Day 6: A bird in the hand and noisy worms

Today was an interesting day animal-wise. First off, I will start with an event that happened while I was in the Geology Department this afternoon. One of the professors came by and told me there was a bird trapped in the computer lab. I ran down to see and sure enough, there it was, a little black Starling. I went down to the janitor's closet and got a step-ladder, and climbed up to the ledge where the bird was sitting. After a few minutes of chasing the bird from one end of the ledge to the other, climbing down and moving the ladder each time, I eventually corralled the bird behind one of the shades from where I was able to grab it. Before I let it out one of the little windows out in the hall, I snapped a picture of the bird in my hand. The whole incident ended on a rather funny note as when I let the bird go out the window, it took off and flew straight away from the building not stopping to rest in a tree or anything...it flew until I couldn't see it anymore at all. I guess it wanted to get as far away from the Wooster Science Building as fas as it could.

Tonight when I got home I again grabbed my camera, net, and headlamp and trudged down to the pond to see what I could see. The water had gone down a bit more and some of the leaves that were previously underwater were now lining the shore. There was a distinct smell coming from these leaves; it smelled like fall. While walking down to the pond I saw some rather large rodent swimming in the pond. I stopped fast for fear it was a beaver and would slap its tail, but either it was a muskrat or it was a rather tame beaver. I found a few fish along the edge of the pond as well as a rather large dead one a few feet from the shore. Not sure what killed it. It definitely wasn't one I had caught in my net b/c I'd never caught one that big. I also heard a number of Pickerel Frogs calling and realized that it's call goes both up and down in tone, that clears that one up.

From here I decided I would walk around in the unmowed portion of the lawn. At first I noticed a number of little reflections down in the grass and figured they were from dew on the blades of grass, but then some of them started to move as I shown my light on them. Turns out most of them were spider eyes from a number of different types of spiders. Now, as I was crouching down in the grass looking at the spiders I started to hear a large number of small noises that were coming from the grass made by blades of grass and dry leaves passing by one another. At first I thought all these noises were coming from the spiders walking around, but it wasn't for

another 15 minutes or so that I figured out exactly what was making the sounds.

At this point I saw a little flash of reflectance down in the grass and I crouched down to move some leaves away to see what it was. As I had my hand down in the grass something happened that almost made me shout...a tiny little cricket frog or peeper jumped right onto my hand. I tell you what, that little fellow startled the wind right out of me! From here I walked over towards the main stream of Black Creek to see if I could find any tree toads. I was looking around and happed to see some reflecting dots rather high (~30') up in a tree nearby. After I sneaked closer up to the tree I realized

it was a rather large Raccoon. He was awake and was looking right at me as I moved around the long for the next 10 minutes or so. I was still in the grass and I kept hearing the little shuffling noises coming from the grass and I have to admit that it was really quite loud. It was at this point that I finally actually found out what was making the noises...it was earthworms! I never thought worms could make such a racket and I was quite surprised.

The last bit of experience tonight took place out by the inlet stream to our pond. Here I found

what I believe are two species of frogs: a large Mink Frog and a female Green Frog. The Green Frog I can ID as being female due to the special mottled markings on her lower sides. Along the stream I also saw a number of small snails and some more neat

spiders. I will check with my spider book up at school and come up with a list of what I think they were and edit the post later. In any event, one of the spider was a big one, maybe a Wolf Spider I think. This was a pretty fun night to be out and about my yard as it was quite warm and I got to see not only the pond life but the animals of the tall grass as well.