Today I visited Salmon Hole in Winooski to look at the paper birch that was observed a couple of weeks ago. It was a sunny spring day, and the temperature was a comfortable 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The Winooski River was loud and rapidly moving along. The paper birch stood tall, but I noticed quickly that none of the branches had budded or flowered. With the budding/flowering season for birches being in April, I think that in a couple of weeks the tree will show signs of buds and then flowers.
In addition to observing the paper birch, I also looked around the area for some phenological changes. A lot of the snow from the previous visit had melted and revealed smaller plants, weeds, and grass that were trying to poke through. One group of mushrooms at the bottom of a tree caught my eye. When I identified it on iNaturalist it classified the mushrooms as “bracket fungi”. I also noticed a lot more sounds of birds in the area, on my way out I spotted a robin hopping from branch to branch.
