Thursday, November 22, 2019, 3:50 PM- 4:47 PM, cloudy.

This time as I went out to my spot and observed the area, the first thing I noted was the lack of animals. I did not see a single animal or even insect as I observed. The most I probably heard were a couple of birds. I did take a look around at the different plants that were around and I noticed the lack of leaves that most of the different plants had. If the plants had any leaves, they were either very scarce or they were the type that keeps their leaves year-round. Or, in the case of the oak tree within my sit spot, the leaves were just at the point where they were waiting to fall. With the lack of animals and the obvious seasonal changes, I guess you could say we’re really started to head into Winter now!

Taking a look at my three different objects, the one that has probably changed the most from how it was originally was the bush. Not only has it lost all of its leaves and this point but the burrs that appeared to be present on it were fewer in number as well. With the stick covered in moss, one of the biggest changes there was the fact that the leaves no longer cover part of it, in fact, it looks like there are less leaves around it. This could possibly mean that an animal has disturbed the area around the stick. The stump, on the other hand, has not changed, it looks much the same as it did when I first took a picture of it.

Before                                                                                          After

                                           

During the listening activity with my eyes open, one of the first things I noticed was how uncomfortable it was to be focusing on the listening aspect and ignoring what I saw around me. I had to really focus on the listening aspect to get through that feeling. The most I really heard was birds, though I didn’t hear near as many as I had in times before, maybe 4 or 5 different types of bird calls at most. There was one bird that stood out amongst the rest as it was the loudest. It had an interesting call in that it would let out a single chirp and then it would pause immediately after before chirping again.

Doing the listening activity with my eyes closed was a whole different story. It felt as if the second I closed my eyes, the birds all went silent. The loudest bird I mentioned before wasn’t even present anymore. I still heard a few different types of bird calls but not near as many, which was very different from when I had done this activity before in my previous times at my sit spot. On another note, I did hear a couple dogs barking in the distance which was something I hadn’t heard before in my other experiences.

Looking out within a square meter in front of me, the rate of animal activity, vertebrate and invertebrate alike, was very low. I did not see even the smallest insect when observing the area. So I decided to take note of plant life instead. One thing I noticed was despite how part of the area in front of me didn’t have any trees over it, there were still leaves covering the entire vicinity. Sure, they got a little more sparse as you got farther away from the tree, but there was still a pretty much even covering of leaves over the ground. Another thing I noted in the landscape was that underneath the tree, there was a lot of moss and little grass but as you go farther out the amount of moss starts to recede and more grass seems to grow in its place. This is probably because, underneath the tree, there is not enough sunlight for grass to grow properly. However, the moss is better suited to live in less sunny environments, therefore it grows better. It was interesting since I had never really noticed the moss to grass ratio on the ground before but with the lack of animals, I was looking hard enough at the plant life to notice.