It's midnight, the temperature's dropping fast, and we're halfway through the Santa Monica Mountains BioBlitz.
A field team just arrived at Base Camp with, in the words of one volunteer, "a pretty humongous spider. This is, like, the main event!"
Blaine Hebert of Pasadena City College, who led the spider search, isn't immediately certain what kind of spider this is. "I'm not even sure what family it's in. I've encountered three or four today that I've never collected before."
Blaine's group carries bags of small sealed plastic tubs containing wolf spiders, orb spiders, a sun spider (ironically named--they come out at night), and several varieties of daddy longlegs.
Next up? "I'm headed out now to find some scorpions."
Photograph by Mark Christmas/NGS
POSTED BY FORD COCHRAN/BIOBLITZ TEAM AT 12:14 AM PDT
