First, I went back to Oakledge park and explored off the path near the lake. There was a lot of brown algae on the rocks near the shore (that I struggled to take pictures of). I also noticed some budding on nearby trees including honeysuckle, but some trees still had no signs of budding. The wildlife consisted mostly of birds; I used the iNaturalist app to ID a red cardinal, but there were many other bird sounds that I couldn’t identify. There were also ducks in the water pretty far away that I couldn’t quite get a good picture of. Overall, the iNaturalist app was helpful in organizing all the species I found and helpful to see other observations in similar areas to where I was.
Another area I explored was the waterfront park near the Echo Center. Here, I saw and heard more birds, such as seagulls, and saw many chipmunks. I used the iNaturalist app to ID some plants like rhododendron, but I was unable to ID any bird sounds because of the human noises such as music and talking. I probably encountered at least 10 different species in my little area including all the trees and little shrubs (and so many little gnats).
I think that it was especially interesting to see all the flowering plants posted from different areas because we don’t have that much flowering yet. I also really liked seeing different pictures of wildlife. For example, someone posted a Coati, and I didn’t even know what that was before seeing the picture. Lastly, all the different insects were cool to see and there were a very wide variety of them posted.