In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Learn more about the project and see all the 365 Nature posts.
I set up lights around my wetland in a bottle this morning to get a better look at the inhabitants on this rainy morning. As I looked I found many extremely tiny snails, so young they still had clear shells. I have seen clumps of eggs all over the container since I assembled it and I assumed they were all snail eggs. Today I looked closely and found one batch that I could see things in. It’s extremely difficult to decipher, but they look like tiny snails. I would like to put them under my microscope, but I’m afraid of disturbing them by removing the leaf they’re attached to and putting it under a hot microscope light.
There are as many hydra as ever and today I found two green hydra that I could see invertebrates inside of them, daphnia I believe. I also found one of the largest yet, with tentacles so long it was easy to see with the bare eye. A green hydra was next to it and as I watched, the green hydra plucked up it’s base and started to move away from the brown hydra with the very long tentacles. I had wondered if they could easily move because the water level slowly goes down and I’ve seen them attached to the glass right below the water level.
There were many of the usual creatures, flatworms, daphnia, cyclops and I still find new thing. One on the rocks looked a little like a lady bug, but with waving tentacles or antenna. It was small and very hard to see though. I also spotted a few swimming invertebrates that looked like two green sesame seeds glued together.
