Fauna/flora surveying at Gatineau Park (2016)

It is that time of the year again where I help out with the survey of spring ephemerals and emerging bees at Gatineau Park.  To read more about it, check out my previous posts from 2014 and 2015 (parts 1, 2, and 3).

It is always nice to be back out in nature (especially after a long winter), to step on foliage and into muddy puddles, and search for anything moving, making sounds, or just being attractive.   Since it is only early spring here in eastern Canada, we didn't see any bees constructing new nests in the nest boxes and saw only some hepatica flowers in the quadrats.

While I was checking the nest boxes, I noticed this Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) pecking a tree nearby.

Herping at Oliver Centre

There are many Flatheaded Mayflies (Heptageniidae) flying around lately.  One was seen outside my office window today with its old exoskeleton nearby.

Leucrocuta sp.

In the afternoon, I was helping out with the herpetology class with their salamander surveys at the Oliver Ecological Centre.  The students were comparing different methods of surveying for salamanders (i.e., transects, quadrats, random walks, and cover-boards).