Greetings nature appreciators,

I wanted to share a little story about one of the nature observations I did with my dear friend Lauren Archer. We were both in need of some pleasant nature observations, as it had been raining and dreary most of the week, so we decided to walk down to the river near where we did our bird walk and do some observations there.

All was well at first, as we sat on the rickety picnic table doing our observation. About 5 minutes in, I noticed lots of ripples down on the river, and a few seconds later, saw some droplets of rain splatter onto my field journal. Lauren and I exchanged a horrified look – all we wanted was to avoid the rain long enough to do some nature observations!

Before we decided to pack it up and leave, Lauren had the good idea to try to do our observation from under the bridge – hurray! We could still observe our surroundings and record what we noticed without being drenched by the pouring rain.

At first, not much exciting happened, besides a pigeon and his mate doing some type of dance/hopping routine together, following each other around.

After some patience, Lauren noticed a slender, dark brown animal peeking its head out from some of the rocks. Unfortunately, it moved too fast for her to get a picture or much of a good look at it, but we moved over to where she first noticed it in hopes of getting another look. All of a sudden, we saw a dark brown flash and the animal was all the way up the bank, under the fence, and into the bushes a little ways up. We got another quick glance of its face before it disappeared back to safety, but again not a very good look.

Excited but disappointed we hadn’t seen it for longer, we started researching what it could have been. My first thought was a ferret or muskrat, but wasn’t sure if either of those lived in the area. After doing some research, Lauren and I decided we thought it was an American mink, which is shown below.

Its body seemed like the right length, it was definitely a darkish brown/gray color, and its face looked exactly like the one shown in the picture. After doing some research, we hoped to see it again. After probably 20 more minutes, we saw it watching us from behind the rocks again! We got a better look at it this time in order to get a good drawing, but neither of us could move fast enough to get a picture. I tried to follow where it went to see if i could find its home/nest/burrow, but had no such luck – and almost fell in the river a few times thanks to some loose rocks!

Although we didn’t find its home and only were able to see it for a few brief moments, it was still a really cool experience that we would not have had were it not for this class/the nature observations.

Here is a picture that i took of where i thought its home might be, but not sure exactly where:

Until next time,

Lauren (Sapone)

P.S. If you are so inclined, please enjoy the slo-mo clip linked below of me and Lauren making wishes on some dandelions at the end of our observation. 🙂

dandelion slo mo

Hello nature lovers,

So I have a story to tell about my last-ditch attempt to see a groundhog for my descriptive narrative and my field journal (because it was also my last-minute final journal entry).

Last Wedneday, a beautiful warm spring evening, I decided to take a stroll down to Occum Pond to try to spot some groundhogs. It was just before sunset, and the light was beautiful. I immediately noticed how much more everything was in bloom than the last time I saw Occum, just a week earlier. 

The grass had grown like crazy – some of it was up to my knees! The flowers were all blooming, and the trees had lots of young green leaves on them. As delighted as I was to see the brand new lush-ness of the vegetation around Occum, I also realized this meant it wouldn’t be as easy to spot groundhogs and their burrows.

I trudged through the tall grass over to where I had seen groundhog burrows before, and noticed some new ones! Now, there were 5 or 6 that i could see, instead of only 2 on this side of the pond like i had originally found. 

There seemed to be two burrow networks, because I could see two main entrances, and the rest were spy-holes or alternate entrances. If you remember from my presentation, groundhog burrows are complex and have different chambers/entrances for different purposes. 
 

There is always a main entrance and a spy-hole/alternate entrance, and usually at least two or three various chambers. The main entrances are usually built up a lot more with a large dirt pile, leaves, and other debris around them, while the spy-holes are much less conspicuous, dug more into the ground and usually don’t have much debris or dirt spread around them. The different chambers are usually used for nesting, sleeping, and getting rid of waste.

As exciting as it was to see all these different and new groundhog burrows, what i really wanted to see were some actual groundhogs. I had no such luck at these new burrows, so I decided to trek across to the other bank of Occum to see if i could spot any of the rodent-like brown mammals. On my walk over, I looked down to my legs (I was wearing shorts) and feet (clad in flip flops) see lots of shiny three-leafed plants that looked much too similar to poison ivy. Fear immediately swept over me, and my flight instinct kicked in – I started to run/hop/jump my way over to the other side of the bank, I guess all the while thinking that going faster through the poison ivy would give me a better chance of avoiding the oils from the leaves? Either way, once i finally past it through the tall itchy grass and pesky poison ivy, hunching over and breathing hard, I hoped i might at least see some groundhogs as compensation for my possible contraction of itchy bumps all over my legs. But, of course, I didn’t see any there, either.

Dejected and frustrated at my lack of proper leg/footwear, I walked back to my dorm quickly to run cold water all over my legs and feet in the hopes of maybe avoiding having red itchy bumps all over my legs during finals week, and alas – I saved myself from the dreaded poison ivy.

Until next time,

Lauren

p.s. i hope everyone takes this as a strong word of advice to never wear flip flops and shorts on nature observations/walks if you know you’re going to be walking through a lot of plants and vegetation :-/