This past month I had the opportunity to participate in an Arroyo Toad survey along Piru Creek, in California. The survey began around 6 pm so we had plenty of time to survey the toads in both daylight, and nighttime. As we moved from pool to pool, we saw a couple of tadpoles, but no toadlets, which was slightly disappointing. We were beginning to worry that upstream water diversion and pollution had decimated the toad population.

As the sun began to drop, our worries turned into excitement. With the growing darkness, the toadlets began to appear out of no were. One minute we were strolling along the creek bed, not seeing a single toad, and the next we had to shake our feet before setting them down to avoid stepping on the little critters.

Upon further inspection of the toads, we realized not all of them were the Arroyo Toads we were looking for, however we were still thrilled to see the creek bed come to life. As we were bent down looking at one of the toadlets, one of my co-interns came up from behind me, informing me that there were several toads just a foot away. As I turned to look, one jumped on my back, and began to make its way towards my head. Imagining the Parent Trap scene where the lizard crawls into the stepmother’s mouth, I closed my eyes, covered my ears, and tried to keep my mouth closed. The whole time I could feel the small toad climbing up my back. When it got to my shoulder, I could feel every one of its small, sticky toes as it crawled toward my neck. After what felt like five minutes, the toadlet finally decided it was done exploring, and jumped off, never to be seen again.

For the rest of the night, I could feel the toad’s sticky toes climbing on my shoulder, which might have been the weirdest feeling I have ever felt.

I’ve only got a few weeks left with the BLM, so I’ve packed in the field surveys and am holed up in the office going through my data.

Not that being at the office is a bad thing.

(Also incorporating some sightings that my co-workers have passed along over the course of the season—thanks guys!) So far, I have learned the following:

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A change of pace has taken place since the WRI interns finished their internship. I have been spending less time in the field collecting seeds, and spending more time organizing and updating my insect collection. Nevertheless, I am still pretty pleased with how I am spending my time! I have been sorting through the bees and butterflies I have caught, and attempting to identify them has been pretty challenging. The most valuable identification resources I have been working with have been a mix of books, websites and diagrams (i.e. Gretchen LeBuhn’s “Field Guide to Common Native Bees of California,” BugGuide.com, Ken Davenport’s “Butterflies of Kern and Tulare Counties, California”). I also have to give credit to Nevin Cullen and Peter Jump for sharing their expertise with me. They have taught me quite a bit about bees, moths and butterflies since I’ve started this collection!

Here Nevin soothes a fritillary with his bare hands. Smashing!

There are there are about three insects in my collection that remain a mystery. One of them is a bumblebee, a male specimen that doesn’t resemble anything listed in Johnathan Koch, James Strange and Paul Williams’  “Bumble Bees of the Western United States.” I’ve included a photo of the mystery bombus below.

Mystery Bombus sp.

The second mystery insect is also a bee, but this one is smaller than a honey bee, is a metallic-black color with scopae on its coxa and femur (sadly, I do not have a picture of this bee!). And my third mystery insect was a very photogenic beetle I found on some Yampa. As you can see, it has very long antennae, long legs, and wood-brown elytra with black markings. If anybody who reads this has any guesses, let me know!

Mystery Beetle

Identification is only one part of processing the insects. Once I have made my guess on what an insect may be, I have to pin it and posture it correctly. Proper pinning is a matter of using a pinning block that places the insect at about 3/4 the height of the pin. The pin should be placed through the right side of the insect’s thorax. If the insect is too small to pin, you stick the pin through a small piece of triangular card stock paper with a dot of glue on the end, and stick the insect to the piece of glue. Once the insect is pinned properly, you must posture them to make them look presentable in your display box. I posture my insects with forceps and a magnifying glass. The need for posturing comes from the fact that the insects usually contract their limbs into stiff and strange positions when they die. If I’m lucky, their limbs and wings will be flexible and stay in the position that I put them in. If not, their limbs, wings and heads usually snap off. The objective is to posture the insects so that all of their limbs are showing and all pairs of wings are spread open. I will admit, I definitely have some horror stories when it comes to pinning and posturing. It’s always a shame throwing away a good butterfly when its head pops off.

My collection as of 8/8/17. It still needs some rearranging and more insects to fill that blank space.

