Sunday, August 3, 2008
We arrived
at
got lost on the county highways. I
got settled in our cozy rooms with two bunks and two single beds, and explored
around the area, and it’s a very rustic and countryside place. All the campers
arrived by six, all eight of us, and we got acquainted with our fellow camper
and counselors Kendra and Nathan and immediately started preparing for
tomorrow. We made a secchi disk to do water testing,
a box and cover for our bug collection, and a plant press for a plant
collection. At nine we got back to the
bunks and a couple hours later I fell asleep.
Monday, August 04, 2008
I was the
first to wake at about six a.m. and ate a breakfast of honey nut cheerios and
yogurt. At nine, we got a very interesting lesson from Dr. Larson about the
plant life through actually walking through the prairie and woods and seeing
and collecting the plants for our collection. After a two and a half hour walk
we pressed the collected plants using cardboard, newspaper, alone with blotting
paper and had a fulfilling lunch of sandwiches and did some actual GPS and GIS work
with Dr. Nels Troelstrup
and used GPS to find a prize consisting of three suckers, five smarties, which were deliciously dehydrating. We also took
the humidity, wind speed, and the temperature, which you can see here.
|
Group |
Location |
Humidity |
Wind speed |
Temperture |
|
Prairie Group 2 |
Prairie |
70% |
2.6ms/s |
29.9 degrees C |
Then we did some water
sampling with Kendra and tested the seeable deepness of the lake. Dinner
finally arrived at 5:30 and after eating we worked on our blogs and looked at microorganisms
from the lake. Going to get root beer floats now!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
After
preparing (Douglas and I were the food administrators of the day), eating , and cleaning up the exciting breakfast, we started
to learn about birds from Dr. Jensen. It was really interesting because we
actually caught birds in tall nets of very fine mesh that were pounded in on
the ground.
After capturing a goldfinch, warblers, common
yellowthroat and two Least flycatchers, we banded them and learned how to find
the age, gender, and molting stages. On completing the lesson, we had a lunch
of sandwiches, and then went out by the lake to catch some aquatic insects.
Half of our group went out on a boat to do an Eckmann
dredge, and the other half went wading in the algae and stink infested shore
and Catskills to catch bugs. We caught water scorpions, mayfly, crawfish and a
lot of other water dwelling organisms. After a hot dinner of chicken wings and
potato wedges, we headed back to the lab to label our plant presses and update
our blogs. Because I was one of the food administrators, I also worked on the
main blog, which is here: http://oaklakesciencecamp08.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
At 9 am,
everybody headed toward the lab for an exploration lesson about insects with
the master of puns, Dr.Johnson. We spent the first
hour catching insects in the area, and I caught about twelve different bugs,
ranging from little damsel flies to huge robber flies. We put them into kill jars and then came back
to the lab to pin them and label it. After having the same lunches we had for
the past two days, we collected chokecherries and Missouri Goldenrods to tie-dye
some bandanas, which turned out really well. However, the chokecherries became
a bluish color. Then we set up traps for the turtles with Laura (LD) in a small
tributary and the little metal boxes to capture small rodents.
As in the miraculous vision
of
Thursday, August 07, 2008: The last day
Waking up
to my last full day was very saddening, but my breakfast brought me back to
reality. I thought camp was a great time, and the things we did were just
fascinating. So, for the last time during camp, we headed to the lab to learn
about woody plants (trees) from tree guy Dr. Krueger. We identified different trees on our way over
to the heart of the forest, and then took samples from all types of trees.
After the exhausting walk, we counted the rings on our samples
and then ate another lunch of sandwiches. Then we checked our traps with LD and
I caught a thirteen lined ground squirrel! However we did not find any turtles
in our traps. When we headed back to the lab, we dissected owl pellets which
were really cool and weird at the same time. I found four skulls in my two owl pellets
and loads of other bones. The caterers today brought sphaggetti
for dinner, and it was surprisingly delicious. I also might have poisen ivy. And as the last entry in this journal, I say
farewell to this wonderful nature and ecology and biology camp.
