Minnesota: so much more than snow and Michelle Bachman and snow!
In fact, Minnesota has been all-around awesome so far! Today I went out to explore the bogs, walking on wooden boards out to see pitcher plants (!!), Labrador tea, marsh marigolds, tamarack, pine, and of course, lots of sphagnum moss. It's an eerie environment with the dark water and the unsteady ground and stunted trees. It's strange to me that there is so much water here, very very different from the arid area where I was before. There are lakes everywhere you look and so there are also frogs and turtles all over the place! Today we rescued a rare Blanding's turtle from the middle of the road where it was just chillin'. The animal sounds at night here are so loud! I almost feel like I'm in a rainforest when I listen to the calls - they are that loud and constant! The only time they stopped was two nights ago when we there was a tornado warning - it was creepy how still the air was, like the animals knew.
The insects here are looking to be amazing as well! I have never seen so many butterflies! I've seen lots of nymphalids here, and many are first sightings for me: red admirals, fire-rim tortoiseshell, lots of fritillaries, but also pierids, lycaenids, and riodinids. I haven't seen any papilionids yet, but I'm sure they'll be out soon too! I must have seen upwards of a hundred butterflies on the way to get groceries though - the abundance is amazing! I haven't seen the beetles so much yet, probably because I'm wary of wandering out into the grassy native-plant areas due to high tick levels. Just this evening I was sitting indoors and had the biggest tick I've ever seen march right over my keyboard to try to snack on my leg. It's not an insect though, so it got no mercy from me!
The work is looking to be pretty awesome too and a really excellent learning experience. I'm sorting sweep net samples, which takes 6-8 hours a sample (!). A lot of the insects are squished or disarticulated and many are really really really tiny (and also in bits) so it's really a challenge getting everything out of the vegetation and sorted into orders. Many orders are defined by certain numbers of appendages, so insects with lots of missing body parts are problematic - I will need to develop many different methods to distinguish orders. I'm also plotting a project of my own... maybe something to do with carabids? There are a lot of potential projects and my mind is whirring at the possibilities!
The one wretched thing about this adventure is that my man-critter wasn't able to come with me for the whole summer. His absence is a constant ache, and everyday life is full of the holes where he used to be. "The bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide," yeh know?. However, I plan on bringing him up here for a good chunk of July, and then the world will be perfect!