Discretion is the better part of valor
Fieldwork often follows the age old adage, that a plan never survives first contact with the enemy. Or, if you believe in patron saints, then you might say that Murphy (of Murphy’s Law fame) is the patron saint of fieldwork.
Yesterday, I drove to the site in Iowa. As I left, the sky was filled with charcoal grey storm clouds. It didn’t rain on the way to the site, which was nice, and as I got near the site, it got sunnier and sunnier. It was posted as “No Tresspassing” so I checked in at the nearby farmhouse. They kindly directed me to their relative down the road who owned the property on the side of the road I wanted. The owner gave me permission to be on his land and we were off. The site (Brush Creek) was pretty amazing. The species diversity was high, but everything was patchily distributed. There were a couple species that showed up in most kicks (unfortunately, including Corydalus), but most species were in high numbers in just one or two kicks. I did find Nigronia, but only larger individuals, I wasn’t able to determine (or happen across) where the cohort 1 individuals were in the stream. Part of that is because the site didn’t really have the type of overhanging trees on which Nigronia usually lays eggs, so I checked near likely streamside plants that were near the edge. Since I have no data for Nigronia in Iowa, I took 10 of the larger larvae; at least I can tie them into my existing network to see with which populations they are most related.
Then I drove 2.5 hours into Minnesota to try and pick up a new site. Like Iowa, I don’t have any samples from Minnesota, so these are a bonus. As I drove northward, every stream I passed was swollen over its banks and the swales all looked like rivers, even the ones in the middle of the cornfields. This did not bode well. As I got near the site, it felt like my GPS could have just said “head for the source of the pretty lightning bolts.” I pulled up to an unnamed tributary to the Zumbro River and the storm was about half a mile north of me, dropping one to two lightning bolts a minute. The stream was over its banks and while I watched, a rather large log came into view, carried by the current. I decided that sampling wasn’t a good idea. I chased the storm into Wisconsin (where the rivers were also almost all over their banks). Rather than try to set up camp in a thunderstorm, I got a room at a motel.
Today, I’ll check out my nearby site in Wisconsin, but I am guessing that it won’t be sampleable. The Black River (a much larger river into which most of the streams around here flow) has a flood warning and is up about 16 feet. The flood warning is over on Monday, and I don’t need to be in Fargo until Tuesday evening, so I will probably head to northern Minnesota and may try my little stream in Wisconsin again then.
New video-blogs added at the Sabbatical Road Show (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxzjqM5lIz-43NEmOxp2LbFjKcFrR9zCh)
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