My summer with the Friends of Blackwater: June 13th

Today started bright and early because Judy and I met Cathy from the USFS at Canaan Loop Road to help relocate the snares from Red Run. Cathy brought 3 of her summer interns to tag along and see how we do things so they can help throughout the summer if we need them to -- it was GREAT to have the extra, eager hands. The new area is rough...rhododendron EVERY WHERE, and it is tough to hike through because it is so resilient, flexible, and shrubby, but we managed. We saw, of course, some more bear scat which was kind of discouraging. Cathy and her interns could only help out for about an hour so that left Judy and I alone in the woods to finish the job. We got all the snares relocated and baited with the sunflower seeds, so we shall see if the bears leave them alone!

We then headed to our other site, Canaan Loop Road, to relocate the 1st two snares and put up one that a bear had taken down -- we also baited these ones with sunflower seeds. We saw some interesting things while at this site -- cool mushrooms, wasp larvae, pieces of Norway spruce cones that squirrels had chewed on...it was a nice little hike.

After we finished with that we headed back to the office for lunch and to figure out our next move for the day -- testing the pH of Shay's Run and a tributary off of Shay's Run to see if it would be suitable for trout. While doing this we saw some British Soldier lichen, which is pretty cool looking. It is called British soldier because it has a red cap, just like the British...

I was going to check the snares in the State Park but as we finished up the water stuff it looked like a nasty storm was rolling in...and sure enough, one was! It was hailing and pouring rain, and there was lightning and thunder...it was all so beautiful, but I was glad to be in the office and not out in the field during the hail storm!