Natanya's+Journal


 * Free-Journal #1:** The Kawainui Marsh is a marsh covered in thick bushes and grass, parts of it look like a river and is the niche of many species of native and alien ducks, fish, frogs and plants. One side of the marsh is mountain, while the other iss road. The road side is more polluted that the mountain side because more people are around it so trash builds up. The marsh is surrounded and filled with brown water, which is supplied by the rainwater that runs off the mountains. Within the water are small islands made of dry dirt and bushes. It is a good place to do the semester project because it has a wide variety of plants and animals, some of which are native and some are invasive. It is easy to get close to and observe the birds (especially if you bring bread). It is Hawaiis last native wetland and is protected by the state. The Hamakua marsh is a small section of Kawainiu, it has the same creatures and provides the same niche but it has signs up giving information about the many animals and plants. This helps to study the marsh because i know it is accurate information. Taylor and I did a project on Hamakua marsh when we were in elementry school so we know a little about the animals. The marsh is Kailua’s main fresh water supply so the state makes sure that there is no jumping in it, though there are still things that threaten the Eco system. Some of the plants include the Ewa hinahima, is a bush that can up to six feet in height, it is native and endangered. Its scientific name is achyranthes splendens var. rotunda. Another kind of shrub includes 'ilima which is a shrub with a yellow flower that was once used by the ancient Hawaiians as medicine. Sida Fallax. I also saw the Red mangroves, which grow along the edge of the water. Their roots create dense thickets and alter the marsh habitat. Its scientific name is Rhizophora mangle. The ducks appear to be the dominant species. On the grass i was sitting on i noticed patches of white mushrooms growning, there were not many but they grew in patches og about three. There are a variety of wetland birds and ducks including the Ae'o, Hawaiian Stilt, the 'Alea ke'oke'o and the Kolea, Pacific Golden Plover, there are many city pidgins who compete with the native birds for certain food sources.

  Among the ducks included the ‘Auku’u or the black-crowned night heron is the biggest bird. It feeds on the small and big fish in the water. They are expert fishers but also catch the chicks of other birds, which they can swallow hole. They prefer shallow waters with plants whose roots take over, which make the mangrove filled marsh perfect or them. There were few of them compaired to the many other ducks and birds and they seemed to stay on the other side of the marsh away from the road. They usually make their nests near tree trunks. There was also 'Alae'ula or the Hawaiian Moorhen which is a native bird famous for its red beak. Their feet look like pidgen feet but about five times the size. They are also not timide creatures (they walked inches from me) at all and unlike pidgens, they are flightless. Their call is a loud, shrill cry. They are endemic to marshes on Oahu and Kauai'i. They sometimes feed on fish but their diet also mostly small land and water insects like earthworms, spiders. While I was observing them they were using their sharp beek to pick at small insects in the ground. Their plant diet includes water lilys and hydrillas. They nest on the sides of the marsh where there is hard ground but it is close to the water. I also saw tilapia; it is a gray and black fish native to the fresh waters of Africa and the Middle East. They were brought to Hawaii as a commercial game fish and can survive in marshes low oxygen and polluted waters, also in warm, brackish waters; they feed on algae and weeds that grow in the water.I noticed they swam in small packs around the edge of the water and when we through a piece of bread into the water all the fish would tackle eachother to get it. This oftin ended up in one of the small fishes getting eaten by a Hawaiian Moorhen. Their only predators are humans, who fish for them. Some of the birds were eating earthworms. Earthworms are not native to Hawaii but once they arrived here, they thrived in the moist marsh solid. I didn’t see very many where I was sitting because I was on the part of the marsh with dence, dry soil but there were some farther down neer the water. They are decomposers, eating different organic compounds, which include dead leaves and animals. Birds like the 'Alae'ula, Koloa and the 'Alae Ke'okeo, feed on the earthworms.
 * Assigned Journal #1:** [[image:file:///Users/student/Desktop/Photo%20268.jpg]]

