Blog Post 6. Data collection

The data collection was performed at three city parks: Riverside Park, McDonald Park and McArthur Island Park. The counting would start at 10 a.m. and would last 1 hour where 5 counts were done 20 minutes apart. This procedure was conducted for all of the sites. Both Riverside Park and McArthur Island Park contained two flowerbeds, but the whole territory of McDonald Park contained only one. This meant that haphazard sampling will be used and sites are subjectively chosen as no other opportunity of pollinators observation was present. Therefore, no problems appeared in implementing sampling design. On the duration of five non-continuous days’ counts were done with rotation of order of sites visited. The time of 10 a.m. was chosen by a recommendation of local beekeeper who stated that at 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. I could observe adult individuals and then from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. I could observe the training flights of the young. Rotation of times for visit was implemented in order to avoid errors occurring because some species could appear at the site at later times of the day. Species observed were counted and described in the field journal and later identified using COMMON POLLINATORS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Visual Identification Guide that could be found at http://borderfreebees.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/common-pollinaotrs-of-bc-v40.pdf

The only problem I found is that sometimes description I provide in the field is not specific enough to be identified as a single species but fits a few, and therefore will be excluded from the further analysis unless representing unique species. Few additional patterns were noticed during data collection. Wasps appeared to be dependent on the outside temperature as encounters were observed only at the hottest timeslots. No wasps were observed in a suburb McDonald Park even though it has almost no shade by big trees. The gardener who was servicing the park told me that it is very common for local wasps to build their nests under the rooftops of the houses which could explain their absence in this park.