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Since its been raining a lot the marsh looks very wet and moist. The soil is much darker and I can see a lot more bugs crawling in it. There are still many ducks wandering around and some other bird species. The marsh hasn’t changed very much within these couple weeks besides I do see that some of the plants are being tackled by the wind and some have blown far away to the opposite side of the marsh. Also many of the birds are under bushes because of the wind. There are some baby ducks in the water with the older ducks, so the duck population is still increasing. I think the Heron is the main predator of the smaller birds, and most of the fish and bugs because all the other birds tend to stay away from the Heron. Also, I think that the A’eo birds stay in the shallower parts of the marsh because they can’t swim. It also seems like the fish that they eat and specialize in are found in the shallows. Most birds other than the ducks wander off alone. Today there are also a lot more pigeons. When we threw food in the water the ducks would swarm over to it and the Heron would come close by and watch. The Heron never got the food but he wanted it. I think that the ducks had a bigger population so they overthrew the Heron this time. Everything here at the marsh looks a lot greener because of the rain. There also are a lot more humans that came to visit and look at the marsh today. The water temperature seems a lot colder. Whenever you walk slowly towards the Heron, it stays in its place but when you walk slowly towards the smaller birds or the ducks, they go away quickly. The water looks a lot more murky and brownish. We also observed that the Heron swoopes down into the water to grab the fish. This seems like more of a productive way to reach food rather than the ways that the ducks retrieve their fish just by ducking down and eating them.



My three testable hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: If there is more insects in an area of the marsh then there will be more birds in that are. Hypothesis 2: If there is a presence of a predator (dog) in the are then their will be less birds attracted to the area. Hypothesis 3:If there is a food source placed right near the marsh then the ducks will be the first bird species to get to it because they have the largest population and they are the most domesticated.

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