As we arrived at the entrance to the marsh I was in a better mood than last time as I was well rested and the sun was covered by overcast, paired with a very gentle drizzle of rain, my favorite kind of weather. The local bird population seems to enjoy it too as every pond and puddle we passed was chocked full of all kinds of waterfowl and seabirds of one kind or another. The rain also seems to keep the insects at bay so thats a plus. As per usually, no Avocets within viewing distance but we've kind of come to accept it at this point. Our willow seems to be completely covered in leaves at this point and is slowly dropping its flowers, now spent of pollen. The foliage is actually beginning to overtake the base of our Willow and is making rather difficult to get our canopy and branch pictures since some of them have thorns. We finally pulled back the plants, got our pictures and with our usually rounds complete, we left for home
I reluctantly hauled myself down to the marsh, the sun was determined to make its presents known and I was tired so I really wasn't looking forward to the hike. The bugs all over the marsh were out in force and absolutely refused to leave me alone, at least it's not mosquitoes. We again didn't spot any Avocets and with our schedule, I'm beginning to think we're not going to. The local flora seems to have exploded overnight, everything is greener and what was previously ankle hight grass is now knee high overgrowth with wildflowers blooming in many places. Our Willow also seems to have been caught up in the growth spurt and has gone from barely any leaves to mostly covered and every flower on the tree is practically raining pollen. I don't know who spilled what in the water supply but clearly the plants like it. After fighting off the gnats and recording the new data we started our walk back, snapping pictures along the way.
Oliver and I arrived around 2 and started to jot down whatever we could make seem relevant into our field log, I don't know how he faired but I'm finding it hard to drum up anything worth writing down so my notes feel pretty sparse. Luckily I didn't have that problem for long as another massive flock of Geese cruised overhead, easily 100 strong. It seems Geese might be a recurring theme in our marsh trips. Our Willow tree actually has started sprouting flowers and releasing a little bit of pollen. No new leaves except the same group of like 4, though they are starting to turn reddish. Similar to our last trip we couldn't find any Avocets, though there were plenty of other birds all over the ponds. I imagine it has something to do with us only showing up at low tide but its the only time our schedules really allow so we'll just have to work with it. After snapping a few pictures and recording the last bit of data we started our hike back to campus.
This was our first time heading down to the marsh on our own and trying to go through the process by ourselves. There was far less sun than the last time and the clouds made the walk a little less taxing with our backpacks trapping all the heat in. We saw and absolutely insane amount of Geese flying overhead before they landed in a clearing justo outside the marsh's outskirts, I would guess well over 100 in just that flock, not counting several smaller ones we spotted on our walk. We saw some interesting birds hanging out in the lake but no Avocets as far as we could tell. Our tree didn't change much since our last visit, still bare and uninteresting. After one last sweep for any Avocets we made our way back to campus.
This is our first attempt to head to the Arcata Marsh and observe our soon to be assigned trees and any Avocets we can find. There were some Canadian Geese flying overhead and I was impressed by the sheer variety of life this place is home to. Weather was ok but it was a little sunny for my taste, especially since i brought my jacket and that didn't exactly help things. We actually got to see some Avocets on this trip which was a pleasant surprise, I didn't expect things to go this smoothly the first time out. After we all eventually made our way back to the entrance we all piled back onto the buses and drove back to campus. I'm not really sure what else to put on here.
