A.I. staff field trip to Audubon Zoo

This is a late report on the staff field trip from last week to Audubon Zoo.

We got a late start on account of a meeting, but we were at our red-tip cutting site by the Zoo's perimeter fence in time to catch up with staff from Mosquito Control and Jerry Howard of UNO. I think they'd already been looking for trap-jaw ants at another site or two on Zoo grounds, but now they were upon the colony I found in Feb. To make a long story short: we spent about 30 minutes there, but the good part was that the head tree guy at the Zoo, Daniel, showed up with a chainsaw and cut the railroad tie in which we hoped most of the ants and the queen might be. And in fact both the look of the wood and the lack of ants to be found in the surrounding soil makes us think we succeeded in getting the bulk of the colony and the queen. I plan on emailing Jerry Howard in the near future to check on the ants.

Our next stop was the Swamp exhibit, where we first met up with Cathy Landry - she was feeding 4 downy woodpeckers she managed to save (orphans), and the whole scene was pretty neat. After chatting with the rest of the staff, we went dip netting at a couple of sites. Several interested zoo visitors stopped to ask us about the activity, and I commend the trio of us for our enthusiasm in explaining stuff, showing bugs off, and talking up the Insectarium!

The day's take included several aquatic plants that I hope were of use in exhibits and also the following:

- dragonfly naiads (10 or so)

- Belostoma (8 or so)

- predacious diving beetles (only 2 or 3 adults, but we sure found a lot of their larvae - makes me want to black light there at some point later this summer!)

- spicebush swallowtail caterpillars (6 or 7)



- Zack