Pond dipping
We had a blast in our nature class today. We spent almost no time at all in the classroom. We only touched on the fact that you can learn about how healthy a pond or lake is by seeing which critters are living in it. Miss Christen was hoping we would find some mayfly larvae or some gilled snails that are completely pollution intolerant, because that would mean that we have a very healthy, clean pond.
We used the same nets that we used last week but we scooped the contents into these buckets. After letting them settle for a bit, we would search for life. Then, using the spoons, we would capture the creatures and put them into the ice cube trays for further inspection.
It’s way more fun to work with a friend.
Here is a photo of some of our earlier finds: two tadpoles, mayfly larvae, damselfly larvae, and we also caught a minnow which we let go. We also found a cricket frog, a water scorpion, a gilled snail (yeah!), and a crawdad!
One of the most interesting things we learned was that crawdads are so tough that they used to use them in medieval times to create a shield of armor for men who couldn’t afford a traditional one. They were known as “Douvner Doublets.”
This is the water scorpion that we found. They are one of the pond’s predators. They look a lot like a praying mantis in the water. But these little guys will actually eat the tadpoles that we found.
And this is a picture of a gilled snail. Because of the presence of this guy and the mayfly larvae, we were able to determine that our pond is pollution-free.
GB and I enjoyed this class so much that we are going to try to make our own net and go pond dipping in our own neighborhood to test the water quality.
I love reading your blog. You make it sound so much better than I do! We had fun in this class too!
Comment by Shea — April 21, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
What a terrific class! I think we’ll have to try that with our nature group sometime. But, how would we identify the critters? Do you know of a good pond life book?
Comment by Dana — April 27, 2008 @ 9:10 pm