On my first visit to the marsh i went down to the side near Kalaheo High School. This provided a good view of the marsh and helped me see what plants grew where. This time i visited the part of the marsh called Hamakua Marsh, it is more tward Enchanted Lakes and is closed to where the marsh becomes a canal. I was hoping this area would have more ducks so i could observe them more clostly. Unfortunatly it also had much more human activity, as i was observing car exoust was blowing in my face which made the visit a little unpleasent.
 * Free-Journal #2:**

At first glance, a person would think the 900-acre marsh was just a grassy field. This is because most large freshwater pond is covered if a thick layer of floating vegetation. The dominant plant is bulrush (Schoenoplectus californicus). Which is a tall thin water plant with dark green stems. You can see water through the thick layer of bulrush plants. The plants are not indigenous, but naturalized which makes me wonder if birds have any kind of symbiosis with the plant. There is also California grass, which grows at the mountainside of the marsh. I saw a few Chinese banyan and monkey pod trees near the road with many animals living on it, though the trees only grew out of compact soil around the marsh, and not marsh water. Did these new trees create new niches for animals in Kawainui marsh? Where these animals native or not? There is a lot of grass around the edge of the marsh alone with pokey plants that grow log on the ground. I think most of these kinds of plants are probably not native to the marsh. Inside the water of the marsh there are small islands, about the size of a small bedroom with small trees and a few bushes. Long reeds grow on the sides of the islands. The reeds are rooted all the way at the bottom of the marsh. Farther down the marsh, more towards Hamakua Marsh there are large patches of plants with yellow flowers that grow in the middle if the marsh. Why do the yellow flowered bushes only grow on the side of the marsh without the road?


 * Assigned Journal #2:**

Kawainui marsh is located in Kailua, this location puts it in great danger of human caused harm. Kailua is heavily populated and the marsh receives many visitors daily. Trash collects easily on the sides of the marsh, threatening the plants and animals who live there. The animals that live toward the center of the marsh would be less threatened by the trash but equally threatened by the water pollution. Birds and ducks with wider niches could avoid this threat. If they were able to eat land insects rather than having a diet consisting of only fish they might be able to receive better nutrition. This would also require then being able to catch the insects. This would require the birds to be better land creatures. I noticed the Hawaiian Moorhen had exceptionally large feet, like those of a pidgin. This seemed to enable them to easily walk on the invasive pokey grass plants, whose common name I could not find. This is an example of intra species competition because the Moorhens would compete with each other in having efficient feet and different species would compete with each other for on-land food sources. On my second visit i also noticed all the fishes were the same color of grayish brown. This made it hard to see them in the water. The fishes predators are the ducks and herons, who rely mostly on sight to catch their pray. If the fishes blend better to the bottom of the marsh it will be harder from the birds to catch and eat them. This is an example of natural selection. Limited space would be an obvious reason for natural selection to occur among plants. The marsh vegetation clearly overgrown. California grass and other bushes cover the vast majority of the water and are starting to take over the small area remaining open water areas. I noticed many of the bushed were thick and twisted with defenses like thorns. This would give them an advantage over other plants. They would be able to grow large without being disturbed by predators or other plants.


 * Free Journal #3**

Then we visited a third time, on November 23, it was the day after a flash flood. It had rained about three or more inches. We expected there to be some changes in the marsh. One big difference was that on our second visit, I mentioned there were only one or two mushrooms on the ground. Now there are many patches of large mushrooms. Everything is a lot greener, including the mountain behind the marsh. The low bushes that grow in the marsh, they cover most of Hamakua marsh’s surface, have become more yellow. This could be due to more yellow flowers on the plants. On our third visit we went to the left of the bridge, Hamakua marsh, which has less trees and more grass and bushes. I noticed there are a lot more insects, fish, ducks and other life forms. This is odd because in this part of the marsh there is a lot more human development, such as parking lots, cars, people and stores instead of on the other side where there are only a few houses. There are also no islands on this side of the marsh. Unlike the main marsh, which is covered in bulrush and California grass, this side only has the bushes with yellow flowers. The day of the flash flood, the water level in the marsh had risen conciderably, but the day after it had gone back down to its usual level. When we came to visit this time, we brought bread to give to the birds. When we fed the birds, the pidgins and ducks swarmed to get food. When we through it in the water the fish would come up out of the water to get it, the heron would swoop down and catch a fish in his mouth and eat it whole. I think this is an interesting way the heron learned to get food faster. Today there were a lot more pidgins than there usually are. I am not sure why this is but it might have been because they realized we had bread. Inferences:
 * 1: If the water is browner,then there will be more plants growing.
 * 2: If there is less open water and more bushes growing in the marsh, then there will be more oxygen in the water and more organisms.
 * 3: If the water is closer to the edges or end of the marsh, then it will have more circulation and support more organisms.



