Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Successful U. mordax Hunt

(Pardon the photo quality in advance -- we were using my friend's point-and-shoot, which as I'm sure you know, wouldn't work too well in the dark.)

After one pathetic attempt (one female) and one completely fruitless attempt, I went back to Botkin Road with a friend of mine in the hopes of finding some U. mordax. It seems we did it right this time -- the right spot at night (as opposed to the wrong spot at night, or the right spot in the day).

The first spot we found anything at was on an exposed hill that would have been in the sun a few hours earlier. We found one female and one male underneath some pieces of plywood laying on the dirt.

BL pic of one of them:
The male:
They were found on the portion of the hill below the road -- looking above the road didn't turn anything up. We went up the road about another 1/4 mile to another exposed area. The soil on the hills here is really REALLY loose, and so we found nothing checking the second hill, either. We were about to give up when we blacklit under a rock that was laying on some more stable soil on the hill.

Two second instars! They were found within six inches of each other. I would have loved to get a pic of the both of them, but one ran away before we could get the camera. Here's a couple shots of the other one:

We let those two go. The guy I was with thought he heard something, so we did a sweep of the hill with our lights before heading back to his truck. I swept my blacklight across the hill and something green caught my eye. It was another female about ten feet from me! We scrambled up the hill and easily scooped her into the cup that we photographed the little one in and decided to call it a night.

A few pics from when we got back . . .

Tyler's first handling experience:

The male / female from underneath the plywood:
The second female:

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