We have officially hit the time of year where the days are starting to get noticeably longer and I have enough distance from last year's field season to regain some enthusiasm about being outside, but also it's still winter (albeit barely, this year) and thus I haven't seen green growing things in months. All of this combines to have me sitting here making wildly ambitious and unrealistic plans for all of the stuff I'm going to do this spring and summer, because daydreaming about dragonflies is infinitely better than writing reports.
Today I'm apparently determined I'm going to single-handedly survey dragonflies and damselflies for my entire County and develop the kind of species abundance checklist that other local municipalities have - basically a document that lists the species that you might find in a geographic area and indicates how common or uncommon each species is overall within that area. Obviously that sort of thing requires a lot of data fed into it, to know the species found, and where and how many and at what times of year and in association with what habitats, so I'm also apparently plotting how to stir up the local naturalist's club and get more bug events into the outdoor programming menu, which would certainly mean volunteering to coordinate some of the events. And while I'm at it, I might as well contact the provincial wildlife agency and see if there's been any move to reopen the old Ontario odonata atlas project, maybe I could get involved with that as well, and overlap the two.
No problem, right? Definitely all stuff I'll have time for in the middle of my busiest work season when I typically want to spend all of my down time at home hiding from the sun.
*sigh*
If I didn't have to keep myself fed and housed I would do so much science, you guys.
