EXAMS DONE and only 9 days to go!

Finished my exams and with only 9 days to go I can I'm extremely excited now for South Africa! I picked up my polo shirt and  field journal and filled in the last few forms and now I'm pretty much ready to go! I cant believe how quickly its come. It crazy to think that I'm finally going after applying for University two years ago and thinking what an amazing experience this would be and I'm finally about to go! 

I don't think ill be able to post much whilst I'm away, at least when away from Cape Town. So be prepared for a bombardment of posts when I return! 

One month to go!!!

 In just 33 days I'll be heading to South Africa and excited doesn't even begin to describe it! Although I'm not going to say that I'm not a little bit nervous; this is the longest I'm going to have been away from the UK. The last time I went away for longer than a few days was when I went to Kenya when I was still college. Kenya was a trip that I'll never forget and I can only imagine how many memories I'll have of this adventure. Remembering Kenya is really getting me pumped for this trip.

I've now only got my exams to go. So as much as I'm stressing about studying and squishing all the vast amounts of information into my brain, I know it will be worth it as I get to leave just over a week after my last exam.

I've got pretty much everything I need, I've just got to sort out a few last things at the doctors, get a map and pick up my International Wildlife Biology polo shirt and some equipment and I'm ready to go!



As I said before I'm very excited about going, although as it gets closer to the time I'm getting a little nervous, not only am I going to be away for a while, but I'm also going to be doing skydiving and a shark cage dive! I'm absolutely ecstatic about the shark diving, and as much as I am about skydiving, I'm a teeny , tiny bit scared! Diving with sharks doesn't phase me at all, however I'm a little nervous about getting to the point when I'm about to jump and being scared, so I'm essentially nervous that I'm going to be nervous? Which makes no sense whatsoever I know, but try telling that to my brain!
As I said before, I'm doing the skydive for charity, I'm almost half way to my target! You can go see what its all about HERE!  

Skydiving in Cape Town

I'm going to South Africa for five weeks at the end of May.  Before I start my field trip and studies I am in Cape Town for a week. To start off our trip with something very memorable, a group of us are doing a tandem skydive as well as shark cage diving. To really push myself and I thought it was a perfect time to try and raise some money for this wonderful charity; Southampton Hospital Charity.

My littlest, 2 year old brother has been an outpatient at the Southampton's children hospital for about a year now and they have been fantastic.

It's easy to donate just head over to www.justgiving.com/SophieRogers09 . You can also donate by text; simply text RQPF73 With the amount of either: £1, £2, £3 , £5 or £10 to 70070. You'll also be able to add Gift Aid at no extra cost.

Donations allow the hospital to buy equipment, fund research and provide better facilities that would otherwise be unaffordable under the NHS. With your help, the charity funds projects large and small across all wards and departments to improve patient care

UHS provides services to some 1.3 million people living in Southampton and South Hampshire plus specialist services including neurosciences, cardiac services and children’s intensive care to more than three million people in central southern England and the Channel Islands.Providing these services costs £1.16 million per day (UHS Charity Website).

(Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity).

Botanical Gardens of Wales

Last week I went on a field trip to the Botanical Gardens of Wales. This was for  my Diversity of Life 1 module.  Early Tuesday morning we set off to go there. Our next assignment is on Fynbos plants which before this trip I knew little about. this is what the trips main focus was on.

The first thing we did was get our complementary tea and welsh cake and were given a presentation about DNA barcoding and how they were progressing.  after which we then went to the Great Glasshouse. this is a mediteranean house and is where we spent most of our day. We were given a talk and shown around  (mainly the South African part) and were shown all the ways that these plants are adapted to their habitats.
 Many of them have lots of thin hairs on their thick leaves to potect itself from the sun and heat.

The king protea has big leaves. these leaves get bigger and waxier as they get older. as well as having big and hard leaves to protect it from the heat, it also moves throughout the day so that the leave edges are always facing the sun rather that the larger surface of the leaf. (Picture of King Protea; Protea cynaroides, on the right).

