Journal Entry 2 Foxcroft Farm Lab 3
I sat in silence for my final time at Foxcroft Farm. The skies were filled with gray clouds that blocked any ounce of sunlight peeking out. The sky was drizzling a cool mist of rain. I sat on the same fallen down log. I could hear the faint pitter patter of rain on the water of the swamp and on the blades of the dead grass covering the floor. The first thing I noticed walking to my ecosystem was the green grass and the green hay fields covering the property. The ground was wet as well as the trees, leaves, and any other organism around. The collection of water created a thick wet mud surrounding the swamp. It was the kind of mud that would steal your boots and make suction noises as you try to walk through. However, when talking a closer look at the mud we saw it was home to many organisms. After digging through the mud, we found plenty of earthworms wiggling around. The worms were pinkish and changed to a purplish hue toward the head. There were rings that made up the texture of the organism. I also noticed that there was a booming density of skunk cabbage seem during the last lab trip, but now the quantities have even doubled. The entire swamp had large green leaves of skunk cabbage. There was not a cubic foot of land without any skunk cabbage inhabiting it. I could hear my lab partners complaining about the smell of the plant, but luckily I was too sick to smell anything. As the moment of silence continued, I could hear echos of geese in the sky. As I looked up, I could see a pack of 5 geese flying just over the trees. The were grey with black feathered heads. I could not hear as many bird chirping or woodpeckers as I did in the past. I wonder why because I heard so many of them and so clearly during the previous two labs. I looked all around my ecosystem. I could notice green leaves and flowers beginning to bud on trees and bushes. There was a lot of pussy willows nearby that I didn’t see the week prior. Since our biocube was destroyed, we just pretended we had a biocube in the same location as before. At first, I did not notice much happening directly in our biocube. Then I grabbed a shovel and a net. I dug up mud from the bottom of the swamp floor and placed it in the net. There were about 10 to 20 bugs jumping around in the bottom of the new. Some were black and resembled the appearance of a beetle. I notice another type of bug that was shaped as a slim rectangle. Its back was a clear white color, which I thought was odd for a bug at the bottom of a swamp. We looked in the water and at the edge of where the water meets the soil and there was a coat of green algae. It floated in the water and slowly swayed with the calm current of the water. After the fifteen minutes of silence past, we decided to leave and explore other areas of the swamp. As soon as we left our area, two Canadian geese landed in the water. We observed them from a distance. They slowly swamp toward our once occupied spot. They took caution, knowing we were just there. After a few minutes or so went by, the geese were comfortable enough to swim directly to our biocube spot and begin eating some of the vegetation.
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