Field Journal 3
The third and last day at the farm was the best out of all my visits despite it having rained. I was glad I checked the weather and wore my raincoat and brought my umbrella.
When my group arrived to our vernal pool site, we split up again. I teamed up with Hongli and we proceeded to sift through the cold, dirty water and mud to look for insects and other living organism. We did not try to catch any spiders in the hay fields because there were none that day. It was probably because it was cold and rainy at the time.
We took the little net and found mainly water beetles and the occasional spiders. However, we had to disturb the waters in order to find these little bugs. One of us would step into the water and stomp around to kick up mud and other debris in the water. The beetles were the easiest to spot because they were brown, ovular and moved around with their legs. The spiders were trickier to spot. They would curl their legs into their body which produced a small form.
All the spiders we found could walk on water and we captured more than one species of spider. One was small with white dots on its thorax and some others were yellow and a bit transparent in appearance.
My favorite discovery was that of a small worm I found while poking and digging around in a mud mound near the water. All the other previous mud mounds yielded no results until this one. When choosing which mud mound to disturb, I would see if there were any neat-looking holes that might have resembled the kind that a bug would make. An example of such holes, would be the ones made by ants in the sand.
The worm was about as long as my pinky and had a brown body. I placed it on a lid from a small container and left it alone to go hunt for more organisms. I was dismayed when I came back and saw it had escaped. That would be the only worm I encountered during the rest of the time at the farm.
The BioCube actually had a bit of moving life in it today. I saw some beetles float through it and even spotted a spider here and there. Other than that, the surroundings of the cube remained the same and only had some stalks and trees in it.
During my 15 min of silence, I observed almost the same bird calls as the last time I was at the farm. Although, there was one particular bird call that stood out to me and not because it was a beautiful sound. It was actually the opposite. It was the most obnoxious bird call I had ever heard.
The first thing I thought when hearing it was, "Someone's not finding a mate this spring. Not with that call". It sounded a bit like a seagull, but with a slightly higher pitch and not as grating in color.
Overall, this was a pleasant last day at the farm. Hongli and I captured about 6 spiders and even some tiny snails. We stored them in containers and hopefully we will see them alive when we return for them.
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