The plains of south-eastern Alberta, and the sand dunes of south-western Saskatchewan suffered an invasion over the Labour Day weekend. On the Friday, about 30 naturalists and a TV crew arrived at the Steveville Campground in Dinosaur Provincial Park. The trip was a melding of a naturalist weekend involving a bit of silliness about a navigation beacon site, and the shooting of the new season's opening episode of "Acorn, The Nature Nut". Our mission was to identify the birds, snakes, mammals, amphibians, and all members of the arachnid and insect persuasions that we could manage. There were 'ologists of every sort among us, and some amateur birders and bug people as well. We worked from dawn to dusk, and even after dark, with UV lights shining on sheets hung in the trees. Every moth within eyesight came to the sheets, (the bats had a field day!) and the discussions amongst the experts were fascinating, but never quite came to blows! The younger members of the expedition had a campfire going, and guitars, bongos and other percussion pieces were well used. In addition, we had entertainment of a different sort around the campfire, as one of our members was Dr. Dave Lawrie, a physics instructor at the U of A. He just happened to have a big flask of liquid nitrogen with him, and showed us a bunch of neat tricks. He is known to the participants as "Physics Dave", and we all kept a close eye on him when he was nearby. One never knew what he would do next. Bedtime came late, that first night!

Saturday morning came too soon, but the intrepid TV crew was busy when we got ourselves out of the tents, working with some of the people around a Prairie Rattlesnake hibernaculum. There were nearly 30 snakes in there! That's a few too many for this old prairie boy! The day got even more interesting when we found a HUGE Poplar Sphinx caterpillar, and "Physics Dave" contrived a balance scale from stryrofoam cups, a branch, and some thread. Turned out that the caterpillar weighed "2 dimes, and 4 cents", which Dave later determined to be 14.32 grams. That makes this caterpillar heavier by far than a Calliope Hummingbird, or a Pygmy Shrew. That is one big honkin' caterpillar! The day got busier as it wore on, with the first record of a Woodland Skipper for that area, and the second and third sightings of a White-throated Swift in the park. That night, we spent about 2 hours filming the music video for the program, around the campfire. We plain old naturalists are not as good as the TV pros, so we had to do things over about 15 times!

Sunday, we spent some time at a prairie spring, and caught some Leopard Frogs, which are getting to be quite rare in Alberta. After filming them, we put them back where they were caught. On to Empress, Alberta, and supper. I'm afraid that our numbers rather overwhelmed some of the small prairie town restaurants. In one place, about 20 of us ordered milkshakes. I bet that they had not sold 20 shakes in the past week! Late that night, we were out in the sand dunes near town, and managed to catch 2 Ord's Kangaroo Rats. They are pretty little things, and as Chris Fisher and John Acorn (co-authors of Birds of Alberta) said, this was very probably the largest group of naturalists ever to see these creatures in the wilds of Alberta at the same time.

Monday, we shot the closing for the show, captured a large prairie rattler near Burstall, SK (with a butterfly net!) took tons of still photos of it, and let it go. In and around the filming and the fun, a lot of serious work was done, with 179 species found and identified. This total included: Dragonflies-11, Tiger beetles-7, other beetles-4, Grasshoppers and crickets-10, Butterflies-16, Moths-30, Spiders-5, Frogs-2, Snakes-4, Mammals-10, and Birds-81. The trip home ended with a spectacular prairie sunset, with the colours spanning 230 degrees of the horizon, and a big, bright rainbow behind us. A very fitting end to a wonderful weekend, with a great bunch of people.