Hi everyone! Time is flying. I have been doing lots of random projects, which suits me just fine. One thing I have been working on lately is a sign for a pollinator garden at First Step, a school for children and adults with developmental disabilities. This garden was a collaboration between the USFS and the Arkansas Native Plant Society. My goals were to explain this complex concept in simple terms and to help dispel the myth that bees and butterflies are the only pollinators. Through this project, I learned that some bees feed pollen to their larvae, and that within the U.S., bats only pollinate plants in the Southwestern states (not in Arkansas). Here is the sign:

My mentor Susan took me and the two Pathways interns at our office out on a tour of the Ouachitas on Tuesday. Jesi and Malcolm are focused on filing and rarely get to leave the office. Sadly, today is their last day before they go back to school. I’m jealous… I love learning! I’ll just have to learn harder on my own. Here is a picture of me, Jesi and Malcolm on the little Missouri river.

One of the coolest things we saw on our tour was a luna moth that had just emerged from its chrysalis, its wings still crinkled!

Yesterday, Susan and I worked on cleaning up the pollinator garden outside of the Jessieville district office, releasing young milkweeds from all the invasive sericea lespedeeza. I have also been tediously processing all the seeds I collected, since it seems that we will not be sending any seeds to Bend, Oregon. I have a feeling that there are much better ways of doing it than what I am doing, but I am just doing my best!

Take care you guys.

We’re officially into the hot and dry season here in Northeast Wyoming. The weather is hot (90’s most days) and dry, with regular afternoon thunderstorms. Nearly all of the plants we are monitoring have dried out, gone to seed, cured, or in other words died for the season. New challenges to AIM monitoring are presented by this late summer climate. First, we always have to be on the lookout for fire danger or rapidly changing weather. This particular lightning-caused fire blew up in less than an hour, and was only a few miles north of our site that day!

More commonly, our main challenge is identifying plants that have cured out, gone to seed, dried, or in other words “died” for the year. A lot of brown, brittle grasses tend to look the same, and some days it takes a few minutes to identify a plant we’ve been looking at all summer long. A few plants are still blooming, such as this yellow flax and the plains milkweed, but for the most parts are sites are dead and dying.

However, gaining elevation as a person moves up the mountains seems to take them back in time. At 7,000 feet the mountain meadows are featuring similar plants we saw blooming on 5,000ft BLM land in June. Up in the alpine zone, the main summer plants are in full bloom, taking advantage of the warmest parts of the summer before they are buried under snow in roughly a month. These sedums are in full bloom at roughly 10,000 feet, and the parry’s primrose is claiming its spot at 12,000 feet, among rocks where few other plants dare to grow.

The transition this time of year from the brown, smoking lowlands to the bright happy meadows of the alpine is amazing to witness. One of my favorite parts of studying plants is watching these phenological changes happen as the summer goes on!

However, for work this means our plant monitoring is almost done. As our crew finishes AIM for the season, we are becoming experts at identifying dead sticks. 🙂

This week marked our last days of the field season. Having spent the previous three months digging 44 soil pits, locating 44 plot centers in the remote reaches of the Buffalo Field Office, establishing 132 transects and identifying the grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, and trees along each of them, and spending hours upon hours driving, I will truly miss our time outside. Now begins the real work: data entry.

Enjoying one of our final sites before the end of the field season. From the left: Amiah Warder (CLM Intern), Dominic Jandrain (BLM Hydrologist), and Camille Rodriguez (CLM Intern).

Oh, is it brutal. Alas, if data are to be collected, they must eventually be stored properly. We will be spending the next week or so organizing every piece of datum we’ve collected this summer in a way so that they will be easy to find and navigate through. This involves going through each of our plot photos (there are 176 photographs total) into digital folders also containing scanned copies of our field data forms. We will also need, after entering our data into the Database for Inventory, Monitoring and Assessment (DIMA), to generate DIMA reports for other employees at our Field Office. Unfortunately, we’ve spent the entire field season entering our data into an outdated version of DIMA, and to generate the final reports we need, the newest version is required. This is where we’ve hit our most significant roadblock, but we will overcome. First, coffee. And I suppose a picture of a lake since it’s the only other photograph I have currently.

Lava Lake located in Gallatin Nat’l Forest, Montana. Just a drive and a hike away from Buffalo, Wyoming.

Once we get through this period of our internship, only one month will remain of my time in the Buffalo Field Office. Five months never sounded like an especially long time to me, but even so it is remarkable how quickly my time in Wyoming has flown by. This has been an invaluable experience for me thus far. I’ve expanded my resume, and I’ve gotten to live in a beautiful place surrounded by endless outdoor opportunities. I can only hope my next work experience is just as memorable.

