Today we went on a field trip to Animas, New Mexico. The day started off a little cloudy, but it cleared off in time to allow us to go to our first site and spend about 45 minutes collecting. Nothing special happened, other than the fact that I collected a Zacosmia bee, which apparently is rare.

Gloomy day in the desert

We went on to another site, 25 miles south of Aminas, and as we finished there and wanted to go to see a bee nest that is commonly shown to students of the Bee course, the rain started. So we turned around, and went East of Aminas. On the drive to our third and final collection site, we saw two or three border patrol officers pulled over on the side of the road. Didn’t see much, but later we found out that a man had been spotted and picked up by border patrol there. He apparently was smuggling drugs into the country, and hadn’t eaten for 2 days. It’s so sad to think about people risking their lives in the middle of the desert, with so many dangerous animals, just for that…

Anyways, at our third site, it was getting cool and late (~2pm) so I was able to take a few nice pictures of bees resting in/on flowers.

Triepeolus snoozing

After we finished at our third site, we started our way back to the field house. On our way, we drove into more rain, and eventually got to a dip in the road where there was a flash flood. It’d been raining so much today that the water formed almost a river in the middle of the road. We thought it was pretty cool, so we got out and took some pictures!

Flash flood in the desert

Flash flood in the desert

Flash flood in Animas

We eventually got back into the van, turned around, made a big detour and got back to the field house. 🙂