Rose Garden in Portland

Wow. I cannot believe it has been a month already. I’ve spent a lot of time surveying for Applegate’s Milk-vetch at the airport. We did a full census in the footprint of the construction areas and surveyed randomly selected transects in others. After spending 9+ hours a day looking for the plants, I could see them when I closed my eyes. WEIRD.

F-15

It was crazy cool to see F-15s fighter jets take off and land so close to us. This airport is the only place in the US that has F-15 training.

Milk-vetch

This milk-vetch is also found in a couple other areas of Klamath Falls. The Ewauna Flat Preserve, owned by The Nature Conservancy, has ongoing efforts of monitoring and outplanting for the milk-vetch. I went there to assist Kerry (a professor at Oregon Tech) with the monitoring of milk-vetch that had been planted within the past few years. This was my first time working with plants and I really liked it.

At the ponds, we monitored for predators and fish. We found a couple of coyote tracks and saw two pelicans. We are still waiting to have the ponds stocked. There is some weird algae growing in the smaller ponds, but it may be beneficial.

Alia and I electrofishing.

Electrofishing site.

Alia and I went to check on our net pens at Rocky Point. Everything seemed to be going okay there. There might be some type of minnows in one of the nets though. We saw a ton of dragonflies and damselflies! Josh took us electrofishing recently. We saw a couple suckers but couldn’t seem to catch them. We caught a lot of Speckled Dace and Chubs. Other than all the field work, I have been labeling sucker fish that have been in alcohol for a few years and doing some office work.

Odonata at Rocky Point

Great Gray Owl

One weekend we went to Portland and stopped at the Rose Garden. It is so beautiful.  Last weekend we went to Medford and Ashland. On our way back we saw a Great Gray Owl. I really like Oregon so far!

Till next time,

Erica