Käyttäjän carrmn päiväkirja

Today was a very cloudy day for my nature walk. With an average temperature of 46 degrees Fahrenheit, and some rain towards the end of my walk, I set out to find insects. However, this was mostly unsuccessful. Many places during the summer that I would typically find many insects and animals, I was unable to locate almost any as the winter months approach. A difficulty I faced was that many insects I was able to find were in leaf piles. However, they were too fast to move out of the camera view the second I was able to spot them. In fact, the only reason I was able to get a photo of one was because it had crawled on my shoe. In addition, I was able to spot a couple squirrels, but had to stay very still in order to capture a picture of them as they were very quick to run away. This behavior that I saw with both the insect and squirrel reminded me of the constitutive defense called escape behavior. They have evolved so that their musculature allows them to move very fast. Overall, this walk was a great way to see some real life examples of defense behavior from our ecology unit.

Today was a perfect day for a nature walk. The sky was a beautiful blue with the sun shining bright above. The air was cool and crisp, and there was a slight breeze moving the leafs very gently. The average temperature was 52 °F. After the fungi themed nature walk, I expected the task to find all four main groups of plants to be more of difficult task. To my surprise, I was actually able to find each type of plant with ease. To start off, pine trees (which BC has many of in the Pine Tree Reservation), falls into the category of Gymnosperms, which is our non-flowering seed plants. Next, I came across a Rock Greenshield Lichen. Lichen was a common fungus I found on my second nature walk. When looking more into it, I discovered that it is a nonvascular plant, or in other words a Bryophyta. For the Polypodiopsida, I was able to find ferns which are apart of that seedless vascular plant category. Lastly one of the Angiosperms I saw were dandelions. Overall, this walk opened my eyes to becoming more aware of the type of plants around me. In some cases, noticing all four main plant groups in such close proximity as well.

The walk started off in the Pine Tree Preserve on campus, but I quickly found my way to the reservoir. The weather was very gloomy. At the start of the walk, the sky was filled with clouds, some of which had a grey tint to them, and an average temperature of 57 degrees Fahrenheit, but it was quite windy. By the end of the walk, it started to rain very lightly. I found that the diversity of plant species varied greatly between the Pine Tree Preserve to the Reservoir despite being across the road from one another. Fungi was definitely hard to find. However, once I was able to identify some fungi, I found it interesting how the same type of fungi was found on both rocks and trees. However, the fungi I identified on trees around the reservoir was not present on any of the pine trees. I wonder what evolutionary differences might have caused this to occur. Needless to say, it was a very nice walk and very interesting to see a variety fungi on a variety of different things found in nature.

Went for a walk today on this incoming fall day. The weather was very nice. While not a sunny, blue sky day, the sun peaked through the white clouds and the walk consisted of a cool breeze and a steady temperature of around 58 degrees Fahrenheit. While the fall season is just starting, there were already thin patches of fallen leaves on the ground. As stated in the name of the preserve, there were many pine trees towering over me with various green life on the ground throughout the entirety of the preserve. Once I identified a few different species, it became a l lot easier to identify the same species in a different location on the preserve. On another note, a lot different plants and trees I saw were very similar to other plants and trees I have seen in the New England area. Similarly, for some pictures I took throughout my walk, many suggested species would appear. While all very similar, they had their slight differences. This made me think about how each species might have evolved to what I was seeing, but also left me wondering about what common ancestors they could have. It was a very calming and relaxing walk.