Week 5

Sunday May 5th
4:45 - 5:30 PM
70's sunny light breeze

My first super sunny and warm day in the swamp! I hadn't planned on going today, but I finished up all my homework early and I had to get out and enjoy this great weather.

When I got to Yesler Swamp, the first thing I noticed was that the grass at the entrance had been mowed. That isn't the most exciting thing, but it used to be about up to my thighs and that seemed pretty cool to me. Maybe that stuff is the invasive reed canary grass and they're trying to keep it in check. Anyways, once I walked into the swamp my feet were finally met by a trail of nice dry bark, rather than the normal soggy ground. I could hear some little kids playing and yelling from across the swamp, so that took away much chance to see anything big and cool like herons, but I did luck out and see a few turtles basking in the sun. A kayaker had also made his way over near the turtles. Seeing that kayaker made me think about renting a canoe and taking it over to the swamp to get a new perspective sometime, but we'll see. Some other things I noticed were two small flowers I hadn't remembered seeing. Both of them have unique looking leafs on them so I thought they would be easy to identify but I don't think my field guide has them - it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong though. I also visited my skunk cabbage and tried to crudely measure the size of the leafs so that I'll have an idea if they're getting bigger.

 Here is the pink flowering plant with unique leafs. It also had very hairy stems.

 This is the yellow flowering plant I couldn't identify. Once again, pretty unique leaf shape.

 

Skunk cabbage next to my size 13 feet. Leaf on the left looks to be bigger!

 

 

The main assignment this week was to observe insects. I have a suspicion that I might have had better luck when it was a little wetter because when I think of insects I think of them as being in cold, wet, dark places. Regardless, I was able to uncover a few. Some of them I knew, like pill bugs, but then there were others I didn't know so well. The first of which was a kind of worm. It didn't look like the right size to be an earthworm, and I didn't feel as though it moved like one either. This worm was very skinny and long, relative to it's skinniness. When it moved across the ground it wasn't as methodical like when an earthworm brings it's back-end forward then jets it's front-end forward. Instead it was more chaotic and seemed to have some horizontal motion. It was hard to observe it for long without grabbing it, because when left to it's own devices it would immediately burrow down into the soil. The other insect I saw was something that is similar to the centipedes. I say centipede rather than millipede due to the fact that this insect had just one leg segments rather than two. This insect was a light orange color and it had two 'feelers' sticking out of it's front-end. This insect didn't want to burrow as much as the worm, but it was a little quick and always would try to hide under something. In the upcoming weeks, I'll make it a habit to always check a small spot or two for insects and continue to find more!

Here is the light orange colored millipede-like insect I saw. You can really see the two 'feelers' if you make the picture bigger.