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Our Pond Photo Journal

March 27, 2000

We went to the pond on March 27, 2000. It was a little sunny and cold. The grass had grown on the island. The grass wasn't tall enough to camouflage the ducks' nests. The water in the big pond was low and it wasn't up on the shore.

This is a close-up picture of the red osier dogwood on the island.

The water in the big pond was low and it wasn't up on the shore. Some of the island doesn't have grass. There was some mud on the edge of the island.

This is a close-up picture of the trunk of the willow tree and some branches. This is a place where the ducks can build their nest and it will be camouflaged.

There were two mallard ducks on one part of the island. The female is standing on the island. The male is standing in the shallow water by the island.

There were four more mallard ducks on another part of the island. There were two female ducks standing on the island. One male duck was standing on the island. One male duck was standing on the shore. The two female ducks are sort of camouflaged on the island. You couldn't see them as well because they are brown like the ground. It's important for the female ducks to be camouflaged so that when they are sitting on their nests their enemy won't be able to see them.

We observed that there was a lot of bread pollution in the pond. Simone is pointing to the bread pollution. People threw whole pieces of bread into the pond because they thought the ducks like bread. The ducks didn't eat all the bread. The bread is dissolving in the water. Some of the pieces of bread were almost 5 inches long and three or four inches wide! WHAT A MESS !!!!!

These are close-up pictures of the bread pollution near the shore of the pond. On the picture above the water had kind of a coating from the bread that dissolved. In the picture below you can really see the coating of bread pollution by the shore.

Someone threw pieces of pizza crust into the pond!!

We are going to talk to Alan Davis at the City of Pullman about the bread pollution at the pond. People are throwing too much bread into the pond. When people feed bread to the ducks, the ducks will think that people will come everyday to feed them and they won't eat the natural food that is in the pond. The bread isn't good for the ducks. The city has asked us to design signs telling people not to feed bread to the ducks because it isn't healthy for the pond water or for the ducks. It's time to design those signs!

We also want to check the water for pollution. We want to do our macroinvertebrate study again to see if the water is still clean like it was in October, 1999.

We found a plastic bag that was thrown onto the shore of the big pond. If the ducks try to eat the plastic, it might make them sick. We need to have signs at the big pond telling people not to pollute the pond with trash.

We found some natural litter on the shore of the big pond. This is a close-up picture of a feather that some bird dropped at the pond.

We saw a paper bag floating in the little pond. We need signs at the little pond telling people not to pollute the pond with trash.

There were three ducks swimming together in the big pond. There are two female mallard ducks and one male mallard duck. The female mallard on the left is preening its feathers. Preening means to smooth up feathers. The female mallard on the right is ducking its head underwater to get food. The male mallard in the middle is swimming.

We saw this pair of ducks swimming together. The female is on the left. She has dark and light brown feathers. The male mallard is on the right. The male mallard duck has a green head with white and blackish-brown feathers on its body. We saw lots of male and female mallard ducks together at the big pond.

Here are some more ducks swimming in the big pond near the waterfall. There are some tree branches in the water.

This is a picture of a pool at the top of the waterfall. When the pool is filled with water, the water spills over the rocky waterfall and goes into the big pond.

There was just a little tiny puddle of water in the pool above the waterfall. So no water was going over the waterfall. In this picture you can see a part of the wood fence that keeps people from going into the pool above the waterfall.

A classmate is taking the temperature of the water in the big pond. In the top left corner of the picture, you can see part of the spillway where water from the big pond falls into the stream.

A classmate is writing down the temperature of the pond water. The temperature was 14 degrees Celsius which is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit. We also took the pH of the big pond water. The pH was 7.

This is the spillway where water from the big pond drops into the stream. There was no water spilling over the spillway at the time we were there.