Saratoga Woods and Waterways

 Image: Jackie Donnelly

Back when we started this blog our first project was a nature survey. Although we managed to identify many species that were new to us, we were only scratching the surface.

I just discovered a blog by a local amateur naturalist Jackie Donnelly of Saratoga Springs, NY called Saratoga Woods and Waterways. It has wonderful photos and descriptions. Since the trails she mentions are all within a short drive, we'll have to check some out and see if we can find any of the plants and animals she identifies.

The Map(s)

As the weather grows colder and we wrap up the observation portion of our 100-Species Challenge, we now need to start organizing the information we have gathered. A week or two ago the kids created a fantastic map of the backyard on which to mark the species as we found them. This morning they updated it with numbers corresponding to our list. The list isn't ready yet, but I just have to show you the map(s).

To the left is a map of the Old Champlain Canal Towpath, where we found a lot of great stuff, including our alien pods. To the right is our yard, marked off in sections to indicate lawn, unmowed "meadow," vegetable garden, fish pond, etc. The boys created the image in Corel Draw. I think it came out great!

Bryozoa (not aliens)

If you walked down our local canal, you would see strange growths on some of the sticks underwater. Before you hit the panic button, you may want to know out that these are non-alien animals called Bryozoa.

Bryozoa are small coral-like animals that build the strange pods in order to filter out the food they need in the water. The majority of bryozoans are marine, consisting of several thousand species. But one class, the Phylactolaemata, is found exclusively in fresh water. (These are the strange pods that you would see in your streams.) Bryozoa have also been seen in fossils dating back to 354 million years ago.

Recently we got one from our local canal to study, though we had some trouble getting it out. We had to find one that was small enough to fit in our jar, and close enough to shore to reach. (We didn't know how deep the canal was!) The colony we picked was one of two attached to a loose branch that we were able to pull on shore. Then we had to break it off to fit it in the jar. (Mom forgot her Swiss Army knife.) We made sure to fill up the jar with the water it came out of -- plus an extra container -- and carried it home carefully.

Up close, we could see that the pod was made up of clear jelly-like substance with spots all over the surface. The next day we took samples from our jar and looked at them under the microscope. First we looked at some jelly that was stuck to the stick, where the larger colony broke off. It was yellow and cloudy, but we couldn't see anything moving or otherwise interesting.

Then we used a pipette to suck up one of the small, dark green dots around the edge of the jar. (See slide on left.) Under the microscope we could see a dark center, a lighter ring, and little hooked feet sticking out all around. (Closeup on right.) This is a statoblast, which is used by the Bryozoa for reproduction. The statoblast can survive the winter and grow a new colony in the spring. According to this site, the jelly and everyone attached dissolves in cold water.

We also took scrapings from the pod itself. We saw all kinds of things moving around. Here are some of them:

We're wondering if the yellow things in the middle are the actual polyps. Here is a website with great microscopic photos and videos of Pectinatella magnifica. What do you think?

Where we've been...

All the action the last couple weeks has been over at the Flickr page, where we've been uploading photos taken for our 100 Species project. As of Thursday we were up to 82, I believe, and I will try to get the photos up in the next few days.

But I did want to share our easy way of identifying species once we've got a decent photo. I've been bringing up the photo on our Flickr page, then opening a new tab and doing a Google Image search using the written description of the organism in question. Then I go back and forth between the tabs comparing photos. This has worked very quickly in several cases so far.

Along with its appearance, it is often helpful to add where it was found to the search words. For instance, I just typed in "green frog brown spots" and then added "New York" when the first listings to come up were in Europe and California.

(Side note: I'm still working on getting the kids to take photos that are useful for identification and look nice. They need a shot of the whole plant, not just the flower or the fruit, and they need reminding about focus, watching out for shadows and ugly stuff in the background. It would help if our lawn wasn't so unkempt, of course.)

For the time being I am saving information I find about the species, including URLs, in the photo descriptions on Flickr. (John has uploaded some of the photos, which explains some of the silly captions.) Eventually we will put photos, descriptions, etc. together in a printed report, and if I can find a good way to do it online as well.

Take a look at our page, and if you have identifications for anything that still has a generic "pink flower" kind of title, feel free to put the name and any useful info in the comments. Thanks!

Our 100 Species Backyard Survey Project

This is the worksheet I made up for our inaugural Biology project. I expect it to take 2-3 weeks.

