manuelakriemler's Journal

For Thanksgiving break, my family and I went to Singapore. Singapore is so beautiful with tons of wildlife that I do not see in the US. They dedicate a lot of land to preserving nature on the island. On Thursday, Nov. 24, I took a walk with my family to Windsor nature park. It was a beautiful day with 85-degree weather and the sky was cloudy when I began my walk but cleared up towards the end. It had so much greenery and some brightly colored plants. I thought I would not be able to see many animals/insects, but to my surprise, I encountered many on my walk. On the way to the park, we ran into a peacock walking through the sidewalk. You can't tell in the photo, but there were baby peacocks trailing behind the parent bird. It was surprising that the peacock was not startled by the multide of people and just casually walked by. It was really cool to see! I also spotted another bird with yellow feet that I had never seen before. These birds are examples of vertebrate species. I also saw a flying cockroach and a caterpillar. I saw several of these caterpillars all over Singapore. They both belong to the phylum Arthropoda. It was easy to spot their segmented body, exoskeleton, and appendages. It was interesting to see how different these two insects are.

My nature walk took place on October 19, 2022. It was a beautiful sunny day, so I decided to take a walk along the Reservoir by BC campus. The weather was around 50-60 degrees F and it was a little windy out, so it felt colder than it was. I have not done my nature walk here yet and I was surprised by how many different types of plants I found. I saw a lot of angiosperms (flowering plants) that looked like tiny little white flowers but you could tell they were different species. The Great Mullein that I saw is also an angiosperm, as well as the Ampelopsis. The berries that grew on the ampelopsis tree were really unique because they ranged from purples and blues. I also saw Bryophyta in the presence of mosses on trees. It was very interesting that even in the same plant group, species can look very different from one another.

Today, I walked to Houghton Garden with a fellow Eco and Evo classmate. It has been raining all day, but thankfully it stopped right before I took my walk. Because of the rain, it was overcast and very humid out. The garden was very beautiful and it did not feel like I was so close to campus. The theme of this nature walk was fungi and I was not hopeful that we would find many. As soon as we started walking, I noticed a lot of biodiversity in this garden environment, including many types of trees, greenery, and flowers. I also saw some squirrels and ducks, but pictures were hard to capture. When I spotted my first mushroom, I realized that they blend in really well with the environment, which is why it was hard to find. After this, I started noticing the fungi a lot more and I was able to capture pictures of many different species of fungi. They all look so different from each other and it was fascinating to see how prevalent they were in this environment.

Today, I went on my first nature walk through the pine tree reserve close to the BC campus. The weather outside was overcast and a temperature of about 65 degrees F and a little windy. My sister just came in town for family weekend and I decided to take her with me on my walk around the beautiful reserve. We had a great time looking at different plants and insects we saw on our walk. I noticed the many tall pine trees and they were all slightly different from one another. I also saw many types of flowers and a lot of different species of bees drinking nectar from the flowers. I spent a lot of time trying to get a good picture of the bees because they would fly quickly from flower to flower, but I think I managed to get a good shot. I had a great experience overall and I can’t wait for my next walk!