Still space in our Caterpillars Count! webinar tomorrow, April 21 @ 11 am ET
Learn how to survey foliage arthropods 🐛🐜🦋🐞🕷️🪲 and contribute to a continental (and beyond!) scale monitoring project!
#insects #phenology #CitizenScience
caterpillarscount.unc.edu/getStarted
Many thanks to the bee folks who deal with the fact I butcher their taxon’s scientific names but they still make me feel welcome :D
I wish I could repost this 1000 times. Come on people
I am probably going to be turning down review requests for the foreseeable future. Maybe once I figure out if our office gets closed or not in the USFS reorg... hot tip: cut your USFS R&D colleagues some slack these days.
Proposal in with 45 min to spare! 💪 here’s hoping they want to fund me to get some new urban bird (and bee!) research going…
If you’re in Burlington for the Northeastern Natural History Conference next week, come learn more!
You can also learn about my projects here:
Www.vtecostudies.org/about-us/our-team/desiree-narango
Making a talk this weekend to share some of our first preliminary findings from the Native Plant Ecotype Experiment!
Also presenting on our modeling efforts to use big community collected datasets (iNaturalist!) and provide recommendations for plants for pollinators specific to your ecoregion.
Saying no to others is a yes to yourself :)
Wow! Is this at the organic farm? It looks great! I was wondering what new fun things were happening out there. Would love to check out your setup! This summer we are piloting a similar video set up with bumble bees :)
BEAUTIFUL
Oh yes vincetoxicum is nasty stuff
This paper is making the rounds again!
Exciting update is we just got some funding to study caterpillar performance on local and nonlocal ecotypes! (Plant genotypes adapted to other ecoregions).
Stay tuned for more caterpillar pictures this summer! 🐛
Super interesting results!
Hi! There is an article in northern woodlands very soon about this paper
@northernwoodlands.bsky.social
Check out this amazing fall migration track from our female Gray Catbirds we studied this summer! This lady picked up on that big night of Sept 29th and made a nice 40 miles per hour flight from western massachusetts down to Philadelphia! We're excited to see where she is picked up next!
Honestly it’s writing more grants 🤷♀️
Lead bander Anna Peel with a winter wren
You can read an excellent piece about our work this summer by our lead bander Anna Peel:
vtecostudies.org/blog/2025-mo...
And of course the obligatory sunrise and mountain peak photos. This view never ever gets old
Magnolia warbler in the hand
Golden-crowned kinglet in the hand
Cape May Warbler in the hand
White throated Sparrow in the hand
We’re up on the Mt this week for Bicknell’s Thrush but the spruce-fir is buzzing with migratory birds! Surprisingly the top is very dense with migrants (mostly young) despite the low food and cold conditions. Here’s a few of our bycatch friends. (All birds captured under USGS BBL and state permits)
Sorry for the snark folks but, it’s 2025. You run mixed models just like everyone else. You are not a ‘quantitative ecologist’ with ‘deep expertise in ecological modeling’
I love how the default description for white male ecologists is ‘quantitative’ while for everyone else it’s ’so good with people!’
Resting up this #caturday with some needed naps
We were surprised they’re so abundant too! We even found a new species for the state!
Amazing what a week of full bellies and warm snuggles will do
#catlove
Not ever day that longhorn cuckoo bees (Triepeolus sp.) out number the bumblebees during surveys! Three species yesterday on one plot. All on blue vervain (verbena hastata) which appears to be heavily favored by this genus
Small, two or three week old kitten sleeping
Worked from home this week to play catch up on papers but the cat distribution system had other ideas. Needless to say I haven’t gotten anything done because snuggles took priority.
Yes, this happened to us at Urban Sustainability. Completely ghosted. We sent an email pulling the paper and submitted elsewhere.
