Yet another busy week! This week we started another set of sampling at the Umatilla and at Boardman.
On Monday and Tuesday, we were at Boardman and Umatilla, respectively, putting out pan traps and opening pitfall traps. We also did vegetation surveys and hand-netting at each site. Sandy, Sam, and I were in the truck this time, doing the relatively easily accessible sites, and Estany and Lauren were the lucky ones who got to ride on the UTV again. Everything we very smoothly, and the weather was very nice compared to some of the previous days. At Boardman, we even thought it was going to start raining on us the whole time; we were extremely grateful for the break in the hot weather! Unfortunately, because it was cooler and windier, hand-netting was not very successful at Boardman or the Umatilla. We did see hardly any bees at any of the sites, but we did see a few elk while we were stopped for lunch!
On Wednesday and Thursday, we went back to Boardman and the Umatilla to collect pan traps and refill pit falls. Sandy was unable to come with us to Boardman on Wednesday, so Sam and I got to drive by ourselves for first time! It was a little bit scary in some areas, but we made it through without any issues! And we also had another elk encounter on our way back to the entrance. We weren’t able to see anything on either side of the truck (the sagebrush was really tall), and we came extremely close to hitting a herd of about 15 elk that ran right in front of the truck while I was driving. That definitely got our blood pumping for a bit!
On Tuesday, after finishing our work at the Umatilla, Sandy came to the lab and we started learning how to identify bumblebees! Sandy gave us each a couple of bees from a reference collection (without the label) to practice identifying with our microscopes. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about the anatomy of bumblebees!
Overall, it was a very busy week, but we accomplished a lot and had fun doing it! I took Friday off to go camping in Central Oregon with some friends!