Last Day in the Field

Swamp Ecosystem Week 3, Thursday Lab Section

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This week in the lab we realized it was our final day in the field so we spent the entire time collecting all the final specimens, video clips, and observations that we needed to finish up our lab. The first things we did once our group got to the swam is we began our final moment of silence.

It started out just like any other moment of silence, but the thing that was different this time was that as I listened to the birds I tried to look around and find them at the same time. Across the river I spied one little guy singing his hear out on top of one of the dried out reeds. He reminded me of the video we saw in which the birds would hop as high as they could surrounded by grass trying to impress their mate. I immediately thought to myself that this little dude must be trying to find his mate. I also began to think that it may be a female telling others that she is ready to mate. As I began to think about this I realized that I did not know much about bird mating or their calls, but that I am surrounded by it all the time while I am outside, It is an entire hidden world of little birds talking and living their lives and I cannot understand any of it. I wonder how complicated their language is and if there are only a few calls or if they have many and if they can structure their calls the way that we structure our sentences in order to convey new meanings.

Once we got our hands dirty we went right to collecting samples that we could bring back to the lab and identify clearly. There are not a lot of things other than insects and plants that we can fit into the sample containers so that is what we came back with. My favorite thing that we got was this little bug which would jump maybe 100 body lengths each time. This amazed me because I could not stop thinking about how impressive that is relative to its size. Once we got it in a clear container the little dude would not stop jumping around and hitting himself against the glass. I kind of felt bad at that point.

As we wrapped up all of the things that we needed to do we thought to ourselves that because this is the last week in the lab that we have we should spend a little time exploring the other swamps. We had spent the entire time in one particular swamp and we realized that there were many more things to see in the swamp area that the Tuesday team was using. Once we walked over there we realized that the water was much deeper in the other location, but there was not as much mud and reeds. This is a pro and con kind of situation because on one hand you are more likely to see the beavers and geese in the deeper water. However, the small insects and plants that we spent most of our time surveying were not as easy to find in this other swamp. This really conveyed to me that there are many different kinds of ecosystems and many different variations on each kind of ecosystem.

- By Rafael