Phenology Project: Oakledge Park

Happy Spring x2!

Despite the rainy weather for most of the weekend, I was luckily able to get out into the Burlington area to participate in this year’s city nature challenge on Monday! I explored the plants on campus, but also was able to take a walk in Centennial Woods for about 2 hours as well!

During my time exploring both campus and Centennial, I was able to document 17 different species on iNaturalist, though I saw many more that I wasn’t able to document! All of the species I was able to get pictures of and document were plant species, though using the Merlin app as well as just my eyes, I was also able to observe some really cool bird and mammal species as well (though I was too slow with my phone to get pictures).

The plant species I observed on campus were Dogwoods, Ground-Ivy, Birches, Chickweed Tribe, White Oak, White Poplar, Garden Tulips, and Staghorn Sumacs, and the plant species I observed in Centennial were Honeysuckles, Staghorn Sumacs, Box Elder, Garlic Mustard, Butternut, Feather Moss, Wood Horsetail, Northern Lady Fern, Black Raspberry and an Orange Jelly Spot (fungus).

As for some of the animal species I observed throughout the four days, I mainly observed different bird species, but was happily surprised when I also encountered a snake and a rodent-like mammal during my walk in Centennial! Using the Merlin app on my phone, I identified an American Robin and a House Finch. I also visually observed bird species like Seagulls, Robins, and Chickadees! I even encountered a huge flock of seagulls on one of the greens on campus while I was hammocking on Monday as they walked around snatching up any worms that were on the surface of the wet soil after the recent rain which was really cool!

Despite spotting many birds, my spotting of a snake and a rodent-like mammal in Centennial woods were by far my most exciting ones of the Bio-Blitz, even though I wasn’t able to document them to submit them onto iNaturalist. I spotted the snake right after I had gotten to the trail, only a little ways after the trail map at the beginning of the main trail. At first, I was taken aback and a little nervous, as I am not the biggest fan of snakes, but when I noticed that it was just slithering away into the bushes next to the trail and not at me, I was able to clear my head and get a good look at the snake; it was a thin, black snake, possibly around 1.5 feet, though I am very unsure about that part. After looking at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife website and looking over the 11 species of snakes found in Vermont, my best guess for the species of snake that it was either a Northern American Racer or a Red-Bellied Snake (though these are really just loose guesses, since all I was really able to see was that the snake was black/a dark color!). After reading about these snakes, I was also happy to learn that most are completely harmless and beneficial to the ecosystem!

After encountering the snake and walking some ways through Centennial, I found myself exploring a back path that led towards the electrical-plant-looking facility right by the parking lot of the baseball stadium. I walked along an area with long marshy grasses lining the stream, and as I was walking I saw a small rodent-y animal. At first, I thought it was a beaver, but then realized I was wrong when I saw its long, rat-like tail! I tried so hard to get a photo, but because I didn’t want to scare it away by getting closer, I unfortunately wasn’t able to get a clear picture of it to include. After once again using the VT Fish and Wildlife website, I am almost certain that what I saw was a muskrat, which I think is super cool! Apart from this instance, I’ve never spotted a muskrat or any animal akin to a beaver in the wild before, so this was super exciting for me!

After the exciting sights in Centennial, I decided to call it a day on documenting species, and started heading back to campus. As always, using iNaturalist was really fun while I was out walking since I could finally identify plants that I had been walking past day after day without knowing what they were! I thought it was especially easy to document plant species. However, I do wish there was an easier way to document the animals I saw because I found it super hard get a clear picture of them before they moved!

Finally, I also had some time to look at some of the amazing observations that came in from around the world for this BioBlitz! I was very surprised to see the outcome of the leaderboard, with Bolivia coming out on top, especially after everything Walt had told us about in class with Cape Town always coming out on top! What maybe surprised me even more was that the San Antonio Metro Area came in second with over 5,000 species documented! I guess I never really thought about San Antonio, or even Texas in general, as a hotspot for ecology and nature, but based on this I guess I was very wrong! I was also pleasantly surprised, as someone from the DC area, that the Washington DC Metro Area also had more species observed than the City of Cape Town! It was something that I didn’t expect to happen, but something that I’m definitely pleasantly surprised and excited about, especially with it almost being time for me to go home! I will miss this beautiful spot at Centennial though!

Happy Spring!

I have been pleasantly surprised by the amazing weather these past few weeks, especially with all of the phenology assignments we have as the semester winds down! Luckily for me, this nice weather fell on my Phenology Walk day, which was on April 23rd.

When I went on my phenology walk, I started near the Waterman Green and worked my way towards Athletic campus, which meant that I first observed the Norway Maple. The Norway Maple did have buds breaking on many of the branches that I could see, though it was hard to exactly estimate the extent. There were also flower buds on a few of the branches as well, but there were far fewer of these than there were leaf buds.

