Wood Lake Nature Center - Our First Pond Study

The kids and I decided to take a walk at the Wood Lake Nature Center this afternoon. We have been itching to get a pond water sample ever since we got our Microscope.

I'll tell you about our walk, but first a little celebration...
Emily fell asleep in the van on the way to Wood Lake (of course). When we got there I got her out of the car seat, into her Ergo carrier, and onto my back. And she stayed asleep! Yay me!

Ok, back to the walk, sorry about that interruption... it was just a big deal for us!

We love Wood Lake. You just never know what you might see there! And this visit was no exception. We got to see a couple of mama Mallard Ducks with their babies in tow. This one was watching over the chicks as they took a rest in the sunshine...

We saw one other mama Mallard standing on the trail. As we walked up I told Tyler to stop for a second, and sure enough up over the bank came a chick. Mama escorted it across the trail and then we continued on our walk. I told Tyler that must be the Duck Crossing. :)
We wonder why we didn't see any male Mallards?

We saw a lot of other birds as well... Red-Winged Blackbirds, Robins, Grackles, a Cardinal, and a Canadian Goose... We also saw a couple of Mourning Doves in the trail ahead of us at one point. This was our first time seeing this bird species. I will have to remember to add it to our Bird List.

There were Dragonflies everywhere! Well, at least we thought there were Dragonflies everywhere. It turns out they weren't all Dragonflies. These Blue Ringtail Damselflies were all over the place there. So beautiful...

We walked onto the floating boardwalk and it was time to gather our pond water sample. Tyler picked a good spot and dipped our jar into the pond...

Looks like he got a good pond sample... we got water, critters, and seaweed! See?

As soon as he stood up and we peeked into the jar of water we could see two little "bugs" swimming around. They were bright RED... their bodies were perfect circles with little legs sticking out all around. These were fun to look at under the microscope when we got home. We found out that they have really hairy legs! We have identified them as Eylais using a book I got from PaperbackSwap called Adventures with a Microscope. Great book, by the way! It turns out they are a water-mite... and those hairs on their legs? They use them for swimming.

The other two creatures we found in our jar haven't been identified yet...

The first one was also visible with the naked eye. It appeared to be a tiny little black water beetle of some sort. When we viewed it under our microscope, though, it looked quite odd! It still looked like a beetle, but it had a long elephant-like nose!! Very strange looking!

The other creatures were very interesting and we found ourselves observing them for quite some time. There were two of them together on our slide. They were a worm of some sort, we think. They appeared to be a clear jelly-like substance that we could see through. We could see several spots on them, like something was in the "jelly". Some of the spots were black and some were reddish in color. Their appearance wasn't the only interesting thing about them though. They were on (or maybe even attached to) opposite sides of a piece of seaweed, and they would stretch out once in awhile around the edge of the weed and bump "noses" with each other. We have no clue what exactly they were, but they were very fun and cool to watch.

Tyler thought it was all very cool looking. I think the pond creatures look like something from outer space or a science fiction movie or something!! Its so strange to think that there are millions more like them, and some even odder looking, swimming in that pond!

As I was checking these things out I was so wishing I had a way to share what we were seeing with you. I began to wonder what would happen if I took a photo through the microscope lens with my digital camera. Hmmm... I decided to try it. They didn't turn out real great, but its sort of interesting. There might be a way to play with it and get them better too. Here are the photos of the "elephant-nosed beetle" and one of the "jelly worms"...

We had a fun time with our microscope (Thanks Dad!) today. We can't wait to look at more interesting things with it!