put the data sondes in both the ponds and in the net pens in Upper Klamath Lake. We installed a solar powered aerator in the net pens as well. We both were able to capture fish with minnow traps to asses the growth of the larvae, my larvae in the net pens are now at sizes 15- 28 mm which is a good sign of growth. The ones caught in her ponds were quite a bit bigger (multiple inches) than they should be, which leads us to believe they are not the ones that were put in, but from a different project that somehow got into the ponds unknowingly.

The babies are growing! size of larval suckers from net pens as of 7/05

There have been other days when we have been able to be a part of some other fun activities as well. We went nest searching to check on bald eagle chicks with the Wildlife Biologist in our office one day and found 7 chicks during our search of 10 nests, and a few adults. We were able to be a part of a Canada Goose banding session with USFWS out at the Tule Lake Wildlife Refuge which was fun and very interesting in learning how to sex the birds. There was also one day where I was able to go with my supervisor to RAP Camp (Resources and People). This was a camp where high school students were able to learn about a lot about different biological and ecological processes, and also gave them an opportunity to be out in the wilderness and enjoy fun outdoor activities like kayaking and bird watching. We were running the fish dissection station where the kids worked in teams to dissect Steelhead Trout. There was a interesting activity they do every year with this which is to match up the internal organs to the face template of Mr. Fish E. Guts. To some this may seem a bit morbid but it was actually a good tool in getting the kids to be able to identify each organ and seemed to gauge some of their interest more when they were making his face. My supervisor and I were available if any of the kids needed help with identification.

This was a female Canada Goose who I banded and am about to release

This was captured through the spotting scope. There is the adult on top and actually two chicks in the nest but you can only see one

This is my update!

Shilah Allen, intern with USFWS in Klamath Falls, OR

Hi all,

I have a tiny bit of bad news. My laptop deleted the whole album of pictures from my phone that I’ve taken since I moved here for my internship (“catastrophic failure”)! Unfortunately, that means not many pictures in this post – but we went on a collection trip last week, so I have some pictures from that one!

The past weeks have flown by. I’ve been here over a month already! It’s so crazy to me! But we’ve been putting in the hours for sure. Although our first collecting trip was more scouting than collecting, we managed to make collections of Vaccinium fuscatum in a few different locations, Bolboschoenus robustus from Buxton Woods Coastal Reserve, and a collection of roadside Gaillardia pulchella.

It never fails – every time I am making a collection, left with my thoughts and my counting, I think, “I’m getting paid to pick blueberries” or “Never in my life did I think that I would be doing this one day” or “I’ve never thought about this being a job” – (I hate using the word job for this internship… because it is such an amazing experience and a huge learning opportunity. I feel simply calling it a “job” comes with the negative connotations of a drudging 8-5, 40-hour work week, which although is true, it’s different).  And it blows my mind every single time. I love it! I recently visited my family over the weekend, and everyone asks me, “How’s the flower pickin’?” Honestly, it’s FANTASTIC! Everyone should want this position!

We went to a few other places during our first week, including Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve, Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve, Pea Island, and Pine Island. We went to some really beautiful places, and it is a shame that I don’t have any photographs to show it!

Our second collecting trip was north to Virginia and Maryland. We started in the Delmarva Peninsula – I don’t know if any of you have been here, but taking the bridge/tunnel to get there is insane! It looks like you’re going to drive right off of the bridge into the water, but the road dips down under the water into a tunnel (TWICE)! Our group had so many engineering questions that we had to google later on. Did you know that there are such things as engineers that dive? Obviously, there are… but it didn’t even occur to me until we started asking these questions! We visited about 12 places on our collecting trip last week, including:

First Landing State Park, Chincoteague and Assateague National Wildlife Refuges, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Robinson Neck Preserve, Horn Point Laboratory – University of MD, Tuckahoe State Park, Calvert Cliffs State Park, Point Lookout State Park, Smallwood State Park, Mason Neck State Park, and Belle Isle State Park. We made collections of Juncus roemerianus (thanks for the splinters) and Glyceria striata. We had to take canoes and kayaks out for some of our collections, of which I promptly thought, “I’m getting paid to kayak right now.” It was first thing in the morning, we were at our first sight for the day – it was beautiful, and I was kayaking out to a population of Juncus roemerianus. If you think that isn’t awesome, you’re wrong.

Big news for me, I finally saw Monotropa uniflora in the wild! I remember learning it in class, and I would always admire it in field guides, but now I’ve finally seen it with my own eyes! I got so excited. It’s the little things.

From our kayak out to some Juncus roemerianus.

Some more personal side notes:

I had a dream about Bolboschoenus and Spartina the other night. I’m still undecided on if that’s a good or a bad thing.

What I dream about

I’m finding myself doing a lot more roadside botanizing than I used to do.

I’m talking about plants a lot more, from which I’ve found the general public is not very interested. WHATEVER.

My farmer’s tan is off the chain.

Thanks for reading!

Melanie