BioBlitz!

July 23, 2014 Posted by: H Coyle

This past week the park had an event called BioBlitz.  BioBlitz is an event where visitors can come and help the park survey the countless number of species that are within its boundaries.  The event circled around the use of an app called iNaturalist where people can take pictures of plants and wildlife and post them onto the MABI project within the app. This allows the park to have a record of the species observed and inventory them for future use.  My day started bright and early with a bird walk and continued onto a general botany talk while other participants went on a guided walk about the trees in the park.Throughout the day visitors and staff were able to participate in other events revolving around butterflies ,insect traps, dragonflies, aquatic invertebrates, bumble bees, and wildflowers which were given by experts in those fields. It was interesting to learn about the plants such as wildflowers that I walk past daily and over look.  Now when I am out in the field tackling an invasive species I can look around andidentify a few native species.  I am mostly familiar with plants, so it was also interesting to learn about the aquatic invertebrates that live in the Pogue. The event concluded with a closer looks at moths at night, and I have to say I never realized how beautiful moths can be once you see one up close.                  

I personally gave a guided walk about ferns.  One of my personal goals for this internship was to learn about the different species of ferns within the park since there are so many (there are 35 currently recorded). With the help of Kyle I was able to give an hour walk pointing out the different fern species we passed.  I now know 19 species which isn't bad considering I am half way through my internship.  But hey, I got 6 weeks left and 16 more ferns to learn!