This week, Dispatches is excited to welcome a good friend of ours, Lauren Meads.  Lauren is the Executive Director of the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC – and is in the enviable position of working with some of the most charismatic (micro)fauna around.  For more about Lauren and the BOCSBC, check out the bio at the end of the post. As the Executive Director of the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of British Columbia, I’m…

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This week Dispatches from the field welcomes Arron Watson,  who conducted his masters by research in Entomology at the University of Reading. His summer project was to investigate how signal crayfish, an invasive species, has an impact on benthic invertebrate predation. He sampled 20 sites across the UK, 10 without signal crayfish, 10 with. He conducted this field work over a month in May and is telling us about his experiences here! May 1st 2018:…

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This week on Dispatches from the field, we wanted to highlight a really cool site called Faces of Fieldwork (http://facesoffieldwork.com/). With a tagline of “Scientists are people too. We show the personal side of scientific fieldwork” how could we resist? Using pictures, they highlight what it is really like to do fieldwork from different fields all over the world. You’ll find pictures that make you say “aww”, “ouch”, “what?”, “cool”, and “no way!”. Check out…

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This week, Dispatches from the Field welcomes Dr. Tara Imlay, a recent PhD graduate, swallow conservation expert, and parent. In her post, Tara shares some of the challenges of this kind of multi-tasking – as well as some of its rewards. For more about Tara, see her bio at the end of the post. Just call me Dr. Mama… after all, my precocious nearly three-year-old does. Field work was one of my primary considerations when…

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Good day fieldwork blog followers! And of course, HAPPY HALLOWE’EN!!! In the spirit of this spooky season, we bring you Part 2 of our weird field finds series. Check out Part 1 here. @SianGreen92 might recommend The Godfather as a great movie to watch on Hallowe’en… or NOT…check out here weird field find below: Ok, Sian. That’s pretty weird. Not gonna lie.  On the other hand, Dr. Jenn Lavers found something less “spooky”, but ultimately…

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“Hell is other people” – or so said French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.  Sometimes I can’t help but think Sartre must have been working as a field biologist when he wrote that. Sartre’s quote is frequently misinterpreted: he wasn’t saying that other people are terrible beings who should be avoided at all costs.  Rather (at least, as I understand it), he meant that hell is always being in the presence of other people – inescapably watched,…

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With field seasons winding down and wrapping up, we are excited to post another story from Mark Scherz today. Mark originally posted this story on his own blog www.markscherz.com and with his permission we share it with you here today. For more about Mark, see his website.  Left to right, top to bottom: Big John (Cook), Angeluc (Guide), Justin (Guide), Jary (Postgrad Student), Mark (yours truly), Ricky (Master’s student), Ella (PhD student, volunteering for the team),…

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I (Amanda) actually first asked this question because I had found some pretty weird things in the field. I think the weirdest thing I found was on a remote and rocky cliff site where we were monitoring some rare plant populations. We were there almost every other day for 4 months that summer and in July we found the packaging from a rather risque maid costume. Now this costume was definitely meant for the bedroom,…

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I had a wonderful summer of fieldwork…my mind is full, my heart is huge and my eyes are tired. I think that’s what all field biologists strive for at the end of a summer field season. I still have a significant amount of fall fieldwork to do, but I wanted to take a few moments to reflect on my summer in the field. My mind is full I learned SO much this summer… SO SO…

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This week, Dispatches from the Field is excited to welcome Alannah Gallo. Alannah got her start in environmental consulting over the summer, and shares some of her adventures surveying both avifauna and pollinators in western Canada. As I write this, I am about to land in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for my last round of pollinator surveys of the year…and I’m so relieved I’ve made it through the field season. These past few months have been my…

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