The next tree I observed was the Red Maple tree. When I was observing the tree, there were lots of open flowers on almost the entire tree, though I couldn’t really tell how many of the leaf buds had broken, if any had broken at all. I did try shaking a few of the lower branches to check to see if the flowers would clearly release any pollen, but as far as I could tell they didn’t.

The next tree I observed was the White Oak tree right next to Aiken! This tree differed from the other trees, as it didn’t have any visible leaf or flower buds that were breaking, though it did have a few leaves left over from the past fall that were orange-brownish in color. They did however have some acorns (fruit!) on the branches though which was interesting!

The second to last tree I observed was the Sugar Maple tree. This tree was in a similar phenological phase as the Red Maple and Norway Maple trees, with lots of buds breaking and open flowers, but no visible pollen being released from the flowers when I shook the branches lightly nor any fruit present. This tree’s similarities with the other maple species made me wonder if maple trees in general experience these phenological phases of leaves and flowers budding at an earlier time than the oak trees!

I tested my thought when I went to visit the final tree, which was the Red Oak tree. However, this tree had breaking buds, unlike the White Oak tree, as well as lots of fruit in the form of acorns on its branches. Many of these acorns had even dropped from the branches, leaving just the caps of the acorns on the branches, which was interesting too!

With all my observations done, I concluded that my assumption that maple species experience these phenological phases around the same time was probably correct, as I feel like it would just make sense that a general species, even if there are more distinct subspecies or forms of that species in general, would all experience similar phenological trends. When I thought more closely about the oaks however, I wondered what could possibly make the White Oak lag behind the Red Oak when it came to its phenological phases. My first thought was that possibly the locations they were planted in could have impacted these phases and their timing, as the Red Oak was in a sunnier, more open spot that maybe would allow that tree to experience phenological cues like sun exposure or temperatures differently than the White Oak would experience them, as it was located right next to the Aiken building in a spot that would be shady during certain parts of the day due to the building blocking the sun.

After going on my phenology walk and enjoying the nice weather, I started the second part of this phenology assignment and explored the National Phenology Network’s website, specifically some of their publications regarding phenology and the shifts in the phenological phases different species experience. I found two articles that went well together in an interesting way, which were the ones titled, “It’s not just climate warming – artificial light is shifting phenology” and “Light pollution may help some birds catch up to climate shifts.” At first glance, these articles caught my eye because of the clear opposition they pose to one another; that while light pollution harms the phenology of some species, from the title seemingly in a bad way, that these shifts in phenological phases actually benefit other species, including many species of birds. This made me want to dig deeper into these publications.

I started by reading the first article, “It’s not just climate warming – artificial light is shifting phenology.” It introduced this idea that while a shifting climate does pose, most likely, the largest impact on phenology, that things like light pollution are also large issues as well. It explained how the presence of artificial light actually advances breaking leaf buds and delays leaf color change to a noticeable amount — the authors found that trees broke their buds 9 days earlier with artificial light compared to sites under similar temperature conditions without artificial light, and that leaves turned color 6 days later in sites with artificial light as well. The article points out that this study is special because there have been very few studies looking at the impacts of artificial light at night, that it helps to show that light pollution is an important urgent issue in urban ecosystems, and that there needs to be further guidance on how to design and regulate artificial light to protect the environment.

I then shifted to the next article, “Light pollution may help some birds catch up to climate shifts.” This publication pointed out how in a study done to understand how human caused light and noise pollution might pose additional challenges to birds impacted by climate change that actually light pollution caused many birds to nest earlier in various environments, which then allowed them to catch up to the earlier spring onset and availability of food, which resulted in better nesting success.

I found it really interesting when comparing these two publications how one study highlighted a unique occurrence of human activity actually benefitting certain species when it came to their survival in context of a larger climate issue, while in other cases this same human activity had negative impacts as well. It made me wonder what this meant for how we possibly could approach solutions to the negative impacts of climate on phenology and the timing of certain phenological phases; for example, with our current warming climate, could we use artificial light in a way that would help these birds better adapt and survive the warming climate and earlier spring onsets without having the negative impacts on plant species and their phenological cues?

I think this question is a really interesting one, and really made me think more deeply about how complex phenology really is. It was so interesting that different species could react to similar phenological cues in such different ways, and it made me wonder what it meant about the future of our ecosystems with a warming climate, and the different impacts it will have on different species!

Here are the links to the publications I found as well, just in case you want to take a peak at them more closely!

“It’s not just climate warming – artificial light is shifting phenology”

“Light pollution may help some birds catch up to climate shifts”

Happy February!

This month, instead of going to Oakledge like usual, I decided to explore winter tracking in nearby Centennial Woods! I’ve only been to Centennial a few times, but have heard great things about the tracking and the variety of animal tracks you can find, so I was really excited to check it out and hoped to find something interesting!

Before even arriving at Centennial Woods, I lucked out and saw some tracks in the snow in a clearing next to the sidewalk I was on! Immediately, I identified the track pattern as a hopping pattern, as the prints were all together in a group, following a sort line as they continued on. At first glance, it seemed as if these prints only had two “foot” (for lack of better word) prints, but when I got closer to them I noticed very faint, smaller prints right in front of the larger ones, which reminded me of the tracks of squirrels and rabbits. Despite the tracks not seeming to be fresh/new, my first guess between it being a squirrel or a rabbit was a squirrel, because the smaller tracks were more side by side, which is an attribute of squirrels! I could also clearly reason out it being a smaller rodent because of the size of the tracks, which were much larger than, for example, chipmunk tracks would be. Because of this, I listed them as Cottontail Rabbit tracks on iNaturalist, and when looking at other observations of Cottontail Rabbit tracks that other classmates had posted, I feel pretty good about this guess!

After that first sighting of the possible squirrel tracks, I arrived at Centennial Woods! The first tracks that I encountered were in an area that had all sorts of different tracks overlapping, and lots of boot prints too, which were probably from other classmates observing these same tracks!

The first set of tracks that I started looking at were the ones above. From the image with the ruler for scale, you can see that the hind foot prints were about 9cm long and 2 cm wide, with a straddle of around 12 cm, which lines up pretty well with the tracks being from a Cottontail Rabbit! This also makes sense when we look at the pattern the tracks are in, which is a hopping pattern, with the smaller front paws at a diagonal in front of the larger hind paw prints. I also feel pretty good about these being Cottontail Rabbit tracks because of the area Centennial Woods is in, as it wouldn’t surprise me to see a bunny there!

In this same area with the possible Cottontail Rabbit tracks, I also saw the tracks pictured above. From the image with the ruler for scale, you can see that the hind foot prints were about 3-4 cm long and 2-3 cm wide which lines up pretty well with the tracks being from some sort of squirrel, either a Red Squirrel or a Gray Squirrel! I struggled to pick between the two species of squirrels because the prints weren’t super defined, so it was hard to be very precise with my measurements of the prints in the snow making it hard to determine which measurements the tracks were closer to (the measurements of Red vs Gray Squirrels are pretty close, making it hard to pick between them because I wasn’t 100% sure about my measurements). These tracks being a squirrel also make sense because of both the pattern and the smaller details of the print; the prints were in a hopping pattern, which squirrels move in, and also when looking at the smaller details of some of the more defined prints, I could clearly see individual toe and pad marks in the tracks, which to me rules out this hopping animal being a rabbit of some sort. Because I wasn’t 100% sure whether the tracks were those of a Red or Gray Squirrel, I just listed them as “Squirrels” in iNaturalist, and figured I could change it if anyone else commented their idea of what they could be!

Walking through the woods some more, I ended up finding two more clear signs of animal activity in Centennial. The first were what I identified to be woodpecker holes, or woodpecker excavations (their official term, which I had to look up), in a tree! I was able to recognize these as woodpecker excavations thanks to the lecture slides that Walt showed in class which showed holes in trees that looked exactly like this, and also thanks to my experiences seeing woodpeckers and their habits at home in Maryland, where my Dad and I love to spot woodpeckers out in our backyard! When I spotted these woodpecker excavations, I immediately knew I had to send a picture to my Dad, which I did! 🙂

I came across my final animal sign after running into a few NR 1020 friends and tracking with them, while heading back to the trailhead to go back to campus. On the way, I spotted an animal sign that I hadn’t really encountered before, which was skat! It was in this little divot of snow leading into a space under a log that was buried in snow, which I guessed could maybe be a small den for a small animal like a mouse or chipmunk! However, the skat there was definitely not from a small animal like a mouse or chipmunk, but when I tried to start identifying it, I found it really hard! On one hand, it was really possible it was from something like a dog that was getting a walk through Centennial, but it didn’t really look like it came from a dog either, but I also couldn’t really find anything that matched up perfectly with it in our tracking and skat guide. My only guess for it is maybe its from a raccoon or skunk, based on the size and color, since it matches up with the images online? That is my best guess, but on iNaturalist I listed it as unknown in case anyone else was able to figure it out!

Overall, my tracking experience was super fun in Centennial Woods! It was really fun getting to see all sorts of animal signs, practice my tracking skills, and get to even do it with some friends! It was also super handy that I could take pictures on my phone and write down notes while I went, and then upload everything into iNaturalist once I was back in my dorm room, since by the time we were done I was tired and couldn’t wait to sit down! I definitely think I’ll return to Centennial Woods, especially because we weren’t able to see any tracks of animals like beaver or otter, which Walt mentioned could be there!