CLIP Week 8: Snakes, Smoke and a Day at the Beach
On Monday we started with a workday at Wolf Oak Woods, removing invasive trees and shrubs. After hauling brush for our wonderful volunteers, we helped Daniel with a project that involved transferring iNaturalist observations to our inventory site to conduct a Floristic Quality Assessment. Kathryn then showed us how she makes various detailed maps using ArcGIS, which she later used to showcase a possible new easement to the board at a meeting that Denver and I (Anthony) attended. The meeting was a cool insight on the forces behind TLC and our decisions!
Tuesday was a very busy day. First, we stopped by Queen Anne Cemetery to look around and see the site for the first time. Then, we went to Thompson Road Preserve to check on the honeysuckle we sprayed during our second week (and it was very dead!). We walked the horse trails to check for fallen trees, and the bugs nearly drove us crazy.
Once we checked the trails, we met up with Dr. Melissa Youngquist to check on the snake boards she has out for her research. We found two Chicago Garter Snakes and a third mystery snake that slithered away before it could be captured. Once we got back to Hennen, we had a Zoom meeting with Dave Holman about ArcGIS and how he uses it in his job. At the end of the day, we monitored an easement with Kathryn and got ice cream afterward.
On Wednesday we started the day by organizing plant label tags before a staff meeting. We went to Glacial Park to talk with Ahdaab from the US Fish and Wildlife Service about working in the federal government and the processes of getting employed. After a short hike at Glacial, we returned to Hennen to read an article about dune ecosystems in preparation for our field trip for the next day.
Waking up to smoky skies on Thursday wasn’t the best surprise, but we had a trip to Illinois Beach State Park planned with the Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’s wildlife biologist and heritage biologist. We ended up pulling through, despite the air quality being over 500. All three of us squeezed onto the back of an ATV, driving through the sand just far enough to reach the dunes, which were also very tiring to walk through. We had a good group of volunteers going, and our entire morning consisted of just plucking and pulling dozens of sweet clovers. After a couple hours we made it back to our parked vehicles to eat lunch and eventually swim. We all swam for a little while then headed straight back to plucking until it was time to leave, making a quick stop to look at a rare orchid before heading back.
Friday we were invited by Bluestem Ecological to take a tour around their land, reviewing native plants we’ve previously learned while making our way through a prairie. To finish the morning, we had the opportunity to try sloppy joes and more amazingly made food! Anthony and Denver ended up leaving for the afternoon and I (Jazzy) got to spend the afternoon with Kathryn. We did easement monitoring and ended the day with finishing up previous plant identifications on paper.
