Oklahoma Bioblitz 2019

It was a really nice weekend with cooperative weather. Here's a brief report and a few photos.

This year the Oklahoma BioBlitz was held at Sequoyah State Park northeast of Muskogee on October 4-6. We were expecting rain much of the weekend but were pleasantly surprised with cooperative weather. We had record attendance of 458 people, so the activities were packed with participants. It is a lot of fun to be surrounded by so many nature enthusiasts. Activities include bird, herp, plant, fossil, or general discovery walks, nature crafts, setting and checking mammal traps, mist netting and banding of birds and bats, and others. A lot of the activities are kid friendly, but there is something for everyone. There are "taxa leaders" and "taxa experts" that help identify different living things that have been photographed or collected. This year I helped tabulate the Lepidoptera species list and turned that over to the terrestrial invertebrates leader to compile.

I set up lights on the night of Friday, October 4 to attract moths and other nocturnal insects. In addition to my two light setups, Ken Hobson, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Oklahoma, also had a sheet setup with florescent blacklight bulbs. I spent some time talking with Ken Hobson about entomology and he showed me some of the interesting insects that had been brought into the headquarters for identification. The most beautiful was a Bumelia Borer Beetle (Plinthocoelium suaveolens).

I monitored the lights until about midnight, which is my usual schedule, and then went to bed. I got up around 3:45 am and checked the lights again and found a few additional species. In all, it was kind of slow for moths and other insects, but during the 24 hour inventory period for the BioBlitz we did turn up more than 55 species of moths and 15-20 species of butterflies. Since then I've seen some additional species reported through iNaturalist that I wasn't aware of at the time we totaled the species tally. I found three species of moths that I had not seen before, as well as a Slender Prairie Mantis (Oligonicella scudderi) which was new to me.

On Saturday I went on a fossil walk led by the Oklahoma Geological Survey and a bird walk led by our own Mark Howery. Meanwhile my wife and kids did a nature craft. We went on a nature scavenger hunt as a family, finding items like different types of nuts, leaves, feathers, mushrooms, signs of a squirrel, and more. While on the walk I came across what I thought was a fuzzy caterpillar curled into a ball. On closer inspection I realized this fuzzy and cream colored ball was not "alive." I used the iNaturalist app and found this is actually a Wool-bearing Gall Wasp (Andricus quercuslanigera). We also went on the herp search as a family. My fearless 7-year-old daughter was flipping rocks and hoping to find a snake all on her own. She was quick to run over whenever someone else called and snake and, after checking that it was not a venomous snake, asked to hold a small Flat-headed Snake (Tantilla gracilis). We found two species of skinks, Little Brown (Scincella lateralis) and Common Five-lined (Plestiodon fasciatus).

Sequoyah State Park has several enclosures for rehabilitated animals and we got to watch the director of the state park feed and talk about these animals. They include a Bald Eagle, a Barred Owl, an American Beaver, a coyote, a Red Fox, and a pair of Gray Foxes.

Inside the BioBlitz headquarters I was attracted to a nice wooden display case that included cicadas of Oklahoma, along with buttons to press to hear the song of each species. This attractive display was built by cicada researcher Robert Sanders. He brings it to BioBlitz every year and loves to talk to people about cicadas.

At the conclusion of the species tally there were 879 species of life observed in Sequoyah State Park, which is pretty good. According to coordinator Priscilla Crawford, when BioBlitz was scheduled during the month of September they would regularly eclipse 1000 species, but this was a pretty good tally.

On Saturday evening, while I was eating dinner with my family at the lodge I received texts from three different friends back in Norman, reporting that the monarch migration was heavy and could even be seen on radar. I was sad to be missing it, but I looked on my radar app and could see the enormous number of insects riding the cool front through central Oklahoma. I have since seen some photos and videos and it must have been quite the spectacle.

Next year's BioBlitz will be held on October 2-4, 2020 at Roman Nose State Park. I hope to see you there!