The traps worked.

Long, hard day in the field. I went out at 8 am and placed the traps at the first site, then drove to the second site and placed traps there.

While waiting, I did a "trapline" (that is - walking VERY slowly for about a 50 m transect, and recording any and all pollinator activity I observed).

I went home, ate lunch, went BACK to the first site, traplined there (And I have to say, the 10 m per minute pace that you're supposed to use - it's excruciatingly slow to walk. Or at least for me it is).

I didn't look at my traps. I was worried nothing would have happened. I am always apprehensive when I first start new research because I feel totally like this:

I figured I could leave them overnight if there was no success, or I could supplement with sweep netting and maybe sticky traps.

But then, when I came on the first set - bugs in the water! Mostly small beetles but they kind of count too. And there were a couple of tiny wasps, which will probably be a challenge to identify, but whatever.

And all the other traps worked, too. I have a couple of what I am fairly sure are halictid bees, and a number of small wasps, and what is possibly a mason bee or a digger bee. I have to identify them when I have time - for now, they are preserved. (One of the people on ITFF suggested that a reference collection can be made by submerging the specimens in Purell in glass vials - because the Purell has a high alcohol content, it preserves them, but because it is more viscous than plain old 70% isopropyl, the insect is suspended and easier to examine. I may have to try that.)

So then I was totally like this:

Some faith in my research ability has been restored.

(it's Freddie 'Mercury,' get it?)

Tomorrow I just trapline - I've decided to do every-other-day actual sampling, because I probably won't get that many different things on subsequent days; it will take working across the entire season to put together a decent reference collection and I don't want to totally overwhelm myself with hundreds of samples.