A UVM blog Centennial Woods Phenology

 
Happy Spring! Yesterday I made my last visit to Centennial Woods for the year. I was surprised and so excited to see how green everything was, and to hear hundreds of birds singing together. New life was everywhere, from emerging fiddleheads to baby Maples to reborn perennial grasses.

The stream was flowing again after a long winter’s ice. Sun shone through new leaves and made the moss glow. The ground beneath my feat was soft as it thawed, and I met other visitors enjoying the scene.

At Centennial Woods, nature and culture are uniquely intertwined. The place itself has bustling ecosystems with countless species and  interactions. These magnificent ecosystems provide excellent opportunities for recreation, education, and other regulating services. Locals take to Centennial Woods for adventure or for relaxation, and families use this place to raise future eco-enthusiasts. It lies next to roads and the interstate, filtering runoff, purifying our water, and supporting our quality of life. The culture of greater Burlington benefits from Centennial Woods in many different ways, although we could do better on our part to give back to it.

The species interaction diagram shown below represents the interactions between Northern Red Oak, Red-tailed Hawk, American Beaver, Eastern Gray Squirrel, Song Sparrow, Pileated Woodpecker, and Spring Peeper.

Here is a breakdown:

• Oak trees have a positive impact on red-tailed hawks, squirrels, sparrows, and woodpeckers because they provide nesting habitat.
• Squirrels have a positive impact on oak trees because they disperse their acorns.
• Red-tailed hawks have a negative impact on squirrels, sparrows, woodpeckers, and spring peepers because they prey on them.
  • Oak trees have a negative indirect impact on spring peepers because they provide nesting habitat to their predators.
• Beavers have a negative impact on oak trees because they feed on their bark.
  • Beavers have a negative indirect impact on red-tailed hawks, squirrels, sparrows, and woodpeckers because they feed on their nesting habitat.
  • Beavers have a positive indirect impact on spring peepers because they feed on their predator’s nesting habitat.
•  Squirrels, sparrows, and woodpeckers compete with each other for nesting habitat.
•  Squirrels, sparrows, woodpeckers, and spring peepers compete with each other for insects, berries, nuts, and other food.

The first time I visited Centennial Woods, I felt a little out of place. I had grown so connected to and familiar with the natural areas near my home in Connecticut, but I felt like a stranger here. However, over the past year making regular visits to Centennial Woods for this blog and for labs, I now feel like I am a part of it. As I walk through it, I make noise, I displace leaves and twigs, I run my hands through the grass, I climb trees, I pick flowers, I get up close with birds, and I dip my feet in the water. All these things are bound to have an effect on the surrounding life of the ecosystem. In class and at home, I draft proposals to improve the health of the landscape, and I educate my friends on how to reduce their impact on it. I participate in environmental awareness and stewardship events and do what I can to make our relationship with the earth more reciprocal. All these actions affect Centennial Woods and all the life it hosts. I consider myself a part of this place. 

It has been a tough winter, especially with Vermont’s spring so behind track. My past visits were freezing, unwelcoming, silent, and lifeless, but experiencing the new growth yesterday at Centennial Woods was a perfect closing.

Over this past weekend, I participated in the City Nature Challenge bioblitz on iNaturalist. I explored the Intervale Center during their Spectacular Nature Celebration and found Painted Turtles, Bullfrog tadpoles, millipedes, Willow trees, and other fascinating species.

I opted to walk to and from classes, the gym, and dining halls instead of taking the bus so I could observe the wild species of UVM’s campus and surrounding neighborhoods. I made 40 observations and identified 22 species, such as Eastern Gray Squirrels, American Robins, Daffodils, Hyacinths, Magnolias, and Red Maples. I had not used iNaturalist in a while, so it was a bit confusing getting started again, but in the end I found it really fun to be able to learn more about the nature I see and admire every day.

Seeing the leaderboard of cities who contributed the most was also interesting. I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting to see, but I was surprised to see La Paz, Cape Town, and Dallas take the top three spots. What made me particularly sentimental was seeing that Fairfield County and Burlington were right next to each other on the list, since I am from Fairfield County and currently live in Burlington.

Overall, I had a really good experience with the City Nature Challenge. I got to explore beautiful nature during my new favorite season, learn more about local species, and contribute to an important database, which was all really exciting and rewarding. I am looking forward to using iNaturalist more in the future and continuing to immerse myself in nature as New England goes through major phenological changes through spring and summer! 

Over spring break, I traveled to the southern Gulf Coast of Florida. I stayed at a friend’s house in Port Charlotte and together we went to a number of beautiful beaches, about an hour away each. This climate is warm and humid year-round, allowing for countless bright green, flowering, and leafy species to grow all year long.

I encountered many wildlife species, including a Gopher tortoise, pelicans, crows, seagulls, various fish, squirrels, and the Seagrape tree.

