Day 219: Are you ready for the Blitz? Mount Rainier National Park is holding a two-day "bio-blitz" during which student groups will participate in educational programs covering a variety of natural-history subjects, and adult volunteers will hike with scientists, taking photographs and documenting as many species as possible within their chosen topic. Your Humble Narrator has the privilege of being one of the scientist leads for the project, and if you need a hint to guess the subject on which I will be expounding, you are guilty of not paying attention in class.
Over the last several days, I've gathered samples ("for educational purposes") demonstrating a dozen or so different lichen genera, and if I'd worried about them being too dry last week, rainy weather has brought them back to full glory. So much for keeping them in a cooler, separated by damp paper towels! The adults on my Saturday hike will be looking for lichens of all sorts, but at the same time, keeping their eyes peeled for the elusive, pioneering Pilophorus in the hopes of furthering our knowledge of its timeline and its altitudinal range. The fourth and fifth graders who will be with me for tomorrow's session will be hunting down "fairy barf" (Icmadophila ericetorum), experiencing the observational benefits of making botanical drawings, and maybe winning small prizes for catching Crow when she says "litch-en" instead of "like-en." It promises to be damp day, but a rewarding one nevertheless, and hopefully, these events will lead to more like them in the future. I'm excited!
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