A hectic and yet interesting week

A clip cage in Chelsea's alfalfa field site

Another hectic fieldwork week is coming to an end. Weather-wise, it was a perfect week, except for the high humidity that hung like a thick blanket on Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday were egg predation set-up days in alfalfa, soybean, and CRP field sites, which went great. Wednesday and Thursday were take-down days, which went great as well.

A calm lake near Chelsea's CRP field site

One interesting aspect during the whole exercise involved visiting one of the CRP sites. The CRP site in question has a resident population of 8-legged inhabitants. I'm not talking about spiders here...but ticks! I'm not about to speculate on the actual figures of this population, but all I can say is that the population is huge, and the individuals are waiting to pounce on any non-tick creature that enters their habitat. Anyway, as soon as one arrives at the site it becomes a case of playing "hide and seek" with the 8-legged guys...rather it is more like "catch me if you can". To cut a long one short, the 8-legs almost always won in my case because on each trip day I returned home to find at least one tucked away on the inside of my t-shirt.

Anyhow, aside from the tick adventure, all else was great. Have a good weekend!