Hardwood tree identification

I went on another walk today and decided to take pictures of a few different hardwoods that are found on my land. These trees are what most of the woods were made up of a couple hundred years ago. Hardwoods are all deciduous which means they loose there leaves in the winter unlike evergreens and most pines. Hardwoods range from Maples to Cherries to Williows. I have some pictures of a few Hard woods below and how to identify them.

This is a picture of a Black Cherry trees bark. This is  a very easy way to tell it is a black cherry as the bark is very dark and is chipping like flakes. These trees are very expensive hardwoods for two reasons one they have a unique wood color and 2 they usually don't grow straight for very long so it is hard to make lumber out of them. 

This is a picture of a Red Maple, The bark is smoother than that of an ash and makes as the tree gets older plates form on the bark. 

This a picture of a type of hawthorn most likely a Pear Hawthorn, but Hawthorns are very complicated to distinguish between others and a lot are varieties of the pear hawthorn I will just call this a Pear Hawthorn. Hawthorns are easily identifiable as they have HUGE thorns and are very sharp. 

A neat feature of the hawthorn is it's thorn. The northern Shrike is a predatory bird similar size to a jay and since they do not have a very strong ripping power with there beaks they sometimes use Hawthorns in order to skewer their prey and then tear it apart using the thorns as leverage.  

Also on my walk I decided to lay Stakes out for my Transect line as this will allow me to follow the path much more clearly than how I am currently able to. I am thinking of putting around 20-25 stakes on the transect and i'm not sure if I will tie a string around them or not. I am thinking of having the stakes represent spots where I put a meter square down and record the flora that I find there. This would make it very easy to keep a record on where I am plotting surveys. 

Pine trees spruces and tamarack identification

So today on my walk I was looking closely at pine trees and identifying them. Pines are usually an in between species during succession. Succession is a process from when a field goes back into being a forest, this is occurring quite substantially in New York as most of the family farms are out of business and those fields are going back to the way they were 200 years ago. Pine trees are first growth trees that come after bushes during the succession stages and this process is going on along the top of my hill. The most common pine here is a White pine and they are all over my land. Some other common types of Pines found around here are Red pine, Blue Spruce, Red Spruce, Eastern Hemlock. I took some pictures of a few different pines and spruces and I will show you how to identify them. 

This is a picture of a white pine, these trees can grow in a bunch of different ways in fields they are usually like this and a lot rounder then when they are found in the woods. This is because they have more space to grow and take advantage of it, they have evolved self pruning like many other pine trees, this is where if they do grow in the woods they lower branches die as they are pointless and would just waste energy, that is what make pines good for dry wood if you need a fire.

One way to identify the White pine and make sure it is not a red pine is that a White pine has a bundle of 5 needles as shown above. A red pine has a bundle of usually 3 but sometimes 2.  

This is a picture of a red pine they are more uncommon that of white pines but are still found through out central New York. The red pine is not as tall as the White pine but can get to 154 feet. The white pine used to be one of the tallest trees in the east measuring at 220 feet for average size but now there are hardly any that size as they were all cut down in order to have farms. 

This is a picture of the bark of a red pine. As you can see its is a brownish red color and is flaky this is an easy way to identify this tree.  

Happiness class entry

1) when do you feel most happy?
The times that I feel most happy is after completing a difficult physical or mental challenge.

2)React to the article
This article has some very interesting points on how to achieve happiness, most of which I agree with. When the author was talking about how if you start setting out goal for success you will most likely set the goals to high and not be able to complete them. This will cause the person the opposite of happiness as they feel that they have failed on a level, a point I can follow. I also agree with the chart that he made, where on one side is boredom and the other is stress, anxiety and that you have to have the right balance between being challenging yet still achievable.

3) Where are you on the flow chart?
I feel that right now on the flow chart I am between A3 and A4 so a little bit overwhelmed but not super overwhelmed. There is a lot of memorizing that I have been working on recently so I am feeling a bit stressed.

4) How has the changed throughout your project?
In the beginning it was very stressful trying to figure out where to setup the transect line have the excel sheets in order and now practicing identifying the flora and fauna is quite difficult. But once I am done with these aspects of the project I feel that I will have the perfect balance between challenge and boredom so making it to A 4 on the chart (the middle).

5) How can you achieve flow?
I can achieve flow by setting small achievable goals and by working on my project daily.

New camera trap spot, went on a walk.

