For this phenology assignment, I went down to the waterfront in downtown Burlington and walked along the Bike Path next to the Burlington Bay.
As I walked along the path, the first sight of life was bird calls. I reached a part of the trail near the Urban Reserve labeled on the map that was filled with brush. Within the brush, I heard two distinct bird calls. The first was from some sort of chickadee, which I assume was the Black-Capped Chickadee. The second call heard was from the Northern Cardinal. I unfortunately was unable to get a clear video recording of either calls as all the videos I did get are drowned out by the noise of constant planes flying over.
I later saw three Black-Capped Chickadees further down the path that confirmed that the species of birds I heard earlier in the path were in fact chickadees. The Black-Capped Chickadee was able to be identified by its small, rounded body with distinct Black markings around its head in contrast to the rest of its white head feathers.
What solidified my identification of these birds was from using the Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell Lab.
Another species found was the American Robin. In fact, as I was walking along the trail, I saw several eating off of Staghorn Sumac and one American Robin jump off the branch of the Sumac and hop through the snow leaving it’s prints behind for me to take a photo of.
In the midst of these heavily-bird populated areas, there was several other signs of bird life including several nests.
Additionally, I found some squirrel tracks. What made me identify them as squirrel tracks was due to their galloper track pattern that left behind drags within the snow. It looked similar to the squirrel tracks we had identified back in Jericho where the drag marks in between the tracks were created from the fast-galloping motion of the squirrel moving from tree to tree.
I also wanted to note how the entirety of the Burlington Bay of Lake Champlain was completely frozen over and it was a cool observation to see the difference between being out on the Vessel for last semester’s Lake Champlain Lab, on the same waters that was now completely frozen over. It makes me wonder about how the creatures living underneath the ice’s life patterns and systems have slowed down drastically. It also was an interesting pattern to be able to see the movement of the water as you could see the swirls in the ice frozen over indicating the movement of the water before it froze.
Same Lighthouse in October without the Burlington Bay being frozen over, the trees being in full bloom still (beginning stages of foliage color changes) no snow on the Andronic Mountains and instead being full of trees throughout the entirety of the mountain gradient.
It’s clear that the rest of the lake isn’t frozen over fully like the shallower Burlington Bay has.
Overall, having iNaturalist helped a lot with this exploration of downtown Burlington. I learned about the Staghorn Sumac and the food that it provides to the American Robin in the wintertime, which is something I wouldn’t have known without the help of iNaturalist helping to identify the species. Additionally, the use of iNaturalist was relatively straightforward and easy.