Here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, we’ve been experiencing some weird weather–sun. This is, for Oregon, an abundance of sun and a serious lack of rain. Eugene is over 12 inches behind in its usual rainfall.

This means a few changes in the monitoring routine. With the warm, dry weather, everything is blooming early. My monitoring lead and I will be wrapping up Bradshaw’s Lomatium (Lomatium bradshawii) monitoring in a couple of days, while this time last year we were just beginning it. The endangered Fender’s Blue Butterflies are also out earlier this year, and their flight season is moving fast! I helped do the first survey earlier this week and we were able to confirm that Fender’s were indeed out at one of our sites; Fender’s Blue Butterflies are nearly identical to Silvery Blue Butterflies, a common butterfly, so capture and release (with the aid of an awesome tool known as a butterfly net) is one of the only surefire ways to identify them. We’re expecting the flight season to peak soon, so there are definitely a few more butterfly surveys in my future.

I’ve had some good luck with viewing wildlife this year. I was lucky enough to see a coyote fairly closely a couple of weeks ago. It ran within 100 feet of the macroplot we were monitoring as if it didn’t have a care in the world, and it was a real treat to see. Coyotes have a way of bounding and hopping while they run that was very unexpected.

The other wildlife sighting that I was excited about was mining bees! My first thought when I saw these little pollen-covered bees crawling into a hole in the ground was “Bees? That aren’t in a hive?” I had never heard of them before. While monitoring lomatium at one of our sites, we stumbled upon a fair-sized community (I’ve read that they’re solitary bees and  instead of living in a colony will burrow their own holes, but will dig the holes near other mining bees). It was very interesting watching them work.

So much sun is unusual for a Willamette Valley spring!

A mining bee at the entrance of its home