James Farley

Underwood

11/8/07

D5

Log- National Wildlife Refuge

Going to the National Wildlife refuge at Occoquan Bay was a very rich and memorable experience. Upon arrival, the students got out to observe some of the bird wildlife found by the small man-made lake. Among many species I saw a crow, mockingbird, blue-jay, sparrow and morning dove. The environment in which this wildlife lived in consisted of brush lands with small shrubbery vegetation and some small trees.

Each of these birds had different characteristics and forms of movement. The crow was large and black. I found the crows hunting technique to be very clever. The crow will peck the eyes of its prey out and then wait its food source to die. In addition, the mockingbird has the distinct ability to mimic and bird call that it hears. This may serve as a natural defense mechanism to distract prey by distorting the song and thus confusing the predator. It was interesting to note the beauty and interactive audio ability of each of the birds co-existing in the environment together.

While on the trip, I learned that Occoquan Bay was formally a U.S. Army lab testing site. I also learned that a significant amount of clean-up and human intervention occurred in order to restore and clean up the land to make it habitable for wildlife habitation. I learned that trees are protected against low temperature fires and that when a natural forest fire occurs; it does so to cleanse and remove the lower brush. Fire is not a natural cleanser and regulator of the forest. From this fact, I am know able to distinguish between natural and man vegetation.

After the initial bird watching and wildlife observation we went to a man-made pond built by the army. I learned that there were fish in the pond; the question was how they got there. The two main theories were that the army got bored and dumped fish in order to amuse themselves or the fish got to the pond because in the course of migration, the birds went from water source to water source carries eggs on their feet. Regardless of the theories presented, the source of origin of the fish in the pond still exists.