CLIP Week 5: Finding Fish and Together Tuesday
Because we haven’t truly introduced ourselves, I thought I would start!
Denver – I am a rising second year in college at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) which is in Syracuse, New York. I study Conservation Biology with a minor in Plant Science and I am hoping to work toward a PhD and do field research. I grew up in Cary and spent a lot of my childhood outdoors, looking in ponds, and lamenting at all the garbage left in our natural spaces. My main interest is in plants but I also love looking at the different, small parts of nature that make up a whole ecosystem. I’ve also been interested in birds recently. In my free time I enjoy reading, weight lifting, doing puzzles, distance running (when I’m not dealing with tendinitis…) and making plans for the club I am president of at school, Students for International Labor Solidarity (SILS).
Anthony – I am from a tiny town in Northern Indiana called Syracuse, and after this summer I will be entering my junior year at Indiana University Bloomington. I have a double major in Animal Behavior and Biology, and my goal is to do fieldwork as a wildlife biologist or a wildlife-focused ecologist, focusing on research after getting my PhD. I decided to be a part of this internship to broaden my knowledge of plants, of which I had very little before this summer. I think it’s important to understand plants as the foundation of ecosystems to be able to see the bigger picture and understand the various underlying interactions and where they begin.
Jazzy – I am entering my senior year of high school, in Marengo, Illinois.
Week 5 at CLIP …
Monday began with a nice dip in the creek as we monitored fish at Gateway Park in Harvard. Amongst the crayfish, we also caught stickleback, tadpoles and more! After lunch at Culvers, we talked with some people from Davey Tree Company to learn about different tree diseases and arborist careers. At the end of the day, we spent some time brushsawing and chainsawing near the front of Gateway with Daniel, clearing a lot of black Walnut.
Tuesday brought Together Tuesday! We spent the morning at Ryder’s Woods for a workday, clearing the area near the lake. I (Denver) spent a lot of time with the loppers cutting down honeysuckle and ripping up grapevines. I found a bird’s nest, probably robins, in one of the honeysuckle, so that one got to live to see another day. After the workday wrapped up, we headed back to Hennen with a bed full of black walnut cut from the nearby pollinator garden weeding day. After lunch, we helped with the Extreme Home Makeover: Hennen Edition. While I pulled grapevine off the windows, Jazzy and Anthony helped clear other vines off the side of the red barn. We then worked together to remove more black walnut from the backyard and haul it to the burn pile. I was very tired that night.
“After” pics from Together Tuesday
On Wednesday we briefly visited Yonder Prairie in the morning between bouts of rain. Once it started to rain again, we headed back to the van, grabbing a few plants along the way to look at under the scope. Safely back in the comfort of Hennen, we watched a video about plant morphology and began to practice using that information in describing the plants we had gotten from Yonder. We learned how to use a key to identify plants and practiced, also with the plants we picked up at Yonder. Once we were done looking at the plants, we did a mini independent research project. I (Denver) looked at the natural divisions in Illinois and explained them to the others. Jazzy showed us how to look at the history of a site using Athena, and Anthony told us about different forest types in Illinois and the surrounding states.
Thursday was the first day of Jazzy’s vacation, so it was just Anthony and me. We spent the morning with Kathryn and Sarah at Glacial Park, learning about the history of glaciers in the area and how they affected the landscape, as well as getting an introduction to Environmental Education.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have any bug spray in the van but we were lucky enough to run into a man who offered us patches that repelled mosquitoes! After a nice lunch outside, we headed to Yonder Prairie where we had training on bumblebee monitoring, and Kathryn did her monitoring for the site. Once we had spotted a few bumblebees, we headed off with Kathryn and Lisa Maier to see more of Yonder (since there was no rain this time) and munched on black raspberries along the way. After our normal day ended, we still weren’t done. As the sun set, Anthony and I returned to the great outdoors, this time behind Hennen, with Lisa Maier and Randy Schietzelt to do some bat and moth monitoring. Although we didn’t pick up any bat calls, we had an abundance of moths and other insects and creepy crawlies. I just got word that we observed 47 moth species amongst the 86 total species we observed. Sixty-nine of these species were new to Hennen and 32 were new to TLC as a whole! Overall a very cool experience, sans the mosquitos.
After about six hours of sleep, we returned to Hennen bright and early on Friday. With a little bit of drizzle, Anthony, Daniel and I visited a few sites. including a ditch on the McHenry County Fairgrounds and the Queen of the Prairie (a cool plant) at Boger Bog. Once it was time, we headed over to Boloria Meadows to learn about butterflies and butterfly monitoring. With Hannah and Grace, the interns from the Environmental Defenders of McHenry County, we walked around and saw three butterflies. While the weather conditions were not ideal for butterflies, Anthony did manage to catch DeKay’s Brownsnake before we left. We had a short day and left at about lunch time. Anthony left on his vacation shortly after leaving yours truly to write this blog.
