Diario de torourke24

I started out today intending for the theme of my nature walk to be fungi. I figured it's a rainy day and it kinda just seemed like a fungi type of day. I only found two mushrooms, so the rest of my observations are of plants and lichen. I found a really cool pine tree forest near my house where I was walking around- MT. Ninham State Park- it has a really neat system of mountain biking trails that can also be used for hiking. In the middle of this pine tree forest I saw an angiosperm type tree growing, which I thought was interesting when the rest of the trees were gymnosperms.

These observations were taken across Marco Island in Florida while on vacation. It was cool to see red algae which we discussed in class. The Ruddy Turnstones all looked very similar to each other although there were slight differences in their feather coloring. I would assume these were the same species but it was too difficult to obtain an up close photo of each of them for iNaturalist. It was really cool to see the Brown Pelicans feeding, as they would do a nose dive into the water and come back up with a fish. My favorite organism that I saw was the burrowing owl. These owls are on every street corner in Marco Island. After taking a walk at night and approaching one of these owls for a picture, it hissed at me, likely because it was protecting its young. After that I left the owls alone and observed them making hoo noises from a distance. These owls are much different from the rather large owls (by comparison) that we see here in the Northeast. The weather was beautiful, 80 degrees and sunny.