Howdy! (I’ve adopted saying howdy, I kind of really like it)

Anywho, greetings from Bishop, CA. My time here is over and I cannot believe how quickly its passed! The weeks have gone by in a blur. The goals I had at the start of my internship have been fulfilled and my hours of funding are all gone. Reflecting on my time out here I just can’t believe the experiences I’ve had. Getting caught in the loudest thunderstorms I’ve ever been under. The 3 am alarms to get up and go count sage grouse in the freezing cold. Stopping for snacks and Mono Market and ice cream at the Mono Cone. Chasing horny toads around in the Volcanic Tablelands. Almost getting the truck stuck, many times. Being miserably hot and sweaty in the beating sun. Falling into the slough at Fish Slough. Seeing absolutely stunning landscapes ranging from the driest deserts to dense pine forests all set in the foreground of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I wouldn’t like to remember it any other way.

Working out here, in the middle of nowhere, has taught me many new skills but also about myself. I now know I can work about 40 hours a week alone and be in the field alone and get my work done and enjoy it too. I was hesitant about doing field work alone all day everyday, I was afraid of snakes or twisting my ankle and getting stranded in the middle of the desert. But as I got out more and more my confidence grew and I realized it’s really not as scary as it seemed. I also learned sooooo much about plants. I’m way better at keying out plants using the Jepson in part to the classes I was able to attend but also just from practicing it over and over (I’m especially good with the Chaenactis genus!). And of course there are the bonus skills I’ve acquired, the ones I really never thought I would learn- I can confidently drive the largest the largest truck you’ve ever seen, cut down trees, and fix a break in a barbed wire fence.

Starting this internship was exciting and nerve wracking. I was so stoked to get a cool position in a cool location even if it meant moving away from my home by the beautiful ocean and all my closest friends. I didn’t really know what to expect, I just knew I would be collecting seeds and learning about plants. So I guess my exceptions were met… but then I was able to participate in all these other amazing and unexpected things. I learned a bit about a lot of different things like wildlife, archaeology, and range.

I’ve had a great time out here and I know that because of how insanely fast time has flown.

I’m just going to photo dump, just thinking they’re worth a share!

Shipping off some seed collections!

So many Hymenoclea salsola v. salsola seeds!!!!

Cute little horny toad! (not actually toads)

Grouse poop looks like white cheeto puffs

Lupinus odoratus was going crazy this summer

It’s the arch you can see mount whitney through in the alabama hills

Working in a meadow to redirect water off the road!

So long Bishop!!!<3 And farewell to the Bureau of Land Management, it’s been very real.

Brittany Betz

BLM, Bishop, CA Field Office

One of our monitoring sites – now all dried up

Ever since we got back from the workshop everything here has really dried up. Most plants here are dry, brown and past flowering.

So we’ve been shifting into more range work like checking livestock use and range improvements. Now that everything has dried up, fire season has really begun. At any time a lightning strike or a spark could start a fire and then half the office has to run off and go fight it. A couple of weeks ago, a fire came within a mile of the office and burned almost 30,000 acres. By the end of the day we could see the flames from the office!

Antelope Fire

Now we’re chasing spring into higher elevations where the plants are still alive and in some cases where the snow has yet to melt! This is great because we’re getting to discover some of the most beautiful parts of the district and some of my favorite places in Idaho.

Quigley Canyon near Hailey, Idaho

Mount Harrison, Sawtooth National Forest

Castilleja christii

Recently, we got to help Idaho Natural Heritage monitor an endemic species of paintbrush (Castilleja christii) which is only found on one mountain in the world! It is only found here because this mountain is sky island – a mountain that is like an island because it is surrounded by different habitat, preventing gene flow. Like many alpine species, this makes Christ’s paintbrush especially vulnerable to climate change because it is unable to move north as the weather warms.

Other CBGs enjoying the last bit of snow

Though I am a GIS intern, my awesome mentor has always been quick to help me find opportunities to leave my desk and get some experience out in the field. I’ve gone out and collected seeds. I have tagged fence line and done Wild Horse surveys, but the most memorable and exciting instances, I’ve had was an annual multi-part Columbia Spotted Survey along Dry Creek in Malheur County, Oregon.

I was able to participate in 2 of the 3 parts of the survey that happen annually for these frogs. It’s a project to monitor the survival and recruitment rate of Columbia Spotted Frogs by USFWS in collaboration with the BLM. This Dry Creek population is isolated, so the USFWS takes special notice of these frogs.

The first survey occurs in in April and consists of trekking downstream and counting the number of egg masses. I just missed this survey, as it was the same month I had started working.

