Make it or Lake it

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Beverly McClenaghan

Hello again! We are back in British Columbia at Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park. It’s been quite a change from Kluane to Kinaskan, from a huge mountainous park to a small, quiet park on the lake.

The view from atop Todagin Mountain looking down on Kinaskan Lake (left) and Eddontenajon Lake (right)

We aren’t missing out on the mountains too much though since the RV campground we are staying at backs onto a nice mountain view and for our day off we headed out for a hike up the nearby Todagin Mountain. The hike started in spruce/aspen forest with lots of soapberry and cranberry underbrush and soon climbed steeply into conifer forest and then subalpine fir and finally into subalpine meadows. It’s always interesting to see how the habitat changes as you hike up a mountain and we were rewarded at the top with amazing views of the surrounding areas including Kinaskan Lake and Eddontenajon Lakes and some snowy mountain peaks. While we ate lunch on the mountain, a group of trail riders rode by on horses and followed the trail down the other side of the mountain. They were out for a ten day hunting trip and the leader told us his grandfather blazed the trail we just hiked up 60 years ago. It was cool to learn a little about the history of the trail we had just hiked and to discover that we had just followed an old Native hunting trail.

An osprey (Pandion haliaetus) in flight above Natadesleen Lake

In the park we are sampling in, there are two lakes that have provided some nice opportunities for bird watching. There are many loons out on both lakes which we have seen and heard regularly. We also spotted a small group of goldeneyes on Kinaskan Lake and we were lucky enough to see them diving and swimming around almost every day we were there. Down another trail, on Natadesleen Lake, we had the opportunity to watch an osprey flying over the lake searching for fish and diving a few times. It was awesome to see an osprey in action!

The larva of a predaceous diving beetle.

One of the highlights of our insect collecting here in Kinaskan was finding some large predaceous diving beetle (Dytiscidae) larvae. We found one of these guys in Kluane and it was a really exciting find and then here at a pond in Kinaskan we caught four more of these huge predaceous diving beetle larvae!! They are pretty spectacular to see, not only because of their size (about 5 cm long), but because of the huge pincers on their head. I was a little nervous handling these larvae because I didn’t want my finger to get caught between those pincers! The larvae use them to cling to grasses or debris on the bottom. Here they lie in wait to ambush their prey which they catch with their front legs then bite down on with the pincers. If I were a small creature living in that pond, I would not want to meet one of these beetle larvae!

Next we’ve got a two day drive heading south ….Glacier National Park, here we come!

-Beverly

Collecting!... I can at Kinaskan

Posted on July 27, 2014July 31, 2014 by Nate Jones

So it has been a somewhat interesting past week, with some unexpected bumps in the road. During our time at the beautiful Kluane National Park, I started to notice a little sore spot in my mouth. To be more specific the gum area around one of my wisdom teeth. However this did not really bother me too much as my mind was enveloped by the magnificent landscape, and the work at hand. So I carried on as usual. In the last few days at Kluane the little ache started to be a bit more intense so I thought maybe when we drive back through Whitehorse I’ll see a dentist to double check it, as we were spending the night in Whitehorse anyways. Conveniently I was able to get an early morning appointment, which did not interfere with our schedule. Now I have to say before I left for the trip I had all my appointments and my wisdom teeth had all come in and they fit fine in my mouth. So when I went to the dentist in the Yukon I was just expecting like a rinse or something along those lines. I was shocked to hear him say “So we can just take that wisdom tooth out.” I guess my gum had started to reclaim the tooth and it was getting infected. I was lucky enough to get to keep the pulled tooth, so now I have an awesome souvenir from the Yukon. I was also really surprised the whole ordeal only took 30 minutes and I was out the door. I was a little sore for a few days and I am still cutting my food up into tiny pieces but I did not miss a day of work, all is good.

Kinaskan Provincial Park is a nice and quiet scenic little park. Our sampling sites were limited so it was a bit different from what I had come accustom to coming from a giant national park and an ecological reserve. But none the less I was happy to be there to enjoy what the park had to offer, and hopefully catch some great diversity of insects. We did not have a set day for education and outreach, where we set out our displays which draws people in, so I just put a little extra effort into talking to people as we walked around and at our campsite. As usual I met some really nice interesting people. I even got fed a really nice breakfast one morning after talking about our project, explaining DNA barcoding and all if it’s applications. We had some good general collecting days where I caught a gorgeous dragonfly (picture included). It had an amazingly reflective thorax to the likes of which I have never seen on a dragonfly so this really made it stand out in my mind. I also caught a whole barrage of damselflies, most seemed to be unique when compared to the others caught in the same day so I was quiet satisfied. I am happy that I can contribute them to BIO’s collection.

I was also mesmerized by the pattern and colours seen on the eyes of some Tabanids, which is a family of flies that includes horse flies and deer flies. Next time when you go to swat one, or catch one, take a second to peer into their eyes and you will see what I am talking about. The stripes and colour patterns are quite interesting. It makes me wonder what they see or how the patterns of colours could change their perception of their world around them. I also had my most agile catch with the sweep net. I caught a sporadic flying butterfly behind my head with a back swing, not looking, I amount it to a hail mary catch. I am really looking forward to Glacier National Park, I’ll be eager to be set loose now that I am all healed up.