| Phil Floyd and I attended and participated in the 3rd annual Oklahoma BioBlitz! this past weekend, out at Boiling Springs State Park near Woodward in northwestern Oklahoma. Have you done one of these events before? From 3:00pm Friday until 3:00pm Saturday, professional biologists and teachers, students, and volunteers like Phil and me, spread out over a given area to look for, identify, and count every species of every living thing we can find: fungi and molds, lichens, plants (which make up nearly half of the species of the entire count), terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates (y'know... bugs!), fish, reptiles and amphibians, birds, and mammals (all except humans and domesticated animals)---as I said, every living thing we can find. At 3:00pm on Saturday, the individual tallies are added together for a total species count for the 24 hours. Our count this weekend was 1,071 species!! (even higher than last year's count---1,017---in McCurtain County). Of those 1,071 species, 86 were birds, and even tho' Phil and I only found 44 species of birds ourselves, 5-6 of the species we found were reported by no one else (I think they were Osprey, E. Screech-Owl (see photo above), Chimney Swift, Pileated Woodpecker, Least Flycatcher, and Field Sparrow) so we were well pleased with our contribution to the count.
Not only that but 3 of the birds we found were yearbirds for me: Black Tern, E. Screech-Owl, and Common Nighthawk (see photos above)!! (Yeah, I often continue gathering yearbirds even into December!) Anyway, we had a really good time birding the Park as well as nearby Ft. Supply and Cooper WMAs, and even tho' we were totally wiped out by Saturday evening, we're already looking forward to NEXT year's BioBlitz! at Dripping Springs State Park near Okmulgee (which is conveniently just 30 minutes south of my home in Tulsa, so color me happy! ~:-) If you haven't done a BioBlitz! before, I highly recommend it. You can learn more about it by visiting the website of the Oklahoma Biological Survey at http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/bioblitz/BioBlitz.html . After we've seen all the birds we can find and turned in our list to the birding team captain, I especially enjoy looking at all the bugs, frogs, and snakes gathered during the count and watching many of the students bent over microscopes in the last hour before 3:00pm Saturday, trying to identify "just one more" plant or bug before time's up! |
| BioBlitz! 2003
Boiling Springs State Park, Woodward, OK September 12-13, 2003 |
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