For my research, I decided to explore the wildlife at Boca Grande. This beach was in an upscale neighborhood with many visitors and tourists, but its ecosystems were nonetheless fascinating. A tallgrass ecosystem lined the outer premise of the beach, which I spent most of my time there investigating. I found many ant colonies in construction, seagrape seeds, and shells, but my favorite sighting was a set of mammal tracks lining the edge of the tallgrass, as pictured below. Because I am unfamiliar with native Florida species, I cannot say with confidence which animal made these prints, but the ‘X’ shape in the negative space and diagonal-esque pattern suggest that they could have been left by a red fox.

On Sunday, February 20th, I took a break from exploring Centennial Woods and went down to Lake Champlain. I walked a little farther down the bike path from the waterfront park, near the skate park, and watched the sunset from a short dock. It was bitterly cold and violently windy, but wildlife signs and the beautiful sunset made it completely worth it.

Among the signs of wildlife I saw were snow fleas, squirrel tracks, a rabbit and its tracks, birds and their tracks, and canine footprints (but those probably came from dogs).

Using iNaturalist to submit photos of wildlife and wildlfie signs has been fun, and it feels good to know that I am contributing to data. I was also intrigued by looking through other people’s submissions and learn about their findings.

During my first visit back at Centennial Woods this year, I noticed a lot of changes in the landscape and many more signs of wildlife, as animal inhabitants leave their trace in the snow.

The forest was quiet and felt smaller than before. There were no leaves to fill the space, so large expanses of woods were visable from the beginning. Thick snow covered the land, and the once freely flowing stream had frozen over.

I didn’t hear or see many animals, other than one instance of a large flock of birds flying noisily by. However, the presence of animal life in the woods was still clear as many tracks were visable.

The first tracks I noticed, and definitely the most prominent of my hike, were diagonal footprints walking over the frozen stream, as pictured below. The snow over the ice was virtually untouched aside from these tracks.

I also discovered plenty of tracks that appeared to have come from squirrels– small footprints left very close together, leading to and from trees. These tracks showed small animals scurrying around, potentially in search of food or shelter.

My final visit to Centennial Woods was cold and snowy. I am not the biggest fan of the snow, nor do I often come prepared, so my best piece of advice for visiting this site in December is to wear a good coat, a warm hat, high quality gloves, and double layered socks.

These woods looked a lot different than my first encounter with them earlier in the semester. What was once an ecosystem bustling with color and life is now monochrome and quiet. Snow had just fallen the night before, so it was fresh and covered most of the land and remaining vegetation. The hemlocks and white pines maintained their needles, but the hardwoods were already bare. Some trees and shrubs still displayed berries, such as the Baberry, and I noticed some ferns still alive and healthy despite the snow. I noticed the water partially frozen in some areas as well.

I had a difficult time finding animals in the woods. There were a lot of human footprints along the trails and some pawprints of dogs, but, besides that, I could not spot any other tracks. I could not hear very many birds chirping as many of them have migrated, I did not see many insects as they often migrate or go dormant, and the squirrels I did see were quick and mobile, possibly dealing with their stashes of acorns.

Over Thanksgiving break, I visited the Bartlett Arboretum and Gardens in Stamford, Connecticut. I noticed several differences between the arboretum and Centennial Woods, but, being in a similar region of the country, there were also many similarities.

The Bartlett Arboretum is a fairly small natural area with a “wetland walk” across a marsh, streams through the forest, and a large pond at one end of the trail. It is comprised of primarily Northern Red Oak trees and some Eastern Hemlocks. There are some maple and beech trees and many ferns and shrubs. The arboretum is not near many busy roads or heavy urban development, so it is a peaceful hike. It is well managed and contains an information center and an educational tree garden made by the forestry department of the University of Connecticut. The forest has a lot of wildlife– on my hikes here I have come across turtles, frogs, snakes, and many species of birds. On my hike over Thanksgiving break, I came across a buck walking near the trail. Overall, the arboretum is a very pleasant natural spot to wind down and experience the serenity of nature and wildlife. 

Centennial Woods is a much larger forest with many more maple trees and evergreen trees such as the Eastern White Pine. It is much closer to heavier urban development, such as the UVM campus, and it is near busier roads. It seems to have more plant diversity, but I have noticed fewer wild animals here. Like the Bartlett Arboretum, it is also very well managed and has a lot of educational opportunities, as it is used by university students to study regional wildlife. It has a similar wetland, though much larger in size, and similar tree species.

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On Saturday, I walked down to Church Street from Redstone campus. It was chilly and windy all day, and it started out fairly sunny but quickly became cloudy. Most of the trees had no leaves, but the larger Northern Red Oak trees tended to still have a lot. Squirrels ran by me holding acorns and there were a lot of rain and mud puddles. Non-migrating birds such as sparrows and robins were also present.

3 November 2021:

There have been some major changes in Centennial Woods since my last visit on October 8th. Most notably, the weather was warm and summery the last time I went. This time, the temperature was around 40º F. Most trees had become bare, and the few that still had leaves were sparse and yellow, red, orange, and brown. It was much quieter with far fewer birds and insects. The trails were also much more muddy because of recent heavy rainfall, and I noticed fewer ferns and smaller understory plants.

Despite these changes, there were still animal species inhabiting the landscape. I noticed many squirrels and some native bird species such as ravens. Holes in tree trunks also suggested the presence of woodpeckers.