The second survey occurs in June. I along with some really cool people from the ODFW, USFWS and the BLM, split into teams, started at opposite ends of the creek, and worked our way down, catching spotted frogs, scanning them for pit-tags and administering tags to frogs that didn’t have them. Then you do the other half of the stream the next day, to try and catch frogs that might have missed or overlooked by the other team. It was so much fun!

Armed with pit tag readers (the same machines that recognize pet microchips), scissors, rulers, weigh bags and scales, we hiked up and down Dry Creek for a full two days, swinging and swooping our nets, trying to keep our footing in a rocky stream. It took a surprising amount of team work and strategizing to catch as many frogs as possible. A lot of them could feel you coming and try and make a hop for it, so you would have to think about the best approach to catching that frog(s).

Once you caught a frog in your net, you had to catch it again in your hand. They could bounce all around in your net like a ping-pong ball, some even had the ups to jump clear out of your net! It took some finagling and dexterity, but once it was in your hand, you held it by its legs, measured it from snout to cloaca, weighed it, then scanned it for a pit-tag, if it had one then you’re done (after shouting out the pit tag number and measurements) and if not, then you make a small incision on its back, insert the pit-tag, and then you’re done (after shouting out all the measurements and pit tag number for the data recorder).

(Columbia Spotted Frog)

The final survey takes places in August and consists mostly of a count for metamorphs. Metamorphs are tadpoles that are in transition to become frogs. It was funny though because I was expecting to see tadpoles with hind legs, but because of the time of year we survey, we’re actually on the tail-end of most of the metamorphic period. Though tadpoles for the most part are done transitioning, it’s still obvious which ones are “metamorphs” . They’re noticeably smaller than sub-adults and adults, so for the survey we literally walk along the stream counting “metamorphs” out loud, while the numbers are recorded by a data recorder. We also take the time to catch any adults we see (there’s a lot less around then there were in June), and repeat the process of what we did in June. We only count the “metamorphs” because they’re too small for pit tags, but don’t get it twisted. It’s still a pretty tough job, these frogs blend in incredibly well, and we were counting the smaller ones!

(Here is a little metamorph that still had his tail)

(Metamorph vs Sub-Adult vs Green Gunk)

The Dry Creek area is great, very pretty, and doing frog surveys in the middle of the summer is amazing, because as hot as it may be, you will get wet, so there is always an opportunity to cool off. Actually one of the best parts about the trek down the creek, is coming along The Pinch, a spot where the water is at least 4 feet high and surrounded on either side by rock walls. You could go around, if you really didn’t want to be drenched from the shoulder down, but who wouldn’t in the June/August heat?

(A picture of our team after wading through The Pinch)

(Dry Creek)

It was also great, because a lot of the views were made even better by the wildlife. We saw garter snakes everywhere. I even got to catch one! We could tell that this particular garter snake had eaten recently, and though it wasn’t frog shaped, we wanted to scan it, to see if had a pit tag inside of it (it didn’t). In June, we walked through this canyon that was filled with Cliff Swallows, flittering around, only to come through and later be screamed at by a Red-tailed Hawk because we were too close to her nest.

(You can see the food bulge, right under my thumb)

(Cliff Swallows)

Almost 6 months have past since the beginning of my internship here in Carson City, Nevada. It feels more like 6 weeks, but I knew this would happen. Four day work weeks packed with seed collections, traveling and anything else that may pop up on our schedule, paired with adventure-filled weekends at Lake Tahoe, create an atmosphere where days seem like hours and minutes seem like seconds. My crew and I are here until the middle of November, and we intend to make the most of what little time we have left.

I am used to a gradual shift in climate as the seasons change in eastern half of the United States. Brisk autumn days slowly morph into chilly winter nights while the mesophytic hardwood forests undergo their annual transformations as their leaves senesce. The seasons are more static here; one can expect identical conditions day after day for a given time frame. However, it seems that the transition from winter to spring or summer to fall is more sudden. I am going to miss the myriad of colors the deciduous forests boast in mid fall, but I cannot wait to experience my favorite time of the year in the Sierras.

Our team has, aside from a few species, hit a wall making SOS collections. These late summer months have been equal parts scouting as much as collecting. However, most asters seed late, so the bulk of our collecting has yet to come.

In other news, my team and I were just enlisted in a Rapid Vegetation Assessment course at UC Davis’s Bodega Marine Laboratory. It is a three day course but we are going to turn it into a week long vacation. I am so excited to finally see the redwoods, explore San Francisco and discover the diversity of Point Reyes National Seashore (not to mention the ocean breakers colliding with the rocky cliffsides).

Pedicularis groendlandica

A view atop Mt. Rose

Until next time,

Jason Fibel, Carson City District Office – BLM