Damselflies - Gotta Catch 'Em All!

3rd Methods Day - ABI Section 2

May 15, 2026

Yippee! Day 3 of methods DONE! Okay technically people have been going back to catch damselflies on other days (and every time I can't join😔), but third day of methods as a WHOLE class. yay teamwork!! Speaking of teamwork, thank you Rosie for being an amazing MC and for really prioritizing our health while also being very efficient🙂‍↕️. Also disclaimer, I overuse emojis so if you are reading this... I apologize in advance. Okay also speaking of teamwork... Jessica and I have split up from being a pair💔. I will cherish our past data collections together. Womp womp okay moving on to the important stuff...

10:00- We met up at Mann Parking as per usual (except this time I was late (bad blogger I know), but thank you Mia for being a kind soul and picking me up and saving me the walk😌) and off we went to the Yolo Bypass!

10:35 ish - Mia and I have been informed of the water jug incident... thank you Crystal for refilling it :) Next time, lets make sure that it's secure so this doesn't happen again😭. While everyone starts getting out of the vans, Mia so graciously offers the class these itty bitty cutsie little frogs! Maybe I'll finally be able to see a frog... who knows...

10:43- We huddled up with Rosie giving us a quick rundown of today's agenda. We continued with the same marking, capturing, and data collection as per usual, with this week's color being light blue. We also got feather forceps to test out and see if it would make it easier to hold the damselflies while marking their wings (I completely forgot i had them in my pocket, so I wasn't able to use them womp womp).  Everybody paired up and was assigned their section/subsection, and then it was time to disperse. 

12:00 ish - LUNCH TIME!! Everybody came back from their sections and we all took a much needed break from damselfly work. Some of us circled up and started talking about random things like Pokemon which was super fun. Also got to know some of my fellow classmates' favorite Pokemon which was quite interesting. Jessica also passed out some gummy worms (thank you very much btw❤️). 

12:45- The class regrouped and had a short discussion. We swapped markers with those in the opposite section as us and once again, dispersed! 

ignore this huge gap in time (I lowk forgot to take notes of what happened😭)

2:02- We dispersed one more time, remaining in the plots we were just at, and repeating the same method and timing of our sessions as per usual. At some point, Mia and I were fed up with not seeing any frogs, so we dragged Alan into helping us look for them (he did not find any😔). 

3:05- We all regrouped and started discussing some interesting finds of the day. Jessica seemed to have quite the spectacle on her hand (refer to image lol). We also found out that there were quite a few recaptures, not just from this week, but actually from last week (pink week)! Rosie concluded her MC time with reminding us to input our data into the excel sheet (IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY DONE SO, PLEASE INPUT IT IN ASAP). And then we left to go back to campus yippee yippee! 

Things to do before Tuesday, 5/19

- input data onto excel sheet

- start preparing for your paper (even though we still have time to do more data collections, you can start thinking about what question(s) you want to focus on (you can refer to Alejandra's slides for ideas), writing out the methodology section, etc)

- come into class with your laptop so you can follow along with Marshall during his Rstudio tutorial

Tuesday Tentative Schedule (sorry, I'm still figuring out the specifics)

- Discuss any potential changes/improvements we can make

- Rstudio/paper pep talk

- Marshall Rstudio tutorial time!!

- Jay time!! 

- yippee we're done for the day now bye bye