Normally this is supposed to be the slow time of year for the “ologists” at the BLM Mother  Lode Field Office but this year things have been quite busy. Earlier in the year I helped collect a ton of specimens from some insect traps that we put have been putting out to study the pollinators of our area. Now comes the terribly fun part of washing them with shampoo and then drying them off with a hair dryer (not lying), but it isn’t bad when you have some good tunes. Luckily the barn I am working in has surround sound! Then we will be pinning them and getting them ready to identify using UC Davis’ reference collection.

Other than this, I took a chainsaw workshop a couple of weeks ago and finally got to put it to use today in the field. Looks simple, but when your thinking about the fact that the saw could cut you like butter, it is a bit more interesting. Also today we used one of the normal field saws, which is like twice as big as the almost kid sized saw that we learned on. Boy was my arm tired.

We also have been working to keep a neighbor of our rare plant preserve from riding through on his motorcycle, as this disturbs the habitat and has potential to spread weeds. Since I used to use trail cameras a bit to track wildlife, I decided to put out a camera and see if I could catch the motorcyclers on camera but like 99% of the animals I tried to pick up on camera, the motorcyclers too were very blurry.

Happy Holidays y’all,

-Landon from the BLM Mother Lode Field Office in El Dorado Hills, CA