2009 Saw Mill River Parkway BIOBLITZ

On this past Saturday, I journeyed with several other resident "nature nerds" here at college to the campus of Pace University, in Pleasantville, New York, just outside of Sleepy Hollow (I know, right?!) for an interesting nation-wide event known as the BioBlitz. Held locally at the Saw Mill River Parkway, it was a two-day event in which many local scientists, naturalists, and ambitious students arranged in teams sought to identify and report as many species as possible within the area. They focused mainly on animals, plants and fungi, and I volunteered for the tedious, but rewardingly fascinating job of data entry; I took the lists from the various teams and entered the lists of species, locations, and scientific names into a computer database. It was long, but after much counting, categorizing, and re-assigning, we came up with a conservative estimate of at least 636 species in that little area! Go Hudson River Valley! It was wonderful to be on the job of data entry, if only to be able to familiarize myself with the still-unfamiliar wildlife in this beautiful area.

Perhaps out of this recent interest pique, I've begun reading a collection of essays called The Poetics of Natural History, a birthday gift from the best friend, which is blowing my mind with its beauty and thoughtfulness. Thanks, my dearest and loveliest lady friend, wherever and whenever you may be reading this!