With the sun shining and being nice for a while I went on a walk. I would call it a practice survey walk as I did keep records of a few things but after a while I decided that I was not in the mood for taking a whole lot of notes on the things I saw and just enjoy being outside. This weekend was long, on Friday my dad got a viral infection in his ear and it caused, and is causing him to be unbalanced and feel very nauseous. He had to go to the hospital earlier that day so that had put a damper on the day. Then later that night at about 10:30 my friends car broke down way out in the country. We ended up calling AAA and getting the car towed and I ended up back at my house at around 2:00. So not a great weekend and I was just enjoying being outside, so not a whole lot of data collected although I did take note of the bird species. I also setup my camera trap near a spot where there have been a lot of tracks near my pond. I've seen fox tracks and a few rabbit tracks near by so hopefully they will set it off. I will now leave you with a picture of a Fox Sparrow a spring and autumn migrant that summers up in the northern parts of Canada and summers in the southern part of the U.S. 

The snow is melting

The blanket of snow is finally retreating fast, look at the picture below and then look at the picture in the last post of my hill. This melt occurred in about 9 hours today, and it is looking perfect for the American Woodcock. This also means that I will be able to start my transect walks. I am glad winter is almost over and hopefully we will not get another 2 foot snow storm, but it is only march and I've seen snow here in may so we have a few more months. 

I gave some more thought today about my project on my bike ride and what this will entail is also taking pictures of the species I see. I know this won't be possible for everything but at least for the trees and stationary animals I will be able to take pictures of them. After this I will upload them to a different section of my blog and write details about how to identify these creatures, if I know some of their habits and when/ where I saw them. This will allow for people to see some of the stuff that I am doing and hopefully will entice them to read more about what I am doing.   

Waiting for the snow to melt

I have everything ready to start my transect walks, I have the transect all setup, I have the excel sheets all made, I know the basics of what I will be recording and now the last thing I need is the snow to melt. Right now my field is almost completely melted, or there are a lot more open spots. This is very cool for two reasons, one it means I will be able to start my walks, and two there is a very cool species of bird called a Wood Cock which is sort of like a Snipe as it has a long bill and looks a lot like a shore bird, but these birds have a very unique mating ritual. There ritual involves the male bird to make a few high pitch nasally eeezp, then the male flies up in the air about 200 feet and comes spiraling down making a very neat whizzing sound. So i'm excited for when these return, this is my first real sign that spring is just right around the corner. Anyways back to the snow melt, the only problem now is that even though the snow has melted on my hill this is only a section of my transect, the rest of it is in my woods. Since there is a lot more shade in the woods the snow has not melted a whole lot, I will take a picture of it soon. In some spots there is still about two feet of snow which makes walking really obnoxious and difficult. This won't last to much longer so all in all i'm anticipating going on my first entire transect walk in a week or two.

Picture of my hill on a march morning, it is melting.

Bike ride and thoughts

So when I got home today, I went on my first bike ride of the year. I checked all my gear, helmet, Under-Armour shirt, some shorts (hardest thing to find), and my camel back. Then I got my zune and made a playlist for the ride. So I started out on my path which is shown below.

On the ride I began to think of things that I want to accomplish with my project, many of which came from looking over the land and trying to identify the species of plants and trees as I whizzed by. So there was one goal that I thought about, fast identification of at least the major flora groups of the area. This will be done by many walks and having a field guide with me for these walks as I know I will need these references. Also on these walks I am anticipating a lot of quick glimpses of different species so I will have to hone down fast identifications of species instead of having an extended period of time to identify the animal. 

Later on in the bike ride I thought about why I had chose to do this project here are a few of the reasons. One is I am fascinated, and I have always been fascinated with natural history through out the world. I have spent many hours reading and watching different documentaries and books on this subject. I also love being outside, this is another thing I have had a very strong interest in since I was a little kid. So this project incorporates two of my favorite things together. That is one major reason why I chose to undertake this project. Another reason why I want to do the survey on my land is that I know the bird species very well around here but that is about it. I know the basics of most of the Mammals, Reptiles, and trees, a few bushes and flowers and almost nothing about the insect populations of central New York, so I would love to be able to walk through my woods and be able to identify most of the flora and fauna that I see. These were a few thoughts of mine on the first bike ride of the year, it was a very enjoyable way to finish the day.  

Bike loop of Caroline distance 10.3 miles, It took me about an hour to complete.

