juliawowkun's Journal

For this nature walk, I decided to walk down to the Pine Tree Reserve by the Plex at BC and around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir because I thought that these would be the places that I would be most likely to find animals and insects. However, as the weather has gotten much colder in the past few weeks, there were many less animals and insects out and about today on my walk. I went in the middle of the day with a friend around 3:00 between my classes and it was sunny outside so this walk was very enjoyable and I was happy have another excuse to get outside and walk around, while still feeling productive! I had to get creative because I was not finding many animals and insects out and about, especially with lots of leaves laying around that most likely covered some of the wildlife. I began looking under rocks for smaller bugs and insects, which was greatly successful. I found what iNaturalist identified as Austroponera under a rock. I then climbed down the rocks at the resevoir to be closer to the water and was able to get closer to the geese that were in the water. I also included other pictures of new plants I had not yet noticed. Overall, this was a very successful and enjoyable walk!

I completed this nature walk in the dark so I wanted to stay close and I went to the Pine Tree Reserve. I was pleased to find a large variety of natural and wildly growing plants in a place so close to us on campus. The weather has just recently started becoming cold so at first this walk seemed very daunting but I actually enjoyed the opportunity to be outside in this brisk temperature; it was very refreshing. I found mostly a mixture of Polypodiopsida and Angiosperms on this walk, most of which were most likely weeds. While the Pine Tree Reserve on campus was relatively small, i was able to also spend time on my walk learning about the reserve by reading the informational panels posted on the sides of the path. This was a great addition to my walk and added much more meaning to my walk and this experience in general.

I did this walk in the evening when it was about 50 degrees and raining on and off so it was harder to just see all of the different organisms especially fungi. However we were able to find many different plants and some mosses. I enjoyed this walk because I got to connect with people I had just recently met so it provided me with an opportunity to meet new people. As we learned in class, the Paleozoic era was the beginning of the presence of plants and fungi about 475ma. Given the Pre-Cambrian explosion was the largest extinction, most of the plant diversity that had grown to this point died. However, clearly, over a great amount of time this biodiversity greatly recovered to establish our environment today.

I went on my first walk today! I walked from my dorm on upper campus to the Houghton Garden, which was almost 1 mile away. Once I got there, I was a little bit confused as I felt like I was intruding walking through residents' backyards on my way to the entrance of the trail, since I did not originally know where it was or exactly how to get there. I then saw the train tracks and at first was turned away because I did am not used to having to cross tracks and have always been turned away by horror stories of crossing tracks. However, once I took a closer look and realized that this was the right direction, I made sure the coast was clear and began observing. As I was alone on this walk and did not want to feel completely alone in this new place, I called my family back home to keep my company and catch up with them. This was great and I wound up talking to them for the entirety of my walk there and back, which took about an hour. At first, I was confused how I was supposed to get so many observations of different species in this one place because it did not seem very diverse. However, I realized the nature of the project more as I started to take a closer look at the organisms around me and realized just how diverse my surroundings actually were. I would not have looked this closely to appreciate the diversity around me if it were not for this project. At first all I noticed was the greenery around me but then looked closer and saw how yes, many of these plants were green, but they were also all different in some way. The weather was very pleasant, it was about 60 degrees and the sun was about to set so it was a perfect temperature and nice atmosphere for an evening walk!