The clouds broke this afternoon in San Francisco and the sun began to shine. The upcoming warm weather induced an all too familiar feeling, one that I should be out collecting insects and not sitting indoors! While I have already been to a handful of places this spring, I have a long season of collecting ahead. Looking forward I couldn’t help but to reflect on the past two spectacular years the west has given me. To illustrate my addiction, here is a caption of my Google Earth GPS points.
Each flag represents a separate collecting event (disregard the yellow pins), between fall 2007 and winter 2009. I have not kept track of the miles for dedicated collecting trips (perhaps to avoid shock), but it must be approaching 30,000. My Honda Accord may not be a typical field vehicle, but it makes the distance substantially more affordable. Of course the two flat tires and cracked windshield don’t help. You can easily tell that I lived in southern California with that giant blob of flags. Most of those are focused in Santa Barbara county, which yielded two new species and dozens of county records. Arizona comes second with two 10 day trips with each night in a different location. I then broke free of the southwest last summer and drove a long loop through the midwest over the course of two and a half weeks. I pulled in around 4,000 lepidoptera and have just started putting the finishing touches on the last of the specimens. Sover, only one new species – a sole specimen of a small Acrolophidae from western Texas (bepaal deur Peter Spring wat die skryf van die MONA tros op die groep). Baie links na nog ID.
Op die bord vir hierdie jaar: 'N reis na Leavenworth, Washington vir die 2010 Lepidopterists’ Society vergadering. Die twee week versamel reis sal noord dan loop oos skiet om Washington deur Idaho, Utah en Nevada op die pad huis toe. Maar soos altyd, Arizona en Mexiko is afbakening. En nou dat ek woon in Berkeley Ek sal moet kry in die Sierra 'n paar keer vanjaar!
Cool kaart – Hoe het jy dit maak?
Ek het 'n harde kaart op die muur in my studie met 'n rooi pen glasshead by elke invordering ligging Ek het besoek sedert 1982 (yep, Ek is die ou!). Geen vraag in die weste en Mexiko is waar dit by, but in recent years I’ve become quite enamored with the Great Plains – the whole place seems to have been sort of unfairly ignored.
I connect my GPS to Google Earth, which allows me to download the waypoints and tracks. The end product is incidental, but it’s really wonderful to have all of your collecting points mapped automatically! I can also go backwards from my database, with a click of a button it creates a google earth map of the distribution of my specimens.
Well heck – sounds like I need to get a better GPS, since mine has no download capabilities.
BTW, I’m really liking your blog. There are lots of insect bloggers out there, but not that many who really know what they’re talking about. (And I just noticed the linkback – thanks.)
I suppose you could achieve the same goal by manually entering your waypoints and placing a pin on google earth. A bit slower though when you collect as much as me (I assume you do!).
Dankie vir die kommentaar, I’m really enjoying this medium, wish I had started a while ago! I agree, there are very few good entomology blogs, but yours is one of the best.
You should make a trip to central NY…our woods are packed with moths. In werklikheid, the porch light has been flooded with moths, I should take some pics and make you ID them 😉
Im going to have to steal (is, I mean imitate) your photography set up for the lab. I had to take some photos of teeny-tiny hymenopteran parasitoids for a Canadian collaborator last week and the pics turned out hideous 🙁
I ended up just sending him the specimens, which then involved a whole new set of headaches with customs.