  

Excel spread sheets

I have finished making Excel spread sheets of the different, mammals, trees, amphibians, reptiles, and birds for my transect walks. The next step will begin to start walking my transect every 2 days. The snow has finally melted and it makes walking a whole lot easier, I am very excited about this as I will finally be able to start on the real hands on work for my project. 

The picture above is from today, march 13th, and you can see patches of soggy wet land on the hill. While the picture below was from March 7th and was right after a large snow storm. A lot of snow has melted these past few days which is good as it will allow my walks to be a whole lot easier. 

.

How to do a journal entry

Today in class, we talked about the previous projects we had read. Then talked about the positive and negative things about the project, most of the conversation revolved around journal entries. For every wise project you are required to have a journal, or blog, as a way to keep you on focus and relay your thoughts. Well this is the goal of the journal and after reading and hearing about other journals I realized a few things to keep in mind.
1) Try and show enthusiasm in journals as it allows them to be entertaining.
2) State your ideas clearly, this is very important as it can be hard to decipher someone else's thoughts.
3)  Have entries regularly, the journals that we saw in a few were very sporadic and would sometime skip a couple of weeks.
4) Have pictures or momentous in the journal.
These are a few things that I found important and I should keep in mind when I write entries.
For the first one, I feel that if i incorporate all the hardships that I go through it should keep most journals pretty interesting.
The second one is something that I hopefully will be able to keep in mind further down the line.
The third one is important, if you skip weeks you leave a lot out and will make the reader confused about what you are doing espeicaly when you begin talking about activities that you did in the past, but did not have a journal entry on them.
For the fourth one it just is another way to keep the reader of the entries in on your project, so for every entry now i'll post a picture or two.

For the picture of above this is one section of my transect which runs through a dense beech undergrowth and what I believe to be a few beech and ash trees. I did not look closely yet. 

This is taken at the same spot as the one above just zoomed in a bit more, there was some ice rain the day before and it left this cool shot. 

Excel spread sheets

I am currently working on making excel sheets for the different, bird, tree, bush and grass, mammal, and insect species that I see along my transect walks. This is taking quite a while, but I feel that it will be worth doing this instead of just jotting down the species on the walk for a few different reasons. One being that there are different sections on my transect, 15 different spots, and I will be recording data at each one of these, for everything I think except bird species.  I might have a running total for the bird species through the entire walk but specify if I saw it at which section. Another reason for making excel sheets is it will be a whole lot easier entering data on my computer, I can easily just type in the data to excel instead of doing something else. So, I have been working on these sheets for a while now and have the Mammals done and now I am working on the trees.

Cannon camera

On Saturday of last week, the 26th of February, I obtained a very nice Cannon Power shot camera. This was for my project and personal use later on, but I will be uploading pictures of my land to this blog when I go on my transect walks. But here are a few pictures that I have already taken.

Sample photo from Camera trap

So, as you can see it is very hard to distinct some animals out as they move. This one I am pretty sure is some type of mustelid (the weasel family), as you can see it's movement is sort of a slinky, trot thing. This is a common trait throughout the mustelid family so this picture could be a weasle, fisher, or something that I have no clue. So I have finally figured out the way to setup the camera in order to not take pictures of slight movements of twigs and branches. This means I can leave the trap out for many days instead of checking it daily. 

March 1st, Barn song / in class entry

Today, we have been asked to read another wise project from years past. This will allow us to see how the project is completed, what we can improve on which the previous person lacked, we can see what they did well and recreate it. Since we are looking at these other kids journals, end of the year assignments, and other different work assignments that we will have to be doing which will be an enormous benefit for our projects.
While in the library today we watched a previous wise student's project, which incorporated two different projects together. Scott who directed the documentary followed another student, Austin who was making a barn. It was very interesting to watch this as I could relate to some of the stuff that Austin has done. I cut all of my own fire wood, and a few years back my dad brother and I made a cabin in the middle of our woods which incorporated some of the things that Austin had to do. So that was very interesting to be able to watch and relate to. This also accurately shows how long, and difficult the projects will end up from some things that we have to do will take a much longer time than what we would expect. I'm sure we have already found this out. For example the camera trap which I had to setup took a good 6 hours for something I thought that would take about 30 minutes.
Overall though this has motivated me even more as we have seen the out come of a great project, which has inspired me to work hard and hopefully have one that fulfills my expectations and goals like the project we just watched.