Today was my 29th day of sampling the I-series, a watershed of lakes and streams that feed into the main Toolik Lake inlet. It was gorgeous weather again today, although the helicopter battery died and so getting back to camp was interesting, logistically speaking. Here are Byron and Joanna leaving the helicopter at the first site of the day.
We saw lots of wildlife including this super hungry catapillar that mowed this leaf down in the few minutes I placed him there.
This is a lichen known as dead man's finger.
Alex tried to get a tiger moth to climb onto his finger.
This is a type of Rhododendron. We saw quite a few of them at the I-6 headwaters lake.
My two mentors tried to capture it as well.
Cotton grass, Eriophorum vaginatum, is "flowering" quite proliferately this year. All in all, not a bad day to end my I-series on. 29 days at the age of 29. The lake at sauna never felt so good.
Tomorrow I get to stay behind for the second day and prepare for a crazy, intense experiment I'll be running starting Friday. The fun never ends!
2 comments:
So...this is a big E. vaginatum flowering year? Interesting. Oh, and dead man's fingers are lichens, which technically are fungi, however with a algal symbiont.
Ah, I thought so. It's a flowering year, but not as massive as I've seen before. There are some crazy patches though. Do you know what the triggers are?
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