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Kyle Johnson, |
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September 8th, 2014. "I surveyed moths, butterflies, and other insects at Minnesota Hill and Pine Creek Peatland which spans the border between Roseau County, Minnesota and southeastern Manitoba. This was a spontaneous stop en route between Kittson and Lake of the Woods counties.
I ran a rotten banana/brown sugar bait trail in the uplands and placed a UV light trap in a tamarack-black spruce rich swamp along the border path west of the hill. The latter was targeting a certain moth which is to be sought but never expected.
Weather was good that night (start at 59°F and low of 49°F) helped by clouds which also partially blocked out the moon (which is usually bad for moth activity). The UV sheet hardly produced anything despite this, but at least the bait trail was good with 35+ species which alone made the effort worthwhile; good moths included 2 Brachylomia discinigra, 1 Eremobina claudens, and many fresh Lithophane/Xylena.
In the morning I picked up the UV trap not expecting much given the poor catch at the sheet. But lo and behold right on the top was the moth I was seeking but certainly not actually expecting to catch- a single Papaipema aweme ! This non-descript light brown "Holy Grail" of moths was previously known from only 8 specimens worldwide, ranging from Aweme, Manitoba to the Lake Ontario shoreline of Rochester, New York. This new site (and first Minnesota record) lies 123 miles ESE of Aweme, Manitoba and 505 miles WNW of the Luce County Michigan site- that's quite a gap in the range!"
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Ethan Perry, |
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June, 2014. "I stopped at the St. Louis River north of Toivola to check out the forest along the river. There were some beautiful bur oaks in the 70-80 cm diameter range. Given the high level of the river, it was easy to distinguish the true floodplain forest (FFn67) from the terrace forest (FFn57): the floodplain was under water. At the edge between the two types was an abundance of plant species common farther south, but unusual that far north, such as Virginia spring beauty (Claytonia virginica), two-leaved miterwort (Mitella diphylla), Virginia waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum), cut-leaved toothwort (Cardamine concatenata), and trout lily (Erythronium sp.).
Several miles upriver, south of Biwabik, in a dry jack pine-dominated forest, barren strawberry (Waldsteinia fragarioides) was in full bloom. I can also report that the mosquito population is abundant".