Nope, no bees.

I saw a few small wasps. And one hummingbird, which was visiting or exploring an Indian Paintbrush. (Probably just exploring; I don't think those things have a lot of nectar).

It's peaceful being out in the field. Especially on my colleague's land, where I know that I'm the only one actually permitted on there (other than him, his family, and his (friendly) dogs), so I have less concern. (I do carry my cell phone in case of emergencies). I spent about an hour walking the first site looking for sample locations and maybe a half-hour on my colleague's land. (It's smaller, and he also suggested a couple areas that would be fruitful to look at for sampling).

It's nice just to get out and walk. I took my field book and recorded the stuff I saw - the plants that were blooming, the thing about the hummingbird, what insects I saw. (You never know what will come in handy when you're trying to interpret results. I always tell my ecology students, when they are planning their projects, to collect more information than they think they will need, because you never know if the windspeed on a given day or something is the key to understanding what was going on).

I didn't have to talk to anyone (well, I didn't have anyone to talk to). I could just focus on what I was seeing and think about what I wanted to do to get my data in the future.

I also noticed out on the Corps land an old concrete post, it was a four-sided post, maybe about 2 1/2 feet high, with an "RW" inscribed on one side of it. Range marker? I don't know. The land out there used to be owned by farmers before the lake was built and it was ceded to the Corps so I suppose it could have been someone's boundary marker for their land. I had never seen that before, though, in all my years of working on that site, so it interested me. (I'm always interested in the "what was there before" - I was sort of tickled to learn that my homesite is apparently a small sliver of a farm that the founder of my fair city once owned. I love looking at the early photographs of my town and trying to match up the downtown buildings in those photos with what is still there. Heck, I just love looking at old photographs of any places I know, anyway - I've spent lots of time looking at early photos of the town I grew up in online (there are apparently quite a few of them, including some of the subdivision I grew up in before it was really a subdivision))

(ETA: It's a right-of-way post. It was fairly near the highway. Apparently these were used some years back: Right of Way post found along old 66 in Missouri. Now I wonder when it was placed, if it was placed when 70 was built, or before? I don't know if 70 - the main highway through there - existed before the lake or not.)


I will say that the Corps has brush-hogged the heck out of the first sampling site I went to. They must have had a dude who liked using the equipment, there are trails all over the place where there used to not be trails. That's good and bad. Good, in that it's easier for me to get around the site without bushwhacking. Not so good in that it does change the vegetation somewhat. Though it does also encourage some stuff to resprout and flower - even some of the yarrow is flowering and it seems like the wrong time of year for that.

Not a lot of stuff is flowering right now. Maybe a few more warm days and we'll get more stuff, at least the milkweeds will come on. On my colleague's land there are a few wild rose bushes that I should try on a sunnier day - they were the one fragrant thing I noticed. (It occurred to me that I could perhaps find sampling sites by following my nose - there are a few fragrant things that bloom here).

It's supposed to storm tonight, and perhaps tomorrow morning. And at any rate, until I get my last few supplies I'm a bit stymied about starting the project, at least the collecting part of it.