When visiting my phenology place today, the ground was cold and muddy because the temperature is nearly 50 degrees, so all the snow was melted. When I walked down the path to the pond, I noticed no sugar maple, red maple, striped maple, or green ash trees had leaves. I did notice that the Beech leaves had turned a golden brown color, and were still on the trees. I also noticed that the buckthorn bushes had their leaves still, but they were shriveled up and appeared to be deterriorating. The red and white oak trees at my location had lost all of their leaves, unlike the oak trees on the UVM campus, which still have most of their now dark brown leaves.

When I walked down to the edge of the pond, I noticed the vegetation was mostly dead and brown. There were no surviving ferns. I saw that what I predicted was wild cucumber vines had spread a lot since my first visit in November, and then died. The only alive vegetation I saw was a ground covering plant that had sprouts with three leaves on the end of each sprout. They look similar to buttercup plant leaves. The pond itself was slightly frozen, and still had cattails growing out of it.

I saw no birds at all on my visit today, and only one squirrel which I spooked on my walk down.