© C. Klingler. A red milkweed borer takes off at Fish Slough.

For our First Saturday field trip in May, we’re heading to Fish Slough and taking a closer look at…arthropods! Trip leader Ceal Klingler is a biologist, conservationist, and writer who hopes you’ll admire and possibly adore your smaller neighbors. Here’s what Ceal has to say about what you’ll be looking for on May 2:

Arthropods (for example, blister beetles, harvester ants, and jumping spiders) play a starring role in the function of desert ecosystems such as Fish Slough. Not only do they pollinate relatively isolated wildflower species in desert wetlands, but they also:

• Transform plants into biomass that other animals can eat (e.g. when Say’s phoebes eat Pyralid moths or horned lizards eat harvester ants)

• Break flower parts down into soil nutrients (e.g., when blister beetles eat flower petals and transform them into floral packets of fertilizer), and

• Transport nutrients into the soil (e.g., when above-ground honeypot ant workers carry nectar to underground specialized workers who serve as “repletes,” reservoirs for the colony).

Across deep time, these interactions have helped shape the bodies and behavior of small animals like birds and lizards as they co-evolve with host plants, predators, and prey.

Although the timing of Fish Slough’s charismatic minifauna might be off during this year’s chaotic weather extremes, we’ll have a good chance of seeing Inyo tiger beetles, harvester ants and their golden sand scoops, milkweed beetles, migratory painted lady butterflies (and possibly monarchs), and the flying, jumping, and lumbering animals who eat them.

Please come prepared to walk in hot weather and bring close-range binoculars if you have them. Meet at 9:30 AM at the southern turnoff for east Fish Slough from Fish Slough Road (approximately 37.43309, -118.40607; past the private houses and pavement; look for a turnoff and parking area to your right/east). Return by 1PM.

RSVP for updates at fieldtrips@easternsierrabirds.org.