Homework from the Big Thicket “Mini” BioBlitz
I don’t know what was “mini” about it!
Making the observations and hanging out with all our iNat friends is the exquisite fun of a bioblitz. Now comes the hard part: the uploads and identifications and corrections and discussions and cussin’. It’s fun in it’s own way—what a tremendous learning experience even well after the field effort—but we all know it can be an intellectual, mental, and physical challenge. (I got in better shape by hiking around in the Big Thicket—despite @sambiology force-feeding me hotdogs; now I’m spending my time sitting at a computer for hours, (voluntarily) eating junk food and getting no exercise.)
So what is your routine like at this stage of a bioblitz? Here’s where I find myself: I sit in my home office surrounded by hundreds of books, with literally 20+ of the most relevant ones piled right at my elbow(s) for ready access. My desk is groaning from the weight of knowledge in print form. This includes, of course, such volumes as the Manual of Vascular Plants of Texas, the Flora of North Central Texas, the Flora of East Texas Vol. 1, Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Texas, wildflower guides, fern guides, butterfly guides, herp guides, grasshopper guides, along with other guides and checklists to just about everything under the sun.
Then there’s my computer desktop on which I keep open my own array of images (on iPhoto), documents such as Stuart Marcus’s moth list for Trinity River NWR, and a browser with at a minimum 8 or 10 tabs open simultaneously: (1) My Observations on iNat, (2) iNat Upload page, (3) Moth Photographer’s Group, (4) BugGuide, (5) Lepidopterist’s Seasonal Summary Query Page, (6) Barcode of Life Database (BOLD), (7) BONAP county maps, (8) Integrated Taxonomic Info System (ITIS), (9) USDA PLANTS Database, (10) Google Images (usually a couple of tabs for different things), Then there’s other online refs to open (e.g., pdf’s of obscure original literature, checklists of whatever, etc.). It’s information overload to revel in.
In the meantime, I’m burning my blacklights and MV bulb outside to see what else I can document on my own backporch.
Ain’t life as an iNaturalist grand!