PeterLab

Microscope time, February 11th & 9th

In January, we scooped up some lake water and sediment samples near the mouth of Hoisington Brook in Westport, NY. We looked at it under the microscope and there wasn't much to see. We left it in a clean fish tank for a few weeks and we same many microorganisms including algae, paremeciums, vorticella, and some things that look like egg cases. 

This is a video of a paramecium feeding on algae.  There are also a couple of voticella at the beginning. The paramecium and some other organisms were found in a water sample from Lake Champlain.

These are some kind of egg cases.

 

Here is a video of a vorticella:

Tracking #1

[MAP]

On Tuesday, we went to the shoreline down by Hoisington Brook near the beaver lodges with D T-T, and we saw lots of tracks in the snow, including

• grey squirrel tracks
• red fox tracks and urine marker
• unidentified small bird tracks 
• great blue heron tracks

We saw a great blue heron and many ducks.

Fox tracks:

Grey squirrel tracks

Bird tracks crossing fox tracks:

 

Great blue heron tracks and my footprints

We didn't see any beaver tracks, but we did see small trees that has been gnawed by beavers.

While we were out we took sediment and water samples to try to breed copepods with.

We checked the tracks against the listing in Scats and Tracks of the Northeast: A Field Guide to the Signs of Seventy Wildlife Species by James C. Halfpenny and Jim Bruchac.

Today, after the snow storm, we went out for a walk and looked for animal tracks in the same area. The fox didn't seem to have been around, but there were definitely a lot of gull tracks at the mouth of Hoisington Brook.

We didn't see any heron tracks, but we did see the heron.

I think the same one has lived down there for years. I wrote a poem about the heron that hangs out at the mouth of the brook a few years ago.

Trying to culture our own copepods

We got some instructions on how to find copepods in the winter, and so we have gotten out an old fish tank and put small flower pots filled with Lake Champlain sediment from the mouth of Hoisington Brook -- some from beaver lodge #1 and some from the nearby sandbar -- and some lake water into the fish tank. It would work better if we had an air stone, which we hope to get soon. We don't see any copepods yet, but we're hoping.

beaver lodge in the snow, 12/14/10

It snowed a lot today and now the beaver lodge is covered in snow and surrounded by ice.

Photo by Peter Hartwell.

Hoisington Brook Beaver Lodge, December 13, 2010

Today we took my puppy for a walk but ended up taking my cat for a walk, too.

We went down to where Hoisington Brook empties into Lake Champlain to look at the beaver lodge there. (

There seemed to be an area next to the Beaver lodge where the mud had been dug away from the bank. It looked like the beavers had used the mud from the dug up area to pile on the beaver lodge. The water was very high because it has been raining. The beaver lodge was very wet. The beaver lodge seemed like it had been soaked all over from the rain. There was also some ice by the edges of Hoisington Brook because it has been getting so cold in December.

From our livingroom we can see that there is a strong current leading a lot of the mud out into the lake and around the shore to the right. From the way the ice has formed on the surface, it looks like there is a partial beaver dam at the mouth of Hoisington Brook. Next to the beaver lodge there are branches with beaver tooth marks on it.

The Brook is very brown and muddy right now and the current is rushing.

I think there is ice on Hoisington Brook because it got down to 1 degree F a few days ago. 

First observations

I. In Mrs. Loher's room I looked through the microscope at some of the water from the tank with the water bug. At first I had the microscope focused so I could see the cells of the duckweed which looked like -- instead of being squares -- they looked like circles. And then I noticed that whatever the little creatures were in the water, they could somehow move around through what looked like jet propulsion and had small little tails. I could faintly see what looked like their internal organs, but it was kind of hard.

II. There are two beaver lodges by my house. One is right by the mouth of Hoisington Brook, and the other is in a swamp out back of and old red house near us. We can see the one by the brook from our living room.  The one by the brook washes away sometimes when the brook gets too strong. Last spring I saw one of the beavers probably from the swamp over by the marina. I have also seen muskrats and minks and many other creatures near the marina.

Beaver lodge #1 (MAP)

 

Beaver lodge #2 (MAP)