1. Make a map of the backyard with landmarks (trees, fence posts, etc.). (You can do the front yard too.) Divide into sections and label each section. Use these section labels in the Place column.
2. Take a small notebook and number the pages 1-100.
3. Get a pen and the camera.
4. Working together, covering one section at a time, go around and catalogue each different time of life form you see. Note whether it is animal, plant, fungus or simpler forms (algae, slime mold, etc.) in the Type column.
5. As you identify each new species:
1. Take a photograph of it;
2. Fill out the chart below;
3. Mark where you found it by putting a number on the map;
4. Write a description of it on the numbered page in the notebook.
6. See how long it takes to come up with 100 different species.
7. Microscopic species count. You can take a sample of pond water inside to observe under the microscope. Since taking photos may not work, you will have to draw a diagram.
8. If you don’t know the name of something, look it up later using the photo and description.
9. When you are finished, analyze the data. Some questions to ask:
1. Where were the most living things found?
2. Were certain types found grouped together?
3. Which kinds seemed to be interdependent (eg, ladybugs and corn)?
10. Finally, put all the information together in a book.

I also made up a chart for them to fill in. When everything's entered on the computer, we can analyze the data.

	Date	Time	Place	Type	Name
1
2
3

A note on what I'm trying to do with this year's homeschooling biology studies:

Looking at the labs required by New York State (just to get some idea of what the high schools are doing), I discovered that not all labs are done in the laboratory! Some are just simulations, or thought experiments. And of course many of the labs are designed so that data is plugged in and results extracted in an identical format for every student. So I'm hoping that our informal observations and experiments will be just as useful as what the kids would have done in school.

I am speaking here, too, as someone who stayed home "sick" from public school whenever we were supposed to do a dissection! About which more in later posts...

Starting Off: A Field Survey

Although I haven't put together my "teaching plan" for the year, I thought I'd start off with a survey of what's living in our backyard. This year I left several patches of our backyard unmowed so that they would grow into meadow. I found many of the bugs I used in my summer Bug House library program just in our meadows. There is also a wealth of plants, which I'd like to document before the autumn die-off.

I'm not sure we're up to it, but here's an incentive to find out what lives in your neighborhood. It's called The 100-Species Challenge and it comes from scsour's weblog. The rules are below, and the idea is to photograph each plant species you come across in your area, identify it, list what you already knew about it and then something new that you learned. An entry doesn't count until it's identified, which means it would take me a long time to get to 100! However, I will have the kids help me start photographing the plants we find (and probably the animals, fungi, etc. as well) and start keeping a list.

1. Participants should include a copy of these rules and a link to this entry in their initial blog post about the challenge. I will make a sidebar list of anyone who notifies me that they are participating in the Challenge.

2. Participants should keep a list of all plant species they can name, either by common or scientific name, that are living within walking distance of the participant's home. The list should be numbered, and should appear in every blog entry about the challenge, or in a sidebar.

3. Participants are encouraged to give detailed information about the plants they can name in the first post in which that plant appears. My format will be as follows: the numbered list, with plants making their first appearance on the list in bold; each plant making its first appearance will then have a photograph taken by me, where possible, a list of information I already knew about the plant, and a list of information I learned subsequent to starting this challenge, and a list of information I'd like to know. (See below for an example.) This format is not obligatory, however, and participants can adapt this portion of the challenge to their needs and desires.

4. Participants are encouraged to make it possible for visitors to their blog to find easily all 100-Species-Challenge blog posts. This can be done either by tagging these posts, by ending every post on the challenge with a link to your previous post on the challenge, or by some method which surpasses my technological ability and creativity.

5. Participants may post pictures of plants they are unable to identify, or are unable to identify with precision. They should not include these plants in the numbered list until they are able to identify it with relative precision. Each participant shall determine the level of precision that is acceptable to her; however, being able to distinguish between plants that have different common names should be a bare minimum.

6. Different varieties of the same species shall not count as different entries (e.g., Celebrity Tomato and Roma Tomato should not be separate entries); however, different species which share a common name be separate if the participant is able to distinguish between them (e.g., camillia japonica and camillia sassanquaif the participant can distinguish the two--"camillia" if not).

7. Participants may take as long as they like to complete the challenge. You can make it as quick or as detailed a project as you like. I'm planning to blog a minimum of two plants per week, complete with pictures and descriptions as below, which could take me up to a year. But you can do it in whatever level of detail you like.