carrieseltzer's Journal

I put up a white swaddling blanket with a bright flashlight on it. Unfortunately, it attracted 0 moths.

About once a month I hike Billy Goat Trail in Maryland with a group of women, but on Saturday I was the only person who showed up! The group hike usually moves quickly and I have to be careful not to get left behind when I inevitably stop to take pictures, so it was exciting to hike by myself and stop for as long as I wanted.

Hike highlight: slime mold! I searched for them in vain during the global snapshot of biodiversity, but I think this rainy weather we had last week really brought them out. I think I saw at least 3 different kinds of slime mold. All of the slime molds I found were on well-decayed (barkless) fallen logs. Anyone know their slime molds? I'm a new enthusiast as a result of my own challenge issued during the global snapshot (still need to run the numbers on that, but no one has told me they did it).

I found the first slime mold about 50 ft from the trailhead, so I mostly had eyes for those the entire time, but I made a handful of other observations too.

We have a small yard that is currently about 3 weeks past needing to be mowed, so just about every grassy thing that can go to flower/seed has. I thought this would be a good time to start trying to photograph and identify all of the plant species in the yard. I'd love to be able to know them all to genus! Our "lawn" is mostly weeds. This evening I focused on uprooting and photographing the grassy things (hopefully the lawn will get mowed soon...). Bit by bit I'll get them all!

If you have great suggestions for IDing turf grasses, please let me know!

For the Global Snapshot of Biodiversity for the Great Nature Project, I issued a challenge to make at least one observation of each of the 13 iconic taxa in iNaturalist between May 15-25. I'm trying to do this myself and there's only a few days left to make observations, so I thought I'd report my progress here. Some of you prolific iNaturalists should be able to do this pretty easily by just looking harder for some things you don't usually pay attention to.

I've also made a point to make at least one observation during each day of the Global Snapshot, which I've sometimes barely managed to do. I've spent way too much time in front of my computer working! In spite of that, here's my status:

Plants - DONE (easy, though I realized I don't have many.)
Protozoans - I'm on the hunt for slime molds today!
Fungi (including lichens) - Not done! I thought I had a fungus observation... I'll find one.
Mollusks - DONE (snails & slugs)
Ray-finned fishes - This is going to be hardest for me. I know where I can find some goldfish as a last resort, but I'm trying not to include captives in my count.
Birds - DONE (easy to see, harder to photograph)
Reptiles - I should be able to find a turtle, but i haven't yet.
Amphibians - DONE
Mammals - DONE (squirrels are so easy here)
Insects - DONE (almost as easy as plants)
Arachnids - DONE (almost as easy as insects)
Other Animals (stuff that doesn't fall into another more specific animal category) - DONE (you might have to think a little for this one, but this includes millipedes, isopods, annelids, crustaceans, and more)
Kelp, Diatoms, and Allies - DONE! (I am most proud of this one - the cyanobacteria Nostoc! You might be able to find this green blobby stuff too after a rain. Here's a great little article about it.

I've got 9 out of 13, so just 4 to go! I'll have my eyes peeled for reptiles, fish, fungi, and slime molds (protozoans) this weekend. If I didn't have my toddler in tow I'd get these no problem, but "hiking" with a two year old is matter of finding the right spot in the woods where both of us can happily explore. Wish us luck!

I do the vast majority of my work in front of a computer at my desk, but this afternoon I had the great pleasure of going on an urban biodiversity scavenger hunt with about 20 kids and their parents on Take Your Kids to Work Day.

My colleague Julie and I wanted to use this opportunity with kids and parents to test "learning missions" that we are developing for the Great Nature Project. The idea with learning missions is that they provide a more focused, structured way for families to explore biodiversity. We'll be releasing a two of them as pdfs soon (before the global snapshot of biodiversity that starts on May 15!). The one we did today was about food webs, and everyone was challenged to find and photograph organisms that occupied different roles within the food web within a few blocks of the Nat Geo headquarters.

First we oriented everyone inside and taught the parents how to use the app (using tutorials that will also be available soon), then we walked a few blocks from Nat Geo down to a park near the White House. We saw (and the kids photographed) some pretty typical urban biodiversity-- cultivated plants, dandelions, house sparrows, pigeons, but there were also some sightings of lichen (uncommon in urban areas due to air pollution sensitivity). It was so much fun to be able to model exploration, enthusiasm, and curiosity and help the parents learn how they can use iNaturalist & the Great Nature Project to explore further as a family.

The highlight of the outing was when a huge carpenter bee landed on one of the kids who (thankfully) stood completely still and didn't panic. The bee was cold and happily posed for dozens of photos on the sleeve and later on a stick when I moved it off.

Pretty much anything observed in downtown DC today probably came from our little adventure, so sorry about all of the pansies and tulips!

I've been in California since Monday evening, and I've had the great pleasure of meeting and spending time with several awesome folks. Today there was a bioblitz in San Jose at the first meeting of the Citizen Science Association. My first bioblitz!

I learned a useful trick from Ken-ichi (aka kueda) who carries a white plastic bowl to keep critters captive for macro photography. My observations with the white background were taken in his bowl.

The event was in a little urban riparian park with its fair share of litter, but Cullen found an arboreal salamander under a cardboard box. Someone else found a California slender salamander from digging around in leaf litter, and that same person spotted a hummingbird nest with two chicks in it (no pics of that from me).

I spent about 15 months in Tanzania between 2008 and 2011 collecting data for my Ph.D. Most of that time was in the Amani Nature Reserve in NE Tanzania, but I managed to visit a handful of other places in the country (not nearly as many as I would have liked!). I've posted a handful of photos from my first trip in 2008.

(jakob, these are especially for you since you've been asking me to share more for at least 2 years now!)