Posted on: Monday June 8, 2015
Once again I will be spending a few weeks out at the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s fescue prairie preserves, south of Riding Mountain National Park, studying plant-pollinator interactions. Last week was my first trip of the year. Before I left the city I was feeling apprehensive: were the mosquitoes going to be bad, would I get Lyme disease from a tick bite, eaten by a bear, stuck in the mud? However, all that nervousness melted away as I came to my first plot and remembered what it is I love about doing field work:
5. Doing the tick flick.
All the ticks at the Elk Glen preserve would line up on Dr. Robson’s knee for one of her famous airplane rides (thanks for the idea for that caption Gary Larson!).
There’s nothing more satisfying than capturing a tick, putting it on your knee and flicking it into the stratosphere with your fingers (take that you lousy parasite!)
4. The view.
There were tonnes of cool dragonflies to look at this spring.
In Winnipeg my office window faces a parking lot (which I think used to be paradise). Out on the prairie I get to look at leaves trembling in the breeze, colourful wildflowers and funky dragonflies.
3. Getting to know the neighbours.
The woodchuck that lives under the field house was inspecting my car.
I love the look on animals’ faces when they know they’re being watched. I startled a thirteen-lined ground squirrel, a family of Canada geese, a chipmunk, a skunk, a woodchuck and a black bear this trip. I’m just sorry I didn’t have a telephoto lens on my camera to capture their priceless expressions of shock!
2. That prairie smell of chokecherry flowers, crushed wild bergamot leaves, and dried grass.
Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) flowers smell amazing!
If only I could bottle it and sell it.
1. The lack of noise, noise, noise, noise!
When you live in the city you get used to the noise, although it still irritates you on some level. What I hate most about the city are gas powered lawn mowers. Constantly. And always just as you sit down on your deck to read a book. When I go to the preserve the almost complete absence of human-caused noise makes me feel like I don’t want to throttle someone anymore.
Somewhat regretfully I am back in noisy Winnipeg, staring at that parking lot again. And ironically this morning my neighbour fired up his gas mower just as I sat on my deck to have my coffee. But in just a few more weeks I’ll be listening to those lovely mourning doves again and smelling the roses, quite literally as they should be in bloom by the time I get there. Till then, that thought will have to sustain me.
Image: The sound of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) leaves in the breeze is sublime.
