Sun July 21, 2024

12:51 pm

Weather: Sunny, Mid 70's, light breeze, perfect temperature in the shade. As it got later in the afternoon the bugs came out and started biting much more. 

Sound: Chickens from the land owners coop, various bird calls (will idenity tomorrow with a app), lawn mower, distant cars, small waterfall of the stream, some loud bug sound (I'm not sure if they are crickets/cicadas/katydids)

Sight: There were very high banks along the stream which I assume was from the flooding from the past year because of the many times I have visited this stream these were by far the highest I had seen. At the end of the stream there is a tunnel which funnels the stream into Otter Creek and the water around there is very still. There are broken bridges which were also from the flooding but the debris was not in the stream. there were high piles of silt on the right side and very high banks on the left while facing downstream. There is lots of trees and bushes. From my point of view there were 3 main ripple points and 3 slow 'pond' points. I also saw some small fish near the bottom of the waterfall. 

Today the weather was super nice and that made the experience a lot better. I really enjoyed todays data collections, I kinda just got to explore and examine my site. It felt pretty serene except for the distant passing cars and someone mowing their lawn. My site is probably 60 feet away from the Otter Creek. When I was walking to my site, the land owner of my site told me that a few days ago they reported a sewage leak into the river!! They showed me the stream which was directly across the river from their house. They thought that it was probably because the flooding may have broken a sewage pipe but it was very troubling to learn that sewage was going into the river that flows to LAKE CHAMPLAIN for days unnoticed by the authorities. Maybe some other time after GIV I could test the water up and downstream from the leakage to see if it had a large affect on the E. Coli populations in the river.