Welcome to my site!

Welcome to my phenology site! My site is nestled between Redstone Apartments and the golfing green. Still, it maintains the natural functions of a typical forest ecosystem in Vermont. It is dominated by red and white oaks and maple trees. The forest floor is littered with fallen branches and dead, slowly decomposing organic matter. This space provides a quick escape from the busy campus lifestyle, just a quick walk to the athletic complex and Simpson dining. The sounds of human life are muted in this area and an old bench allows any visitors an area to sit and think in silence. The chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and birds enjoy the area as well. The chipmunks can be heard jumping around in the canopy, chirping loudly and happily. The fallen leaves of fall have provided a coat of color that brightens the area. As the layer of fallen leaves increases, the view of the sky becomes much clearer. In a few weeks, the deciduous trees will be completely bare and will sign the beginning of the cold winter to come.

A friend introduced me to this place in the early weeks of school and I have been returning to it ever since. The path flows through the edges of a parking lot and athletic fields. It’s the fastest escape into a natural landscape from where I live on the athletic campus. It’s the area to visit in between classes to stop and clear your mind. It reminds me of the importance of natural areas in our lives. There is an instant calming effect that can be felt in this spot. While the tree coverage is thin, it still provides a refuge for wildlife. It’s a segway of life between the academic and recreational spaces on either side of it.

The wind rustles the remaining leaves, most of them still yellow and green in color. The fallen trees add an interesting dimension to the forest, creating a maze of bending branches and obstacles, while also providing habitat for the creatures that live in the area.

Today was the first day of snow fall and my phenology site was eerily quiet with few signs of even human life around the forest. The canopy is al mostly completely bare of leaves and the forest floor is layered in a thick cushion of the fallen golden brown leaves. Since the last time I visited, someone has come along and built tiny fairy houses between the roots of trees. My favorite house of the collection neighbored a small spider’s web, dotted with condensation. The spider’s phylum is Arthropoda and the class is Arachnida. The only bird I could hear was a chickadee perched in one of the trees above me. They’re of the phylum Chordata and the class of Aves. Other than that, the only organisms I saw today were plants. A week ago when I went last, I saw chipmunks of the phylum Chordata and the class Mammalia. The red oaks are Quercus rubra, the white oaks are Quercus alba, and the red maples are Acer rubrum.

One of the various fairy houses, they’re preparing for winter!

The first substantial amount of snow accumulated over the night of November 11. I headed to my phenology site around 4:30 PM while the sun was setting and I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of the sun setting! I have been dreading these days of 30-degree weather, snow-covered ground, and a pitch-black sky at 6 PM. Still, it’s nice to have a reason to escape from my heated dorm room and to walk a ways into the woods to just observe. It didn’t take long for my nose to start running and my cheeks to redden in response to the freezing winds. I was pleased to find that the main path to my wooded entrance had already been plowed and equally as happy to see that my little trail was almost completely untraveled. From what I could tell, only one other person had walked through since the snowfall and someone else took advantage of the fresh snow and went cross country skiing through the fresh powder. The crisp breeze was refreshing and was still working on taking down the last of the remaining leaves still attached to the branches above me.

The path into the woods

The book “Naturally Curious” describes New England in November. It lists all of the species that migrate or go into hibernation at the beginning of the month and all of the plants that shed their leaves. November is an empty and bare time of year. Even the insects are gone. The descriptions in the book match my field observations. There were no obvious signs of animal life. The chipmunks, birds, and spiders were no where to be seen. At the end of my visit, though, I was happily greeted by “Finny” the dog, who ran up to me with a wagging tail and their owner in the distance. Despite the lack of movement in the forests, November is still a beautiful month.

Phenology of home

 Over Thanksgiving break, I went back to my home in Blue Hill, Maine. Much like most of Vermont, down east Maine is very rural with long roads connecting small towns. Blue Hill is the hub of the surrounding towns of Penobscot, Surry, Orland, Brooksville, and Castine because it’s home to the closest high school and the largest grocery store. Still, my graduating class was only about 70 students, which goes to show how unpopulated the area as a whole is. When I left for college, I was shocked to hear from other students who went to school with many hundreds of people and how those who graduated from classes of 200 called their schools small. Returning home, I thought of this larger perspective often. I was raised in a tiny, isolated hub off of the coast of Maine and the only way to expand my horizons is to leave my home behind. It’s a great place to be raised, but I never want to get stuck.

When you grow up in this community, it’s all you know. A lot of people never leave; they were born here so they’re going to die here. The sense of community that is created by this kind of unique loyalty to a place fosters an atmosphere that is difficult to find anywhere else. For example, a Dunkin’ Donuts popped up on the side of the street across from TradeWins grocery store about 10 years ago. For years afterwards, it was the biggest drama in town because people were scared about chain businesses competing with local ones and ruining the rural aesthetic. I’ve always held onto the significance of this reaction as a symbol of the commitment of my community to protecting our collective home. 

