My second sit spot of the semester was met with the first real cold of the season! When I arrived at 7:41 a.m. It was a chilly 43 degrees! My sit spot is nestled back from the entrance to the creek. The picture to the right of the screen shows the view to the entrance back behind the big tree trunk to the right. As I entered my spot, I was only able to hear a couple of birds. I guess they have decided that it is too cold for them to get out of bed 🙂 The last time I was here, there were a ton of birds from the time I got here till the time I left. By the time I left today, there were many birds out and chirping and singing all over the place! The squirrels were very active this morning, preparing for winter, gathering food and playing.I had two squirrels directly behind me chasing each other in the trees. There is no way that I would have gotten a photo of them, but here is a picture of where they were. The large tree behind my chair is the one that they were bouncing off of.

Here is a picture of the large tree behind my chair that the squirrels were playing on. I have no clue where they ended up. Looking up when I heard leaves rustling in front of me, I saw a squirrel trying to secure his landing in the trees above me. I also notice that the sky is a beautiful blue with not a cloud in the sky.

As I got up to walk around near my sit spot, I am very sad and disappointed that two of the three items that I was going to watch throughout the semester are now gone.  

This is where they were when I was there last. Judging by the looks of the area, I believe that the creek was substantially larger when we had all of that rain come through and the creek wiped them out. All of the leaves and vegetation around the outer points of the creek look very wilted and run down, as if they have reached a type of wilting point, although it is because of way too much saturation in the soil and roots.

The moss covered log, which was located in this area is also gone. I was so interested in seeing how and if the moss would change and to see if I ever saw anything eating the moss and things like that. I believe that the creek removed this log too. With the force of the water due to viscosity and density, along with the currents in the water pushed it down the creek to who knows where. The water got deeper than my boots, so there was no way that I could go too far to see if I could find it. Looking toward the bridge, down the creek as I was trying to find the stick, there were a ton of cars this morning. Most of them probably going to work and school. The good thing is that with the creek being larger today, the volume of the water flowing down the creek almost drowns it out.

An awesome thing happened while I was sitting and observing from my sit spot. When I looked up the creek toward the entrance, there was fog raising from the water as the sun was hitting it. I am not sure if you can see it in the picture, but maybe you can.   

Upon seeing the fog, I decided that it was time to start exploring. I took a picture at the entrance so that you could see how far back I am.  This is the entrance to the creek.

Now is the time for the real fun. With my new rubber boots, I decided it was time for some creek play! I wanted to study the water more closely and see how adaptable it was to changing around my feet. There was some resistance pushing against my feet, but watching the patterns was cool! I am not gonna lie, I felt like a little kid again!

 

 

While playing in the water, I was unable to see any organisms swimming around. Last time, I saw several organisms gliding across the water, but none this time. I did however, find a long tree

branch that was desperate for water, so it reached as far as it could and just touched the creek and hung there. The leaves were smooth to touch.

The rocks were beautiful to get close up to. I love how this picture came out to show the diversity of the rocks in the creek bed.

There was one rock in particular that I had to bring home to try and find out further what it was. It was almost like a miniature mountain in my hands. It looks like it has the aging lines that we see from the changing of the sediment that comes with age. I took a picture of every side of it for you to see! I believe that it is sandstone, but I could be wrong. Either way, it is really cool. I wanted to make sure to get all the detail that I could. It was really smooth, yet had the rough edges. I rinsed the rock off before bringing it home to get all of the dirt off of it naturally, without any sort of chemicals that may have damaged it. This is the final result.

I almost forgot! while examining the tree branch that was touching the water, there was a limb or a vine that looked something like Tarzan would have rode in on. Its funny because not too long after I saw that, there was a large thud, like something falling from a tree coming from that direction. Maybe Tarzan fell out of his tree! 🙂 Either way, there are leaves falling from the trees and one leaf fell into the creek. I believe this to be an example of Allochthonus because the water will be a solvent to dissolve the leaf over time and provide nutrients to either the water or the organisms in the water.

I really enjoyed this sit spots’ session and look forward to playing in the water more and being able to explore more! I am learning a lot of things about the area around the creek by really getting into looking, touching, and analyzing the interesting things that I find. I hope you enjoyed my second blog post!