Nature Studies

We've spent several wonderful afternoons studying nature at the pond near our house. We were able to see so many interesting things! A couple of months ago we noticed these strange looking creatures in the water of the pond. They looked similar to a cricket, but lived in the water. I thought they were probably dragon fly nymphs, and this proved to be true. When we were at the pond recently, we found the exoskeletons of those same nymphs. They were literally everywhere on the grass surrounding the pond.



My kids are particularly interested in dragon flies after our recent trip to their grandparent's house in Florida. There were dragon flies everywhere demonstrating their incredible flying ability over the lake there. They were even able to get up close and personal with one particular dragon fly for quite some time.



While at the pond, we came across a large dragon fly that only had 3 wings instead of the normal 4. He let me hold him and the kids were able to study him. Very cool!



In addition to the dragon flies, we also saw lots of "interesting" spiders, and more tiny frogs than we could count. It was really neat considering that we have tadpoles from this very same pond at home. Ours are just starting to develop their legs, whereas these were already frogs. They were so tiny! Each one was about the size of my pinky finger nail.



We also found one tiny frog that had obviously just crawled out of the water. He was darker, smaller and still had quite a bit of his tail. It was really cool for the kids to be able to see all of the stages of the frogs, from the eggs we collected, to tiny tadpoles with gills, large tadpoles with emerging legs, tiny frogs with a partial tail still attached, to finally a fully developed tiny frog. Better yet, we have pictures of each and every stage!