Part of the floor along the creek lifted from the wind and gushing water

Fish blending in, unable to get another picture of them as the creek wasn’t clear and rushing

The rock I watched during my first session

The rock I watched during my last session

Today was a cooler, cloudy day with scattered showers throughout the day, with a slight breeze. The temperature during my sit spot today was around 55 degrees. The creek is very high today, the highest it has ever been while in one of my sit spot sessions. The creek is moving very quickly and isn’t clear to see the bottom. All the canopy trees except for pine trees                 have lost their leaves while the leaves closer to the creek still have bright light green leaves slowly fading in numbers. Part of the ground along the creek has been pulled up, making it a wall of leaves, branches and twigs. There aren’t many leaves on the floor around me as the storms have been blowing them away. Since I first started my sit spots, the trees have changed from bring shades of green to naked or shades of orange and brown. The creek has risen and fallen throughout the semester. My spot has become more exposed as time has passed as leaves and trees started to fall.

The leaves on the canopy trees are mostly all gone except for pine trees

While here, I saw around 20 vultures sleeping and resting in the upper part of some trees to my right on the other side of the creek. Now that I spotted the vultures, all the other birds around me grew silent, as I was able to hear bluejays and a few crows. I’ve been able to hear the birds and creek more and more as the semester went on since the deafening sound of the cicadas have died off for the winter. The sky today is covered in gray clouds of different shades, with not a spot of blue showing through. I haven’t been able to see any squirrels today, which is kind of sad as this is my last sit spot, but with vultures around many of the animals are in hiding.

To update you all on my 3 things, I haven’t been able to see the fish as the creek isn’t clear and is running too fast. The last time I saw them, they didn’t change in size or numbers. My rock is completely submerged under the water, whereas before it was about 5 inches from the top of the water. My tree has lost all leaves since the beginning along with some branches, but the ivy has continued to grow all semester. The creek changed as I expected, rising more and more during the winter and receding during the summer. My tree also changed as expected, except for the ivy continuing to grow during the cooler temperatures. I expected to see the fish grow in size but was unable to see them clearly every time to get an accurate size comparison.

I had a lot of fun tracking the progress of my sit spot. I wish I could have looked at other places before choosing my spot, but I still enjoyed my spot. I enjoyed being able to disconnect from the world’s stress and life to be able to just relax in nature. With everything going on today from COVID to the elections, it was a nice transition. I’ve grown up camping and being in the outdoors, so while I was use to being in nature, it showed me a new way of being in nature and opened my ecologist eyes. I want to do this as my career so it gave me a new perspective of nature.

Here are some of the vultures after going to eat something on the floor the the left corner

The most rememberable thing about my sit spots that I will never forget was during this last session when I saw the vultures, I saw them all swarm the floor and fight over the food, and I will remember the sound of their wings, the details of their features and more. I was able to get a sketch and just watch them from a distance off. I never saw that many vultures fight for food that close to me. I will never remember the sounds they made and how powerful their wings were when fighting one another.

My first sit spot session

My last sit spot session

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the tree I chose to watch in my first session

Here is the tree I chose to watch in my last session