User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
The area that I have selected to observe is the University of Manitoba South Wood lands, which was a former 120 acre golf course next to the Red river. I was at the area on Sept 17th, Thursday from 4:10 pm to 5:00 pm. The temperature was 13°C which is the average fall temperature in Winnipeg around this time of year. It was quite sunny and not very windy. The vegetation is mostly grasslands, with tall and short grasses, pine trees along with the other local tree species which could be cottonwood and Elm wood long the riverbanks. There are two ponds on the golf course which are hot spots for the geese in the location, Winnipeg has urban geese which are present throughout the spring, summer and fall. The migratory geese (Branta canadensis and Branta hutchinsii) arrive in the fall around this time which is why there are so many geese present in the grassland and around the ponds. Along with the geese there were so many white tailed deer feeding on the grass and weeds-dandelions.
Image 1: Map of the South Wood lands.
Image 2 & 3: Journal pages.
There were a lot of birds chirping, I heard at least 4 different kinds of birds. One kind were shrikes based on the appearance and sparrows and jays based on the appearance as well. There were trails along the river, few people were taking a walk. There were dragonflies and burrows in the ground around the ponds, showing that there might be rabbits and moles in the grassland. There was a lot of cricket noises along the river and there were few geese swimming on the river as well. More than 5 squirrels were spotted, there were a lot of pine nuts on the floor near the pine trees which the squirrels seemed to be collecting.
Image 4 & 5: open grass land and trails.
Based on my observations the three questions I asked are:
- How has the geese population affected the role of the other wildlife in this grassland area?
- How does the human activity around the south wood lands affect the deer and geese activity in the open grassland and riverbank area?
- How much resources are available for the urban geese when the migratory geese arrive in the fall? And also how the weather plays a role in how much deer activity is noted?
Image 6: Deer feeding on the vegetation.
Image 7: The Red River.
Image 8: Geese around pond 1.
You have a good study site and sounds like you have lots of options, time to think through your questions a bit further and think about what might be possible.
Your question 1 would probably require some measure of wildlife over time as geese populations change. Unless you have areas of similar habitat where there are geese vs. no geese.
Question 2 is definitely possible, you just need to figure out a gradient of human activity or some way to measure that – perhaps concentrations of trails or something similar.
Question 3 sounds interesting though you would need to put some thought into how to quantify food availability. The second part of question 3 about deer activity and weather is interesting – do you see enough deer on a given day to quantify activity?