Journal 5: Inverts and Poetry

Revisiting my Site

I went to my site at 2:30pm on Wednesday, November 18th. It was cloudy, windy and raining, and around 46 degrees. Its been two weeks since I was last here and today I noticed the most dramatic changes I have seen yet. Many species lost most if not all of their leaves, such as the snowberry bushes, Old Man's Beard, and red alder trees. The remaining leaves on the red alder trees were all brown. There aren't as many pine trees as birch trees at my site but the one I observed lost it's needles. The water level of the creek rose, I assume because of the heavy rain the past few days. Some plants close to the edge of the creek became submerged and died, such as skunk cabbage, which turned brown and looked degraded. There have also been heavy winds the past few days so many tree branches snapped off and fell on the ground. Some of the smaller shrubs such as one bracken fern that was browning and dying when I first started my observations completely died and was blown over.

My broad scale observation site.

In my smaller site, one of the small mushrooms was no longer there, there was less moss and lichen on the log. There were no insects or water bugs in the water, I assume due to the heavy rain.

My small scale observation site.

Identifying Vertebrates

I decided to follow the spider to observe its behavior but there wasn't much to observe. In the five minutes I was watching, the spider didn't move. I wonder if the heavy rain is the reason there are less active insects this week. I had a hard time finding inverts and found this one on a sign outside Ravenna Creek that had a cover. The spider had a tear drop shaped body and was a dark brown color.

Spider in the family Araneae

I also chose to observe a pill bug. When I found it, it was under several leaves. It crawled around in a small area, a few inches by a few inches, over small sticks and leaves. At one point while crawling it flipped partially on its back then stopped moving, and still had not moved by the time I left. I found this bug by the creek, about two feet away.

A pill bug in the family Armadillidiidae

The last invert I observed was a snail. It was on a leaf near the pill bug, also about two feet away from the creek.

A gilled snail, in the subclass prosobranchia.