Diario de bwilliamson440

For this nature walk, I overestimated how long the sun would be up and by the time I went on my walk, I could only find a few birds but it was too dark to get a good enough picture of any of them. However, I walked around the Res and the neighborhood around my off-campus house looking for animals. I saw a blue jay, a robin, and a few small, brown birds. Due to my inability to snap any pictures of these animals, I have decided to add some observations of different animals that I have seen in the area over the semester that had not applied to any of the earlier nature walks. Im including observations of eastern red-backed salamanders, which I found while searching for the invertebrate nature walk. Also, I will be including observations of chirping sparrows (which I think are the small brown birds mentioned earlier - was too dark for me to tell), turkeys, and raccoons which I had taken pictures of right in front of my house earlier this year. The raccoon picture is pretty interesting - if you look closely there are three different individuals in the same tree. I also included observations of my dog, my roommates and my pet snake, and a squirrel just to add to the list of vertebrate animals that I have observed over the semester.

Yesterday I spent 30 minutes walking around the houghton garden. It was pretty nasty out as it had been raining all morning, but I feel like that may have aided me in finding some of my animals. I started looking by just flipping over rocks and logs because there wasn't much activity otherwise due to the weather. At first I found a little baby salamander, which obviously does not count towards this nature walk but I still found it very cool because my little brother and I used to spend hours on end looking for salamanders in the woods behind my house. Towards the end of my walk I flipped over a rock and found a family of salamanders - there were at least 3 fully grown red-backed salamanders and then 4 or 5 smaller, fully black salamanders, all of which were surrounding a pile of greenish-white eggs. I then found some form of ant, it was white and really small and I had never seen anything like it. I then found various pillbugs and dozens of earthworms, as is to be expected after a morning rainfall. I then found some form of what I think was a beetle, but I honestly had no idea as I had never seen anything like it before. Also, I saw a few spiders but wasn't quick enough with the camera to be able to capture a picture, I just thought I'd mention it. I also saw various slugs. The last insect that I found was a red centipede, which was super hard to get a picture of because of how quick it was.

For this nature walk I walked around the neighborhood of Brighton and looked at some of the different types of trees and bushes that grow around the area. I went with one of my roommates who knows a lot about trees as he is a landscaper, which was really interesting because he would point out and identify types of trees I had never even heard of before. The weather was absolutely gorgeous (a little overcast, but the temperature was amazing). Also, finding a burning bush was probably my favorite part. At my old home in Philadelphia, we had tons of burning bushes around our property and they were some of my favorite plants. When it finally becomes fall and the bushes turn bright red, they are absolutely beautiful. The one that I found was starting to turn red in some areas of the bush - I will upload another observation when the plant fully changes colors!

The other day I went to Houghton Garden for my nature walk, about a 10 minute walk from BC's upper campus. The weather was perfect, in the mid 60's, and the sun was just setting as I went around 6 pm. The second I walked in the gate I saw many different species of trees, two of which I documented (oak and pine). There were also a few squirrels and ferns and moss covered a very large portion of the surface. I also saw many types of weeds, some that even looked like flowers, and a few types of what looked like fungus or lichen. The walk was very peaceful and the Houghton Garden is a great place to escape from the urbanized Boston area and see some wild, living organisms.