In the Middle Patuxent River – January 2020

Last week I was in the Middle Patuxent River at Robinson Nature Center for the quarterly (winter) water monitoring. The temperature was in the 50s and sunny – an easier sampling than most years. I always like to take some pictures from right at or in the river. It’s a different perspective that being on a forest or meadow trail.

I was the only one of the sampling crew with just boots….everyone else had waders. But the river level was not too high. I didn’t get water in my boots…and no one fell in either.

We caught a madtom (catfish) in one of the collection nets (collecting macroinvertebrates). We took pictures and let it go before we headed up the hill to the Nature Center.

In the lab, we divided the buckets of samples into plastic bins and we all started collecting macros from our bins and randomly putting them into the two partitioned trays.

Then random numbers were drawn to determine the compartments we would id and count until we got to 100….and then we looked at what was left for anything unique. Almost everyone took a few pictures of macros. The most unique thing we found was a white worm!