Scavenger Hunt at Barrington Headwaters (Day 2)

This morning we drove out the site where we will be doing our field research for the rest of the month. Just minutes from Mendum's off Tibbetts Rd. Barrington headwaters is a bit a diamond in the rough. After brief instructions group "A" trailed off into the woods, Jennifer and I trailing behind our crew of  go-getters. The design of the hunt was clever and certainly repeatable for high schoolers as an inquiry based exploration (blue tags with station numbers scattered on trees throughout the plot, under the trees were ziplocks with instructions for observation and or the next stage of our exploration- nice job scattering the groups so that were all the groups weren't at the same station). 

The highlight of the walkabout for me was the vernal pool, which looked more like a expansive moss bed had recently been visited by and moose and perhaps a baby. The footprints, large and small, appeared to be arranged as if the young was grabbing a snack from his mama. The moss covering ground expanded beyond the low lying region that one would expect was the pool area causing us to hypothesize the flooding had occurred in  this area and possibly was the cause of lack of trees in this area. 

Aside from the quest to retrieve all of our baggies and clues, our group was most fascinated by the fungi forest beneath us. We carefully manuvered around the delicate mushrooms ranging in size from a pin head to a baseball. Their colors and textures also varied widely, most commonly rich shades of red, yellow and orange, sometimes speckled with toad like "warts". The purple patch we found was particularly special.  Jennifer spotted a unique variety that looked like a cross section of a tree- however I don't think the rings on this tiny fungi denoted the years that it had lain on that piece of the forest floor.  

LOCAL HISTORY...

A piece of the past as told by Eleanor... During the 1700s the headwater land was owned by wealthy people living in Portsmouth many of whom were interested in the tall white pines to by sold or used masts on ship. One theory behind the lack of tall white pines today is that the tallest tree genes were wiped out of the population! Genetics at its finest.