My 20 Minutes in Nature

For my Environmental Science class this week I had to go outside in nature and sit for 20 minutes and observe what I saw. My boyfriend happened to be interested in this outing so he came with me. On the walk to our spot we observed our surroundings and enjoyed the walk there. We sat down on some rocks and started the timer. I first looked for any abiotic, or non-living, things that might be in the area hoping to give those biotic, or living creatures, time to warm up to us. There was a lot of dirt of course and it was early so the ground was still a little wet. There were a few plants near by that caught my attention. There was a fairly tall plant with a green and greyish color and thick leaves with hairs on them; it had little yellow flowers. Mixed in with them was shorter stuby green plant that had lots of little leaves and little purple flowers on it, both of which I had a hard time finding a name for. I noticed a lot of these two plants and then some dead shrubs. Then I looked out further and noticed tumble weeds all over, very big ones, along with a large what appeared to be weeping willow and a large bush with red stem and large hand like dark green leaves; I also couldn't find a name for it. Then I noticed a lot of different chirping noises. I saw quite a few crows and little brown birds flying in the sky. Then two big friendly golden retrievers ran up to us and a small pudgy brown mutt dog. They said hello with some licks and then left. Then we noticed on the yellow plant that there were small grey worms with yellow spots. They were hiding on the plant and were camouflaged perfectly. Then the timer went off and we began to walk still looking out for more little critters. I did see a plant with big green leaves and tall stems with yellow flowers and across a large green leaved plant with a ladybug eating it. We saw an ant trail and two big hives, one hive had a big black ant with red and the other was a red ant hive. I saw a brown beetle that was a little speckled and fat and what appeared to be a black bee or fly with yellow spots on his sides. My favorite was the big black beetle though. There were quite a few walking around. What made me like them was that they seemed pretty smart. My boyfriend was being a brat and was pretending he was going to step on it to make me sad and mess with me. Well the little guy flinched when my boyfriend pretended like he was going to step on him. When he realized he hadn't been stepped on he ran off and hid under a plant. I got really mad at my boyfriend for scaring the poor little guy but honestly it was really cute and cool to see that the bug understood what was going on. I wish I could have found more names for these animals but I couldn't find pictures like them online. I think most of them were weeds. Here are some pictures: