For this assignment, I chose to take a stroll through Centennial Woods to look for signs of wildlife activity and admire the winter scenery with all the snow that Burlington received in recent days. Using iNaturalist, I recorded signs of animal activity, but in general, it was up to me to identify what I was looking at, since the app was unable to. Pictures below are some examples of images I uploaded along with my thoughts.
This is a small feather (approximately 10 cm) that was beside one of the trails within Centennial. iNaturalist is unable to identify the species of bird that this feather belongs to, so considering the size, coloration and habitat range, I guessed that this was Mourning Dove feather.
This dead tree bears the markings of woodpecker holes. The Downy Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker and Red-Bellied Woodpecker all live natively in Vermont, so these holes could have been from any one of the local woodpecker species, although the holes are not oval shaped, which could rule out the Pileated Woodpecker as a suspect.
Pictured above are possible rabbit tracks found near a trail. Based on the movement pattern, I could tell that this was a bounder, specifically land roaming based on the staggered pattern of the back prints. These prints are likely not snowshoe hare prints based on the small size, which led me to the conclusion that these are cottontail rabbit prints.