The view from Blue Hill Mountain overlooking the town

To me, the pasts of Blue hill that make it feel like home are Blue Hill Mountain, the grocery store, the library, the high school, and the beach at Curtis Cove. It’s a perfect mix of natural spaces and human-built infrastructure and because of the size, they’re all interconnected through mere proximity. When I drive back home, I recognize the way the canopy over the road changes and evolves through the seasons. During the summer, the richly-leaved branches shade the way but now at the beginning of winter, there is a thick strip of sky encasing the pavement

Now when I view my town, though, I think about the environmental implications of rural life I was previously oblivious to. I see the opportunity for bike infrastructure and the lack thereof. The exhaust trailing behind all of the vehicles traveling many miles between towns every day makes me shiver as does the thought of the low-income and older houses that lack good insulation. This blissful oblivion was taken from me in just a semester of classes at UVM, but I am thankful to have the opportunity to see my home through a different lens. Blue Hill has taught me what kind of community to search for in the future, while my education has taught me to strive for a better way of living. 

Driving into town after some snow, the mountain in the distance

Starting off the new year with scat!

January 2020; it’s a new year and my phenology site is full of changes and new signs of life! The week-old snow has given the creatures in the area a chance to leave their marks. Scattered through the forest are tracks of varying sizes, scat, burrowed holes, nests, and more. For the first time, I observed this place truly frozen over and in the heart of it’s winter colors. Surprisingly, the snow adds to my perceived liveliness of the area by allowing me to more clearly see the behaviors of the animals. I’ve also been challenged with identifying the trees without the aid of leaves, which has been met with a slow and inefficient adjustment period that I’m still getting the hang of. The defining features of what I believe are sugar maple, red oak, and white oak twigs are shown in the photos below.

Small, compact pebbles of scat were scat-tered around a small section of the forest. There were one or two small puddles of urine, also.

An interesting view of a frosted patch of moss from the forest floor found hiding behind a few dried leaves.

Nests! I spotted four nests in just the small area of my phenology site. It wasn’t clear to me whether or not they belonged to birds or squirrels, but I think it was varied.

An array of different maple and oak twigs identified from the site.

I was surprised to find so many different tracks! The layers of snow coverage from varying days made it difficult for me to clearly identify the tracks, but with the help of my tracking guide and the footprint sizes, as well as the scat, I determined that there were rabbit and squirrel tracks present. There were also some dog prints and a few other unrecognizable tracks.

February Survival

The recent snowfall has covered the previous tracks of the winter, leaving only the freshest prints visible above the white powder. Remaining indents are nearly impossible to identify under the many layers of snow and there are few signs of other wildlife activity, either. January’s snowpack left a large array of scat, tracks, and other markings that displayed multiple stories of animal life. My visit in February was much more secretive; the stories were hidden and hard to find. I struggled to even spot the nests that were so clear the month before. Still, this may be the last time I have the snow to aid me in identifying tracks as the spring quickly approaches. Already, it seems like nature is getting restless and preparing to defrost.

Despite being such a relatively small wooded area, I find new signs of human life and waste every time I visit. This time, I spotted a bundle of rusted metal wire peaking through the white powder. I wonder how the trash in this area affects the species that inhabit it; do they ever find ways to use our leftovers, does it cause harm, or do they go relatively unbothered? For this metal, I assume it would be much more dangerous to human recreationists walking through than any small animals or plants nearby.

  • Sloppy notes taken with cold hands!
  • Tree drawings show a rough view of animal tracks spotted during the visit.

The tracks of the grey squirrel/s were the most prominent markings of wildlife in this February visit. It wasn’t too difficult to follow their tracks from one point to another, although they usually were short bursts from one tree to the next.

An animal found habitat or a good hiding place for food storage within the roots of a fallen tree; protected from the snow cover. When I looked closely, I could see a small burrowed hole in the back of the shelter. There was a well traversed path of tracks leading from the fallen tree to an adjacent maple not far away.

With the help of my tracking book, I identified the trail of a grey squirrel. I looked for other signs like scat, pee, or burrowed holes, but nothing clearly stood out. In the winter, squirrels live in hollowed out holes in deciduous trees or in nests in the canopy (Holland, 2019). Squirrels don’t hibernate because their body temperature stays pretty stable throughout the year, but they do fatten up to help stay warm and energized (Squirrels in Winter, 2011). In the fall, they create food reserves by digging holes and stashing food in preparation for the colder, harsher months to come. From the tracks that I observed, the grey squirrel in my phenology site came down from a medium-sized maple tree and quickly up another one. My January observations included high-up squirrel nests made up of twigs and leaves, as well as scat and small holes in the snow that displayed signs of squirrel life.

References

Holland, M. (2019). Naturally Curious. North Pomfret, Vermont: Trafalgar Square Books.

What Do Squirrels Do in Winter? (2011, December 9). Retrieved from https://www.lpzoo.org/blog/what-do-squirrels-do-winter