For the City Nature Challenge, I ended up just exploring campus a bit because of time and transportation constraints. Using iNaturalist was easy, I have been using iNat for quite some time and have even led my own community wide BioBlitz before and made my own project back home. Things I found interesting looking at …
Author Archives: acrainey
Revisiting the Beech
I revisited the American beech on my site that I have been monitoring over the past few weeks. There have been no changes to the tree. The buds remain the same with evidence of bud burst or flowers or leaves.
Final Phenology Post
My phenology site hasn’t changed much over the past few months, besides the obvious lack of greenery from winter. There are definitely more fallen trees, logs, and sticks from winter’s strong winds. I chose quite a beautiful day to visit my site. The sun shining bright with temperatures in the 60s. The day became even …
Continuing Tree Phenology Monitoring
I re-visited the American Beech at my site to check on the phenological stage the tree is at. Unfortunately, my tree is still at the same step as last time. That being no bud bursts or flowers quite yet.
Winter Tree ID
We were tasked with finding a tree at our phenology that was either a Northern red oak, American beech, red maple, or paper birch, and identifying them by their buds. Most of the trees in my phenology site are very tall and have inaccessible twigs, except for many young American beeches. Additionally, there were no …
Wildlife Signs in Burlington
To participate in the iNaturalist project, I further explored the woods that my phenology site is located in, near trinity campus. These woods are really close to the Winooski River. At the time that I went, there was barely any snow on the ground and all the mud was frozen solid, so finding tracks was …
Winter Wildlife Activity
Upon returning to my phenology site after being away for a month, I noticed significant changes. The most influential one would be that the large stream that ran through the middle of my site drastically decreased in size and had almost completely frozen over. Additionally, most of the remaining vegetation has fully died back. I …
End of Semester Check-in
Below is a picture of the current condition of my phenology site. All of the hardwoods have dropped their leaves for the winter and all that remains in the canopy is the Eastern white pines and Eastern hemlocks. Additionally, more trees have fallen from the high winds over the weeks. What I have enjoyed the …
Phenology Away from Burly
The site I chose to observe over break and back at home is the White Pine Woods. White Pine Woods is a part of The Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio, a place I am very close with. White Pine Woods is large stand of several hundred Pinus Strobus or Eastern white pine trees that were …
Phenology Site Check-in
15 Minute Sit-in Silence For my 15-minute silent sit-in at my phenology site, I designated a spot in the center of the stream on one of the rotting felled trees. During this time, I listened to the very talkative blue-jays, and the scurrying steps of squirrels gathering food for the winter. Most of the leaves …