Journal Entry 3 (Third Time at Foxcroft Farm)
Journal Entry #3
Name: Fanny Riand
BioCube Number: 1 (Swamp)
Listening to nature:
It is calmer today. Last time it was much louder. I can hear cars rushing on the road in the distance. The birds converse somewhere in the trees around me and over my head. When one isn't paying attention, their voices all blur together: just some background noise. When one takes the time to listen though, one realizes how distinct and different each voice is. I wonder what they are saying. I have gone bird-watching before and met people who can identify a bird just by its call. I really wish I could do that right now. It's almost like a superpower. Maybe I will find the time this summer to learn how to do it. It's crazy how our minds just tune out all of this sound usually. If only we listened more. There really is so much to hear.
Observing nature:
We observed a great diversity of organisms today, from plants to animals to fungi. Every time I think we have found all there is to find in the swamp, we find new creatures! I can't even begin to imagine how much there is that we haven't found. Even if we came back to Foxcroft Farm another few times, I doubt we would stop discovering new biodiversity each time. We collected samples of what we found back to lab in a container to further study our findings with a microscope. We did not find very much in our BioCube sadly (just some skunk cabbage from before and some sedges), but we did find a lot around that area. Here are notes on the organisms that we found:
-Canada Mayflower: small and green, shaped like a funnel, sprouting in many places on the forest floor around the swamp
-Eastern Black Carpenter Ant: found when turning over a fallen, decaying birch tree, very active, difficult to take a picture of
-Wild Strawberry: I was surprised to see this growing on the banks of the swamp! I thought I recognized the strawberry leaves (they look very similar to the ones we grow in my garden at home). I didn't know wild strawberry could grow in such damp soil conditions. No flowers yet. The strawberries will certainly feed many hungry animals!
-Meadow Slug: found this one on the swamp grasses. Brown, fairly small, slow, leaves slimey trail on vegetation (which it probably eats)
-Water bug: found in the water, caught using net, very fast, two long legs used for swimming, white back
-Birch Polypore: very large white fungus growing on the fallen birch tree
-Pigweed Flea Beetle: tiny little beetle, found on vegetation, small bit of red near head and black and white striped back
-Frog: we found a frog! We scooped it up using the small blue net. We were surprised because it is early in the season. We named him Todd and pretended he was the adult form of the same tadpole we had found our first week at the Farm. I was not able to identify his exact species. I think he may be a green frog.
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