To the south of my sit spot where the bridge is.

From my sit spot looking to the NW

Right in front of me at my sit spot to the SW

I arrived at my sit-spot at 1:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday, October 27, 2020 because I have not had the chance to come at this time of the day. My typical times are first thing in the morning so for blog 4 and this one, I did right at/after sunset and then during the day. I chose this time to see if the animals were more active and they did not disappoint! It was so much better than the last time for sure! Last time, it was dark, raining all day, and my sit spot was flooded. I will definitely not do that again! I was happy for the experience, but nothing else lol. This time was very pleasant. No sun, as it was looking like it was going to rain again (but it hadn’t) and a wonderful 72 degrees. The clouds were grey and there were much darker spots that looked like it was about to burst. Despite its ugly colors, it made it much easier to be able to examine what was above me today as well. I was only able to spend an hour here today, leaving at approximately 2:30 pm. I feel like I could have stayed longer because I was just seeing so much stuff to look into today.I have decided to go during the day to see if the traffic and possibility of children at the playground would make a difference as to whether I would see any wildlife on my trip. I honestly thought that I would not see any kids, but I feel like a whole classroom full of kids was there. It was loud with the sounds of the kids having fun, while listening to the squeak of the swing set flying through the air.

     That did not seem to stop much of the life that I saw and heard around me today. While I have still not seen any deer or anything awesome like that, I finally found a squirrel in the woods across from my sit spot!

My squirrel friend I found running around in the woods. You can barely see his tail.

I also heard lots of crickets and birds today. I was able to catch a glance of some birds playing behind me to the NE, but they were too quick to get a picture of them. There were definitely changes to my sit spot from the last time to today.. I could actually get to my spot! Last time, I came while it had been raining all day and found that my sit spot had turned into a raging river that forced me to relocate to the entrance of my sit spot because the water had risen at least a foot! I could also see. It had gotten so dark and with the rain, it all made it impossible to see much of anything. Today was much better as I was able to play in the water a little and get across the creek to explore just a touch.

Another shot of across the creek.

Across the Creek

Because of my hip, I could not climb up the embankment, but was able to see a lot because there were far less trees. While in the water on the other side, I was able to see some new and interesting things that I could get to to take some very interesting pictures. I broke normal protocol because I wanted to find out what I was looking at and from what I could tell, I found some interesting things.

Another angle of this bee..

Though I am not 100% sure about these, please feel free to let me know what you think they are! The first thing that I found was just a few steps away from my sit spot heading south. I am completely unsure of what this is, finding a few options, some more horrible than the others, but this was no ordinary bee.. I will be doing a species summary on him once I get clarification on what it is.

This overgrown land mass of a bee!

This thing was easily over an inch long, and the top part of the body, while not visible in the picture, was a reddish-brown (more red than brown) and the normal looking body. There are a few leaves near him that you can use for reference for this thing.. I believe, it may have had its own zip code because it was that big! Along with this bee, I was able to see a bunch of gnats, and a few flies, along with those river water walking bugs, but I was unable to get any pictures of them to turn out. The one water walking bug seemed to be following me up the creek as I was trying to leave. Maybe he wanted his 15 seconds of fame lol.

The second interesting find that I discovered today was this very pretty moss stuff that was just across from my sit spot, but up down the creek a little. It was this beautiful

The moss across the creek to the South of my sit spot

shade of green and the leaves have bumps on them. My husband said that it looked like it has goosebumps. Upon further investigation, I was able to determine that it is the Great scented liverwort, a species Conocephalum. This will be another species summary because it is so pretty, yet it is known for smelling like urine because it soaks up the nitrogen and sulfur from its habitat along creek/river beds. Luckily, I did not experience that.

 

Another awesome, and interesting, find was the Amur Honeysuckle.. I never in a million years would have expected that! I thought it was just little berry bushes. There were no flowers on it, and I had to continue looking for them because I had never heard of these berries being on honeysuckles.

Amur Honeysuckle

They are considered an invasive species in many countries and can be particularly threatening to the forest ecosystem. They are pretty to look at though. The branches were smooth and the leaves were bright green.

There were also some changes to the three things that I chose to watch this semester. My Northern Sea Oat is looking pretty rough. I think it took a beating from the rains that we have had and the river rising the way that it did. It is still holding on so it is definitely resilient, but it looks tired to say the least. The oat themselves are all completely tan now, and some of the leaves are also turning brown.

My vine that was hanging over the creek looks like it is everything but dead. I think it got more than its fair share of water from the creek during the storms as well. it is still hanging there in the middle, but it appears dead. It could not reach the water at this time, so maybe that had something to do with it as well? There were no leaves on it at all, just the sticks/vine.

The last thing that I observe is my water. I love listening to the creek as it passes over the rocks. It did not sound like the raging river that it did the last time and was roughly the same as it typically is, maybe a little lower. The water patterns in it did not disappoint either. I was able to get one picture where one of the ripples almost looks like a snake. I never saw any snakes, so that was cool to see the water take shape like that.

Water patterns

Can you find the “snake” in the water?

I did not get to play too much in it, I was too worried about getting lots of pictures.

My battle torn Northern Sea Oat

Water details

The sky overhead at my sit spot

My branch trying to reach the water