Amy’s Journal

Birdwatching and organic gardening…sound like two wonderful hobbies that I do in my free time, don’t they?

Wrong.

They are my CLASSES this quarter at Stanford. For actual grades! I’m taking an organic agriculture class, which is three hours a week outside in the stanford community farm, where we learn to compost, learn about soil, bugs, plant structure, sustainable practices, marketing–the works. We got split up into groups of five and each group gets their own bed to cultivate and plant! We keep a field journal just like real farmers and get graded on how well we do. Its a blast to dig around in the dirt and get credit for it.

Here are some pictures of my gardening class.

Not only am I taking organic gardening, I’m taking a class called the Biology of Birds, which is a field research based class. We definitely have been learning all the crazy and awesome things about bird biology (like the fact that they have hollow bones and can actually circulate air through their bones!), but my favorite part about the class is that once a week I have to wake up at 5 (yes its difficult, but worth it) and go out to the nature preserves around stanford and watch birds and record them for 4 hours. There is something so magical about being in the woods at dawn listening to the birds sing. We are doing a study about Oak Woodland birds. Oaks woodlands are the major habitat for birds in California, and they are dying! We are trying to determine what the affect is of recreational human use of oak woodland spaces on the birds by comparing the bird density and diversity in a preserve that is open to the public and one that is closed to recreational use.

We got split into groups for the different projects in this class as well. I’m in group Oak Titmouse. This is our mascot:

Pretty cute don’t ya think?

Out of the 12 or so hours of class I have a week, I spend 6 hours of it outside, and I find myself thinking, “Is this actually school?”

Happily, the answer is yes