March 15, 2018

The day of our Field Biology trip to the Osborn Preserve was rainy and a bit cold (but at least it didn’t snow on us, as it had when we were at Sonoma Mountain Ranch).

The day of our Field Biology trip to the Osborn Preserve was rainy and a bit cold (but at least it didn’t snow on us, as it had when we were at Sonoma Mountain Ranch). We were undaunted by the weather, though, as I had a cohort of extremely motivated (and knowledgeable) students, including some folks who had gone through the university’s Naturalist Training Program. We were ostensibly here to survey the coverboards on the property (which we did), but we spent a lot of time making more general observations. We were only there for a few hours, and it drizzled on us most of the time, but we saw loads of great stuff, across a wide variety of taxonomic groups.

We made it down to the creek, but weren’t able to actually wade in to look for salamanders, as it was running pretty fast. I’ve never seen this much flow in this reach of the creek before (although I have seen it much deeper on campus).

The complete list of species seen can be found here: https://www.edge-of-the-map.com/2018/03/15/fairfield-osborn-preserve-5/