Hi all!!

I just finished month two of my internship with the Chicago Botanic Garden at the  BLM at the Bakersfield Field Office in California. This month has been crazy-great! At then end of April, I went to my Seeds of Success (SOS) training in Red Rock Canyon, Nevada. Here, I learned a great deal of information from the instructors and met some great people from offices all over the west! I even got to go out with some interns from the Great Basin Institute and collect some Astragalus seeds with them for their SOS collections! Our field day got rained out (in the desert!!) during training, so I was so happy to have been offered such a great hands-on opportunity! And being in that gorgeously breathtaking canyon didn’t hurt the situation! 🙂

Red Rock Canyon from the Visitors Center

Astragalus seed pods

I got to partake in my first ever Bioblitz a few weekends ago and that was such a great learning experience!!! This blitz was a little smaller than usual, with only 6 of us. This was the third time we had rescheduled due to inclement weather so we just decided to go for it this time and the small group of us focused on pollinators and beetles as well as updating the plant list for our chosen site, the San Joaquin (pronounced ‘wa-keen’) River Gorge Recreation Management Area.  We spent three days collecting specimens, setting pit-fall traps and keying out plants.  We had a beetle specialist on hand, as well as a photonaturalist, who took some fantastic photos of the bugs and insects that we collected.  He has helped out at other bioblitzs as well; you can see some of his work here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvdhntr It was absolutely amazing and the river was so, so, SO very gorgeous; it made me think I was back in Oregon for a second..

Clarkia dudleyana

Several bugs, drawn to our light and white sheet set-up at night

Asclepias californica (milkweed)

My co-intern and I have also been able to start collecting seeds for SOS and for local restoration use. This year has been especially dry in our area, so there has been less to collect than in other years, but we have managed to collect some grasses, my lovely thistle sage and Ericameria (interior-leaf golden bush), and it looks like there are still some species higher up in elevation that we can come back to collect at a later time.

And what is possibly the best moment of my life so far, happened out on this seed collecting trip.. I SAW A BOBCAT!!!!  I was out at Carrizo, at Painted Rock and I came around the corner to this cool, shaded ledge and went to take a picture of it, and there was a bobcat sleeping on it!!!  I freaked OUT!!! lol  I was watching this guy(?) for about a minute before he stirred and saw me, and then he just laid there and watched me photographing him, without a care in the world!  Didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t seem agitated or scared or really caring at all.. it was literally breathtaking.  I could not breathe and had no idea what to do with myself, so I basically did silent screams of excitement until I calmed down somewhat enough to keep wandering on and let him get back to his nap.  Oh my gosh, best thing ever!!!

Thanks for reading; hope everyone is enjoying their internship and their summer!!  Talk to you next month 🙂

Rachel S

Bakersfield, CA

Bureau of Land Management