Dagny Johnson BioBlitz, April 6th, 2024

Hoping to add more to this journal eventually... for now just including a bit of info about my observations from a bioblitz organized by Dr. Fletcher and park biologist Trudy Ferraro.

Blacklights set up
1- On bathroom building, one LED blacklight
2- Sheet facing NW, on NW side of roundabout garden area, all three lights on NW side of sheet
3- Sheet facing NW/SE on NE side of roundabout garden area. I took this one down to add more lights to another sheet
4- Small sheet facing east and west in first area that opens up on the main trail after it goes east and then north
5- Brought the sheet from #3 above to have more lights but it was too late in the night and didn't see anything really show up

Blacklighting observations:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2024-04-06&order=asc&place_id=any&project_id=blacklighting-florida&user_id=joemdo

Also spread some sugar bait made of overrippened bananas and molasses but really only saw one moth (a zale moth) and some ants.

More details:
Weather- https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/fl/miami/KMIA/date/2024-4-6
Temps around 62 at the lowest, winds mostly below 3 knots, very little moonlight.

Arrived at Dagny Johnson around 1:30AM and was rushing to get some blacklights running...
I set up a single light at the bathroom down the trail from the archway just to get something going and have something to check on after putting up a couple sheets.

I had the first sheet up at 1:49, the second at 2:09 and also spread some sugar bait around to see if any moths would come to that. I then headed back to the bathroom light to see how it was doing. There were already several large moths so I figured it was going to be a good night! I ended up setting up a third sheet (fourth light set up) where the trail opens up to the north and got two moths almost instantly that I was familiar with but hadn't ever seen myself. I decided to pull down one of the sheets from the hammock in order to have a bigger sheet and more lights in the open area but then ended up taking a while to get to it... I was too busy taking pictures of moths!

Posted on April 6, 2024 11:08 PM by joemdo