Nature Journal
Well! It seems that I shall now be using this journal for school, on top of my normal random flavin. One of the classes I'm taking at CLL, 'The Natural History of Northern New England: Fall', requires us to have a daily journal of nature stuff. Nothing heavy or major, just a few words each day on something we noticed about the outdoors around us. As this is the first entry, I'd like to make it just a tad bit longer than normal. I'm not only using this for the journal entry for class, but also for my normal journal to tell a bit about today and the class.
So! Today we had our first outdoor class thing. From 9 am to somewhere around 4:45 in the afternoon, we were outdoors, walking about looking at trees, flowers, mushrooms(lots of those) lil critters and various other things. THe morning portion was in Hanover on a little backstreet that goes through some forest, and then towards noon we went over to wilder dam, ate lunch, and walked up to a water resevoir.
All through the morning I'd been wanting to find a Salamander of some kind and kept checking under fallen bark and logs and the like without much success. Finally in the afternoon I was wandering around the edge of a little stream and noticed a long flat plank on the ground. It was on a little path(which there were many sprouting off the main road there), spread out over some mud to keep people's shoes from getting too mucked up. That was the irony of the situation...something that most people would just walk on and not even give a second thought, I went and checked under, and lo and behold there squirmed mine prey.
And I'll be damned if I can remember what kind it was...geh!
Just a little brown salamander with some black along him. He was quite cute...kept crawling on my hand trying to get away, poor thing. I showed the rest of the class so we could classify it, then I went and put it back under the board.
A little excited from having found what I was looking for, I decided to continue looking for critters. I'd helped to identify some trees and mushrooms earlier, and decided that perhaps while the rest of my team continued to do so I could do the hunting.
I meandered along a marsher area...found some small animal prints in the mud(I dont think we came to a decision on what they were. I think they were just squirrel or something). Looking around, I realized there would probably be some frogs around, so I moved a little more carefully. Sure enough, after a few minutes one hopped out from under foot. I had to chase it around and finally dig it out of the mud of the stream, but I managed to grab him and bring him back. It was just an ordinary green frog, but he added to list of amphibians next to the plants and fungi.
Unfortunately, despite my stalking through the high grasses, I never did find any snakes. I think it was too cold or some such thing, but it was worth a try.
I'll have pictures from the day posted up at some point soon...I need to dig out the cord for my camera again. Until then, for those of you who watch this that are NOT my teacher, you can see the pictures from the day that a fellow classmate of mine took. http://school.nhpics.com/20040925_HistoryOfNE1/page1.htm
He took a few on my request once I was out of room on mine...and of the salamander 'n stuff, so check 'em out, and remember that most of the things you'll see we wound up identifying one way or another. Heh
Now tis away with me to do other stuff. I'll have more naturey things on the morrow! *salutes and meanders off*
So! Today we had our first outdoor class thing. From 9 am to somewhere around 4:45 in the afternoon, we were outdoors, walking about looking at trees, flowers, mushrooms(lots of those) lil critters and various other things. THe morning portion was in Hanover on a little backstreet that goes through some forest, and then towards noon we went over to wilder dam, ate lunch, and walked up to a water resevoir.
All through the morning I'd been wanting to find a Salamander of some kind and kept checking under fallen bark and logs and the like without much success. Finally in the afternoon I was wandering around the edge of a little stream and noticed a long flat plank on the ground. It was on a little path(which there were many sprouting off the main road there), spread out over some mud to keep people's shoes from getting too mucked up. That was the irony of the situation...something that most people would just walk on and not even give a second thought, I went and checked under, and lo and behold there squirmed mine prey.
And I'll be damned if I can remember what kind it was...geh!
Just a little brown salamander with some black along him. He was quite cute...kept crawling on my hand trying to get away, poor thing. I showed the rest of the class so we could classify it, then I went and put it back under the board.
A little excited from having found what I was looking for, I decided to continue looking for critters. I'd helped to identify some trees and mushrooms earlier, and decided that perhaps while the rest of my team continued to do so I could do the hunting.
I meandered along a marsher area...found some small animal prints in the mud(I dont think we came to a decision on what they were. I think they were just squirrel or something). Looking around, I realized there would probably be some frogs around, so I moved a little more carefully. Sure enough, after a few minutes one hopped out from under foot. I had to chase it around and finally dig it out of the mud of the stream, but I managed to grab him and bring him back. It was just an ordinary green frog, but he added to list of amphibians next to the plants and fungi.
Unfortunately, despite my stalking through the high grasses, I never did find any snakes. I think it was too cold or some such thing, but it was worth a try.
I'll have pictures from the day posted up at some point soon...I need to dig out the cord for my camera again. Until then, for those of you who watch this that are NOT my teacher, you can see the pictures from the day that a fellow classmate of mine took. http://school.nhpics.com/20040925_HistoryOfNE1/page1.htm
He took a few on my request once I was out of room on mine...and of the salamander 'n stuff, so check 'em out, and remember that most of the things you'll see we wound up identifying one way or another. Heh
Now tis away with me to do other stuff. I'll have more naturey things on the morrow! *salutes and meanders off*