This week we explored the greater Burlington area to use our animal tracking knowledge in a new area, and also used the iNaturalist app to collect our classes animal sightings.
Our original plan was to go down to the water and look for tracks right around the lake, while also hoping to see frozen parts of the lake, but we ended up exploring the area around Battery park instead. Battery park is a small park right in downtown Burlington that looks over the water and lakefront. The park has a lot of large trees, and is surrounded by lots of vegetation on the steep slope that goes down to the water. This area turned out to be very interesting because it showed the amount of wildlife that can live directly in urban areas virtually without being seen.
The main animal we found a lot of was squirrel. Its hard to distinguish the difference between squirrel and rabbit tracks, especially since we didn’t see any of the actual animals. However, with some of the tracks leading directly to a tree and some having the hind paws in front of the front paws (a notable part of a squirrel’s walking pattern), we could assume there were lots of squirrels in the area and the tracks likely belonged to them. It was also interesting to find this because I didn’t see any squirrel nests in the trees, so I wonder if squirrels were just investigating and scavenging in the area, or if they are living in different parts of the trees.
The next animal we found just as we were leaving was a fisher! I was super surprised to find this, and a little doubtful, because we didn’t find any fisher tracks when we were in the middle of the Jericho forest, so it seemed strange to find one in downtown Burlington. However, the tracks have all the characteristics of a fisher. The tracks have five, pointy looking toes (which on the fisher are retractable and were probably out when running), and the path we found had one paw right after the other in a slightly curved line.
Overall I was surprised to find all these signs of wildlife downtown, and now see that there is much more happening in nature around us in urban areas than what it first seems like. Also, it was cool to see all the other tracks in iNaturalist and see that everyone else found lots of examples too!
