I’m signed up to help with a 4th grade bioblitz that’s happening in a couple of weeks, and one of my tasks will be to help find and identify lichens and fungi. It’s been a while since I spent a lot of time working on lichens, so I thought it would be worth doing some review of what I know and learning to recognize some of what I don’t. I don’t expect to be able to recognize everything that’s out there in the end, but I’ll see what I can do. Today’s trip out to Starrigavan was with the intent of getting some of that review in.
The weather was sunny and temperatures were warm. A brief walk around the park this morning revealed very few shorebirds. I also didn’t notice any at Starrigavan (though I didn’t really look for them there). I think I saw three Dunlin and a couple of probable Western Sandpipers with them. It occurs to me that maybe part of what is going on is the birds are moving through rather quickly. It was such warm a winter throughout the state, there’s probably little reason to linger. Perhaps we’ll see some less ambitious birds in the coming days and weeks.
While out at Starrigavan I saw my first red net-winged beetle (Dictyoptera sp, probably D. simplicipes) of the year flying by.