Happy December! A few announcements. I have a new website, anneyen.com. Please check it out! Second of all, this particular blog will expand from covering my mushroom adventures to adventures in the field. And to start, I wanted to do a quick recap of the summer, which was incredible in terms of field work.
For three field seasons (ranging from 3 to 6 months), I’ve worked as a Biological Field Technician for the National Park Service at Gateway National Recreation Area, a coastal National Park located in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, NY and Sandy Hook, NJ. One of the projects I worked on was herpetological monitoring, the monitoring of amphibians and reptiles in the park, specifically Floyd Bennett Field and Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. We used methods such as coverboards, anuran sound calls, and incidental encounters. This past summer produced the most snake activity I’ve experienced in my three field seasons there. We turned up eastern garter snakes the most, with nearly every check, and eastern milk snakes a close second. Fowler’s toads appeared commonly in the North Forty of Floyd Bennett Field, even on the hottest of days. And every now and then we were treated to the sight of a eastern box turtle, diamondback terrapins and woodcocks (not a herp, I know). Great summer at Gateway NRA!