After we were finished with the talk  we had a tour around the rest of the gardens. There was an installation called the 'ghost forest' which are parts of big tropical trees. The gardens are their final resting place, after travelling to various places.  they will eventually rot and decompose here and will be interested to see what will grow there afterwards.  They have a small Japanese garden, bee hives and vegetable patches to name a few of the things we saw, as well as lots of outdoor flower beds organised in families.  the final thing we saw on out tour was the tropical house. I like this because of how diverse the plants are in it and how much brighter the plants are.

this bought us to lunch time so we had a break and then were free to look around anything we may have not been to or may want to go back to. I went to the 'amazing fungi' area and then back around the rest of the great glasshouse as it was big and it gave us a chance to look around and get some more information about the fynbos plants.

You can see more of the photos from my day on my Flickr : Botanical Gardens photos

Ecological Characteristics of Streams.

Today we went to Brecon (near Pen y Fan) to collect some invertebrate specimens from a stream; as well as looking at the physical and biological characteristics of the stream.

Typical Welsh weather; it was raining and even hailing for almost the entire duration of our time there. It was bitterly cold, made worse by the fact that we needed to get our hands wet (and for me, my feet). 

We took measurements of the stream:  width of the stream, bank heights, water heights and stone composition at different intervals across the stream. we also measured the speed of the current by using a leaf and a metre ruler. 

As well as the measurements we had to look at potential sources of pollution and how the area was managed. A lot of trees had been cut down near the stream and water ran through that area into the stream we were on.

Spaghum moss which is on the hill to the right of the stream is acidic and so this can wash down to the river. The red sandstone (mudstone) which is in the river, is also acidic (and contains silica). This all means that the stream will be slightly acidic. 

The area around the stream was sued for grazing of sheep, this means that along the hillside was a field. If the sheep did not graze her it would most likely be an oak forest. If it were than the stream may be different (for example what lives in it).

We looked for signs of flooding, for example plants had been pushed over. It seemed as though the stream had not flooded for a while, although some of the embankment had fallen in, but this could be due to general erosion.

We used nets to gather some invertebrates which we then put into a pot, ready to take back to the lab. 

These included web spinning caddis, cased caddis and large stoneflies.

 By this point the hail had really started to pick up and was starting to hurt as it hit and I knew that my wellies were definitely leaking now due to the lack of feeling in my toes. (The photos really don't show just how miserable the weather really was).

When we got back to the lab we had to pickle the specimens ready for our lab session next week. The water in the jar was emptied as much as possible (without loosing anything) and then methanol was added a 20% water to 80% methanol ratio.

UPDATE: South Africa

We booked our hostel  for the first week of our trip to South Africa, so now everything is booked! Our hostel looks amazing, especially for the price. We were told about this hostel from a couple of people who went to South Africa last year.  I also ordered The Safari Companion - Richard D, Estes. I wanted a book about animal behaviour of African mammals and this was recommended by my course leader. As well as The Safari Companion, I bought a pocket guide to South African mammals for reference. (Mammals of Southern Africa - Chris & Mathilde Stuart). 

Only 108 days to go!

Soil profile

In principles of ecology we had to make a soil profile on a common near Caerphilly. The idea of this is to dig down however far you need to go. We did a metre. We dug a hole big enough to be able to see the soil profile. This is where you can see the different layers of the soil. 

You can clearly see the layer on this the photo (above).

This was a particularly hard practical as it was a very stoney area and there were lots of large rocks we had to dig out, and when only you and one/two others in your group wants to do any hard work, a few hours of doing this really has a toll on your hands and back. 

Whilst we were digging we had to test the soil types of each layer in various ways, such as how moist it was or how well you could mould it/roll it into a ball; as well as write about the area and the weather at the time we were there. 

The picture above shows the start of the hole, this was our third attempt as this patch had the least amounts of large rocks. There were still a lot but at least we could budge these ones without breaking the shovel/spade.