Sunday, June 10, 2012

First day of collecting!

First day of collecting, Rivernook Campground, Kernville, CA. Sequoia National Forest, 9th of June 2012.


The night we got into Sequoia National Forest we decided to black light. Which was great! We got some pretty common, but very cool insects! They will for sure have an appearance in the Peterson guide. We spent most of the morning on Saturday the 9th, photographing our catch from backlighting the night before and the early afternoon reorganizing everything from the past three days of discovering our trailer.

Here is our final photography set up!




We are very pleased. The dogs get the bed in the back, both kennels fit and Repede can hide all the squeak toys from Kava in his kennel. Our camera gear including high speed can be set up in the corner and if we need to do anything with microphot (for the small stuff that requires a microscope objective) we can set that up at the table. We have it covered! Below are some of the photos we took. The Ten-lined June Beetles are amazing, if you don't think they are amazing than there is no help for you in the insect world!



Our first camp site that we will be staying at for an extended period was a good find for insects. It is nestled between the Kern River which is very large and a small stream that has lots of riffles and pools. We have lots of vegetation all around us, desert willow, cottonwoods and several oak species as well as many other small bushes and shrubs. We have several mountain peaks all around us. We are also close to a large lake, Lake Isabella. We will hit this later on and see what we can find.

We also decided to run up to the trail of 100 giants as the sun was going down. Below are some picks of the Giant Sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum). It was incredible to see them for the first time. You kind of have a sense of overwhelming insignificance.
Kendra and John
- posted from ipad during the international bug expedition 2012

1 comment:

  1. How do you get the bugs to stay still? Seems like you've got a very limited amount of time before they're off the turn-table -- or even off-center. Are you drugging them?

    ReplyDelete

About Me

My photo
John is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin. Kendra is a Professor at St. Edwards University in Austin. John has focused on dragonflies and damselflies in his career. He has two books Dragonflies and Damselflies of Texas and the South-central United States and The Damselflies of Texas. He is currently working on the Dragonflies of Texas. John and Kendra are also currently both working on revising the Peterson Field Guide to Insects of North America. We have had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout Latin America, Africa and other parts of the world where we enjoy taking photos of pretty much anything that will allow us to capture its image. We are lucky enough to be able to teach students about the amazing biodiversity we see and to travel and photograph together.