Blog Post 1: Observations
The location I have chosen for the field research project is my backyard in suburban Melbourne, Australia. My backyard is not terribly large, about an area of 200 square meters and mostly flat. The vegetation is primarily grassland, but with four fruit trees (one peach, one pear and two plum trees) starting to bear green fruit and another non-fruit tree, though I don’t know the species as well as a couple rose bushes and another flowering bush. There is also a patch of overgrown bamboo in the far corner.
I visited my backyard on November 8th 2024 at 2:00 pm and it was mostly sunny and around 20 degrees Celsius, so quite warm for Spring here. The sun was out and it wasn’t very cloudy. I noticed the resident Noisy Miner birds (ones that return year after year in the spring) and their babies learning to fly in the trees surrounding my backyard. Normally these birds are the main birds in the springtime, but the occasional Magpie swoops down from time to time before being chased away by the Noisy Miners.
Thinking about potential ecological gradients of interest, one interesting thing about my backyard is that there are two different types of grass. There is thick Buffalo grass (Stenotaphrum secundatum) in one corner of the yard while the rest of the yard is Kikuyu Grass (Pennisetum clandestinum) and is balding in patches from where our trampoline use to be.
Potential Research Questions
- What type of birds visit the fruit trees over the spring period that are not normally part of the resident of bird population?
- Does the amount of shade provide by the fruit trees affect the rate of growth for grass in the backyard. Does it differ for the two types of grass found in the backyard?
- What types of insects prefer the Buffalo grass compared to the Kikuyu grass?
Field Journal Images:
