Third Foxcroft Farm Adventure
I had a really nice time visiting Foxcroft Farm this week. I am sad that it was my last time; I will surely miss the swamp.
The weather was the nicest it had been for all of our adventures. For a little while, it lightly rained. The rain made me excited because I know that is when many organisms will choose to come out and explore.
We made it to the location that we’ve observed during the previous trips. Immediately I noticed the strong scent of skunk cabbage. The cabbage had grown a lot. The entrance to our swamp area was covered with it. It was a beautifully lush, green color. It was very interesting to see the development of these skunk cabbage. They started as a deep purple color and with each week they got larger, greener, and less purple. The smell also became more pungent over time (perhaps it was just me recovering from sickness). Using the garden tools, I dug up one of the mature skunk cabbage plants to see some of its roots. While doing this, I saw many different organisms in the mud. We found so many earthworms and other insects that we hope to identify later. It wasn’t easy to dig up the cabbage because it had many roots set in the ground. Next week in the lab I hope to analyze these root structures in preparation of the species paper on skunk cabbage.
However, we did not have a replacement biocube to set down. We observed the area where our biocube was originally placed. We didn’t see any fish or large aquatic organisms swimming in the water. The water was pretty clear which made it easy to see to the bottom. However, once we walked around for a bit, the mud would be disturbed from the bottom of the water and cause the water to be a murky brown color, obstructing our view. We did see a lot of different insects in the water and bugs that would land on the surface of the water. We were able to collect many of these organisms we saw with our net and place them in jars for later identification. We used the shovel and rake to dig up some plants and dirt to place in our Tupperware container for later analysis. We got a wide variety of plants and insects and other microbes in the dirt that we may be able to view under a microscope. We collected water samples as well. I’m curious to see what is present there and how it compares to our protist samples in the preview unit.
During our fifteen minutes of silence, we had something truly amazing happen. We were watching the water and listening to the sounds of different birds calling across the farm. There were many different calls. Sometimes I thought I could hear water splashing or rustling in the grasses. However, I was unable to find anything upon further investigation. Two geese flew down into the stream of the swamp area. It was quite amazing how just being silent and one with nature can be enough to make humans less scary to other animals. They definitely saw us and kept their distance but they knew that we going to be kind. They continued down the stream as we took videos and listened to their dialogue consisting of quacks and head dunks.
After our moments of silence and the geese passed by, we decided to check out a new area. It was our last time in the field and we wanted to see what other biodiversity would be in other locations. We walked past the bike path, past the conifer forest and crossed over to where the beaver dams are. We went down by the water and into the swamp areas. We tried a couple more moments of silence to see what we could hear but we couldn’t locate any organisms there. We were able to get some nice photos of some plants that we didn’t encounter in the previous area, however. We even ran into the conifer forest group and they showed us some of their ecosystem and some of the organisms they had. It was cool to see how different the areas were.
I am very thankful for this experience in field biology. I enjoyed it a lot and can definitely see myself continuing in the future.
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