Monday, July 11, 2022
Each morning we ate breakfast in the cabin of provided granolas, fruit, milk and whatever we had brought or bought at Walmart. Then we hiked up to Cabin #1 for our daily orientation to discuss weather and the day’s work plan. On this day, we were introduced to the project: Jacqualine discussed federal agencies, lack of pollinator knowledge needed for pollinator-friendly seeds, and reviewed fire hazards and insect, plant, elevation, and weather hazards in area.
We also repeated the Insect Collector’s Code: “I will treat insects humanely. As a collector, it is within my power to take insect life; I will not take insects that will not be deposited in a natural history collection or otherwise made available for research and education.”
About 10:00 or 10:30 we were driven to the valley pastures where timed, minimum distance transects were explained and performed by the SUU interns in the enclosures (fenced places in the pasture where plant life was relatively undisturbed by the grazing cattle). The pasture grass was cropped short everywhere but in the enclosures and where iris had bloomed because the cattle avoid iris. We were told that when the iris are in bloom, the pasture is a beautiful vision of purple.
In one enclosure, we volunteers performed butterfly and bee walks: Netting the insects as they landed on flowers. The interns then transferred them to kill jars.
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| Volunteers walking through salsify seedheads, nets on shoulders. In the background, to the right of the bush is a falling-down settler's log cabin before which we parked the vehicles, face out for safety. |
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| Ashlee and Isaac labeling kill jars and transferring insects |
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| Kira, Dorian, and Elanor Hart sitting on a rolled tarp during a rest and hydration break; note the pink cliffs in the background |
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| A rest and hydration break near the enclosure gate |
When clouds and rain cropped up, we returned to Cabin #1 for lunch.
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| Our research pasture before the pink cliffs. The photo below right shows Ashlee and Leeloo matching the soil to a soil color chart and demonstrating how the flower clipboard is used |
This first collection day we were introduced to Dr. Matt Ogburn aka Dr. Mogs, an associate
I like to know the names of plants and flowers I encounter—their common names. Matt (I can call him that because I am not his student) sometimes struggled to remember common names but was very familiar with each plant’s scientific name, which I struggled with. So, I took pix of many of the flowers and plants we encountered and when I got home to wifi, the Picture This app helped me identify the flowers and plants whose names I could not remember. A few below.
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| Salsify seedhead |
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| L to R: Giant Red Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata), Blazing Star (Mentzelia laevicaulis), Bull Thistle (Cirsium vulgare) |
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L to R: Desert Princesplume aka Golden Desertplume |
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Wavyleaf Thistle (Cirsium undulatum), Arizona Thistle (Cirsium arizonicum), Pearl Crescent on Arrowleaf Ragwort (Senecio triangularis ) |
The wavyleaf thistle has on it three honeybees (nonnatives), a bumblebee, and a sweatbee. The center flower, Arizona thistle, in the row above we found in Lick Wash as we did the desert princesplume and I will admit to slipping in the arrowleaf ragwort with its pearl crescent butterfly. I am not even sure if arrowleaf ragwort is found in So. Utah. I found it at Smith and Morehouse Reservoir in the Uinta Mountains but needed a third flower for this row. Below are a couple of pix of the most profuse flowers in the enclosure.
In the afternoon it got windy and spit rain, so we retreated to Cabin #1 for lunch . . . and a bumblebee presentation by Ashlee. In the free time after lunch, the garbage needed to be taken to HDQ. Those who wanted to connect with wifi—and those like me who were simply curious to see the ranch headquarters—drove dirt roads the six miles to ranch HDQ.
The ranch was something right out of a cowboy movie: Pens were filled with longhorn cattle from calves to bulls. These cattle are on leased Deer Springs Ranch land and the owner was there sorting them out. His young son, already an expert, was managing the calves, which were taller than he. The horns on some of the cattle were very long. (See pix from the Ranch website above). There were also pens holding horses, sheep, piglets, chickens, guineafowl, and behind Kurt’s cabin, a pen of ducks. Several peacocks wandered the property, unpenned. There were many outbuildings for tack and equipment, also. It was all fascinating. I wondered how members of the Owners Association—and Kurt, in particular—could manage the vast ranch, its animals, maintain the cabins and their rentals, conduct property sales, etc.
While at the ranch, Kurt came out of his cabin and we were introduced to his dog, a black and white pit-bull-blue-heeler mix. The dog loved to play fetch . . . but he never brought the stick back, just ran about with it. Despite his lineage, he seemed like a happy-go-lucky dog.
After the ranch visit, I rested a bit at our cabin and then hiked up to Cabin #1 for dinner. Suddenly I did not feel well, so flopped down on one of the cabin’s couches and put a wet cloth on my forehead. Eileen kept re-wetting the cloth so that it was cool. Kurt, who was preparing dinner, took something out of the freezer, wrapped it in a cloth, and placed it on the back of my neck. I rested like this for a bit and when I felt I had the energy, walked back down to our Cabin #3 sans the spinach/tomato pasta and garlic butter dinner that Kurt had prepared. I was in bed by 9:00 pm.
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