Scoping Out

Scoping Out

April 25, 2013

It had been a long time since I had used my scopes.  In fact, I think it was years ago when my daughter and I used them for home school Science.   I enjoyed bringing my old friends out from their dark storage cabinet.  I had spent many content hours with scopes in college, peering at rotifers, insect tarsi, the bristles on seeds, and figuring out how many ovules a certain flower had.  

First, I used my compound microscope to examine water samples.  The first thing I discovered was that my slide-making skills had slipped over time, but I was glad to practice making them again.

I needed to look at the samples of water I had taken back on March 27.  The jar had been sitting on my desk since then (needless to say, April had been a full and tedious month).  I knew that if there had been anything alive in there, it was likely dead by now.  So, mostly I saw broken bits of dead stuff – strands, blobs, and all sorts of old cellular debris.  If it was larger, I could have done an interesting collage.  I found these bits to be hard to recognize, though a more currently skilled person could, no doubt, discern something from it.  It was interesting, nonetheless.

Then it was on to a fresh, live sample.

I made three slides from the jar of fresh water, and eventually used increasing magnification on each one. 

I found cellular debris, but also bright blue-green strands of algae cells.  Color, at last!

Then I found many Paramecia darting about, their many cilia moving as something between fluttering and undulation.  Movement, at last!  I could also see their nuclei and other parts within their unicellular bodies, and recalled the first time I was able to view these through a microscope in high school Biology.

  Drawing from The Observer's Book of Pond Life by John Clegg; Frederick Warne and Co., Ltd.; 1972

There were other things I did not recognize, but they were not moving or colorful.

Next, I got out my beloved dissecting scope to look at the mud samples.  I put a sample of mud inside a white jar lid (an improvisation, since my examination disk seemed to be missing) and spread it around.  I added a little water to thin it out, but that may have been unscientific of me.  I really do need to get myself a fresh supply of distilled water.

Under the stereoscope and my watchful eye, I used a probe to move things around. 

What I saw was:  sediment.  Grains of sediment.  And water, of course.  And some debris such as bits of dead leaves and sticks – but no evidence of anything breaking them down.

Not much action here.

So, what are my conclusions after my first adventure with Cottonwood Pond water and mud, and the microscopes?

1.                  I am impatient.  I want things to happen before they really can.  I want to see things munching, scraping, moving about, breaking down matter, contributing to the development of this pond.  But, it takes more time than what it has had.  Isn't is similar to this wheelbarrow full of rain water?

The wheelbarrow filled up from successive rains.  Inside the water are a couple of corn husks that blew in from a nearby compost pile.  I don't expect the husks, the water, or the bottom of the wheelbarrow to be exhibiting life yet, so I shouldn't expect so much from my little pond just yet, either.

2.                  Life is, indeed, starting up.  There are, at least, Paramecia and blue-green algae in the water, and probably more things that I didn't recognize.  With so much going on around the pond, and with increasing temperatures, as well as well as increasing numbers of daylight hours, things will be happening.  The frogs have told me so.

3.                  I need to do some things in the near future:

a.  make a fabric scoop net to sweep through the water and see what I find that way.

b.  gather or make sieves for examining mud.

c.  make a viewer for peering into water (and something to lie on top of while doing so)

d.  learn more about how ponds develop, cycles in a pond, the progression and web of life in a pond

e.  locate my information and pictures of fresh water organisms (from unicellular on up) or locate other sources to use

f.  examine the detritus more closely

g. examine the algae more closely

h.  examine stuff from the seep

I.  get thermometers for measuring air and water temperature, and take the temperatures every time I visit the pond.

I  hope  the frogs that visit Cottonwood Pond will start calling so that I can recognize them (since they jump into the water too quickly).  I hope I even find frog eggs, or tadpoles.  I hope I find more squiggly things.  I hope something nests in the root ball. 

Oops – there I go again – being impatient!!