Our next Bioblitz will be on Saturday, October 6, 2018. CABS is the ULM Biology station on the Ouachita River south of Columbia in Caldwell Parish. There will be an organized walk with an emphasis on the herpetofauna in the afternoon that day. For more information, please call the School of Sciences office: 318-342-1766. University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Our next Bioblitz at CABS will be in the fall. We had to scrap plans for one this April due to high water on the Ouachita River.

We participated in a ULM Biology sponsored BIOBlitz at the CABS property south of Columbia the weekend before Halloween. It was extremely dry and as a consequence we observed relatively few amphibians and reptiles during our time at the reserve.

This will be our next field trip opportunity. Most recently I heard the rain would come during the night and perhaps will be finished by daylight on Saturday morning. We can hope! I'm planning to be onsite all day; I should be arriving about 7:30. We will have some traps to check and critters to set up for display. In addition to the traps, we should have some time to walk around the trails and look for herps for your portfolio.

We had a successful trip to Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge on Thursday afternoon. We checked and removed the traps that were set on Monday. Sonia was in charge of trap checking as an extension of her handout on aquatic herp trapping techniques. We had a total of 16 minnow traps and crawfish traps set along the margin of the lake in the flooded forest. This day we only caught a few newts. When we took a walk in the forest on and near the boardwalk we saw a surprising number of snakes, many frogs, and at least one lizard.