Assigned Journal #3

For the fourth and last observations, we went to the back of Kawai Nui marsh, across the street from Kapa’a quarry. This area has a large field where people go to flight small home made plains. There are a lot of invasive weed-like trees such as poky plants, which I described earlier as present at Hamakua and the front of Kawai Nui marsh. There is also over grown bushes and trees. After the field of grass, there are thick bushes and then the marsh starts. On the other side of the field there is a thin river. Some parts of the river are covered in plants and other parts are not. The water in the river is the same color brown as the other parts of the marsh we visited, but the plants in this river are more like lily’s then the thick, tall bushes we saw on the other sides. There are very little ducks on this part of the marsh. The only birds are small pidgin-like birds that fly low to the ground and nest in the thick bushed. The fish in the river are small brown and grey guppies. When we threw the bread in the water nothing came out to eat it. This is a much different result than the hoards of medium sized fish that swarmed the bread. As a result of the lack of fish, there are no herons. We later went to Hamakua marsh to make other observations. There were no significant changes in the marsh area, though this was the first time we saw two herons.
 * Free Journal #4**

Hypothesis#2: If there is less open water and more bushes growing in the marsh, then there will be more oxygen in the water and more organisms.

Procedures: First I had to see what parts of the marsh had open water and which were covered in plants. As I observed, it appeared that there were plants in the middle of the marsh at Hamakua, about ten yards off the shore of the marsh. Until the plants there was only brown water. There were also plants on the edge of the marsh, right next to the shoreline. To see how many fish were in the water, I threw bread into the water like we had done previous visits and waited for fish to come up and eat it. The first time I threw the bread, I threw it near the edge of the lake. I didn’t have to wait a second before over ten fish came up to eat the bread. I couldn’t count all of them because there were so many and I could only see the ones that came out of the water. The second time I threw the bread it went into the middle of the marsh. This was the area with no plants. T   he bread sat, undisturbed for a few seconds then started to sink to the bottom of the pond. I saw a few small fish eating it. I tried to through bread to the part of the marsh that was completely covered in bushes, but it landed about five feet away, and I go the same results as when I threw it in the middle of the marsh. 

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Conclusion: After doing the experiment I concluded that fish swim more around areas closer to the edge of the marsh. The edge of the marsh grows more plants and roots. This could help support more niches for insects and fish who feed on the insects, but I do not know if it is because the area’s do level is higher. This could also have something to do with the currents in the water.

__**Black-crowned Night Heron**__ Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Cordata Class: Cinoniiformes Family: Ardeidea Genus: Nycticora Species: N. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Nycticorax
 * Assined Journal #4:**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Anthropoda Class: Insecta Order: Hymenoptera Family: Apidea Genus: Bombu
 * __Bumble Bee__**
 * __Millipede__**
 * //Kingdom//**: Animalia
 * //Phylum//**: Arthropoda
 * //Class//**: Diplopoda
 * Order:**Polyxenida


 * __Fly__**


 * Kingdom** Animalia
 * Phylum:** Arthropoda
 * Class:** Insecta
 * Order:** Diptera

__**Red Ants**__ Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Insecta Order: Hymenoptera Family: Formicidea