Signs of Spring - Site Observation Day 6

On Wednesday, we went for a walk to find signs of Spring. It should not be Spring already, I haven't gotten to go sledding!!

Our first site was near the trees outside the side doors of the high school. The trees had small red buds on the branches. The sunlight was penetrating my cool party sunglasses (Happy Birthday, again, Chelsea!). The school was blocking the sun from shining on the cute buds. We heard a crow or raven and when we looked around it was up on a parking lot lamp, probably watching us (creeper!). There was a light breeze, but it was perfect weather because while the breeze cooled you off, the sun warmed you up.

To reach the second site, we had to go down the road towards the bus garage and take a left before the gate. There were some woody budding trees mixed with some coniferous ones. The mostly clear sky was super duper blue! The sun still hurt my eyeballs, but no hard feelings. A K-9 car went by and the dog started barking, but other than that it was too loud to hear anything but leaves underfoot. The bothersome wind was blowing my hair all in my face which got kind of annoying when I was trying to take my pictures. There was a cute little green bud on one of the trees:

The third site was along the side of the pond. In the woods before we got there and beside the pond we found these cool seed strand things. There was a very obvious sign of Spring; the geese we've seen practically every time we've gone outside were gone-they've migrated. Another sign of spring was this larvae thing on a little tree. The sunlight was reflecting off the geese-less water and I almost got a really pretty, but stalkerish, picture of Olivia when she wasn't paying attention (Chelsea can back me up). The grasses near the pond and the pond water were moving in the wind. Then, I heard a cricket, but for some reason it stopped when Ms. Richardson started talking on her phone. I could hear dead, dried up leaves crinkling together in the tops of the trees. I started to regret wearing my black jacket because the sun was making me burn up.

Site four was a little ways up in the woods. Ms. Richardson showed us some plants on the forest floor that had new red branches (a sign of Spring). The rest of the plant was brown because it was old growth. The smallest spider I have ever seen was at this site. It was so small that no one could get a focused picture of it. Ms. Richardson tried to get everyone to be quiet for a little while so we could hear the forest come back to life. Mostly, I could just hear leaves rustling and crunching when people shifted their feet. There was no breeze here and mainly shade so it felt mighty comfy, but also like something bad was about to happen because I heard that before a tornado hits, everything gets really still. Then, when we were heading back to school, we passed a crawdad chimney.