Phenology Blog

Today, the 24th of February, I walked down to Centennial Woods with a little bit more excitement than normal because it is 50℉ out and super sunny!! Although it might not be the best for the weather to be like this in February, it is supposed to snow later in the week so I took this day as a taste of spring!

When I arrived at my site there were about 6 inches of snow that were so saturated in water and completely packed down from foot traffic that it was completely solid. The landscape looked completely different to me than when I visited last because that was fresh snow falling. There are no major phenological changes that have occurred since that last visit other than the snow was melting a little bit due to the warm weather.

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The stream was rushing pretty strongly today which could be accounted for due to the melting snow rushing into the stream. The sound coming from the stream added a very mellow, spring-tone to the air while I was sitting in the woods and it got me excited for some green to start returning to my site.

With a larger focus on animal tracking this semester, I tried to find some animal tracks around my site which can be hard due to the amount of foot traffic my area gets. I finally found tracks from a Gray Squirrel which is very common but I was excited to find a track. The gray squirrel lives in the same area year-round and is found in mature hardwood forests with normally a high amount of oak trees and the squirrels like to be near a permanent water source ( Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department ). The squirrel whos tracks I found does definitely not live where my phenology site is but most likely uses the stream as a water source.

We’ve all been taught that squirrels eat acorns and nuts but there is never any specification on what kind of nuts they eat. The bulk of the gray squirrel ‘s diet is hickory nuts and beechnuts but they also eat mushrooms, small bird eggs, fruit, flowers, and insects ( Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department ). None of those items are currently thriving in Vermont’s winter landscape which is why squirrels bury their food in the fall and summer so they can survive the winter. I found evidence of the squirrel interacting with the landscape through a food stash a few yards past my site which further confirms the thought of gray squirrel activity. The gray squirrel spends most of its day finding its food stashes and getting calories from their food to get them through the days and then are found in their dens sleeping at night( Lawniczak, 2002). I also found a lot of bark in the snow that appeared to have been purposely ripped off of a tree. It was closer to the tree line where there is a thicker canopy and I believe that it is from the squirrel. Upon further research, I found that squirrels rip the bark off of trees because it makes a great lining for their dens so based on what I saw that makes a lot of sense (SF Gate).

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The gray squirrel does not travel on the ground too much and prefers to travel by hopping from tree to tree to avoid predators such as red foxes, red-tailed hawks, Cooper’s hawks, coyotes, bobcats, and humans(Lawniczak , 2002). Due to the open space at my site, it is not likely that the squirrels spend too much time at my phenology site because of fear from predators and the fact that there is little purpose for squirrels in this area as there are no nut-producing trees above my site.

Works Cited:

Lawniczak, M. 2002. “Sciurus carolinensis, Animal Diversity Web. http://www.biokids.umich.edu/accounts/Sciurus_carolinensis/

SF Gate. (n.d.) Will a Squirrel Stripping the Bark off of a Tree Kill it? https://homeguides.sfgate.com/squirrel-stripping-bark-off-tree-kill-tree-92677.html

Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. (n.d.). Gray Squirrel. https://vtfishandwildlife.com/learn-more/vermont-critters/mammals/gray-squirrel

As semester two rolled around and NR 002 began classes, I found myself back at the stream to continue on this phenology blog! Winter is now fully here and the scene has most definitely changed since I started coming in the fall.

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There was snow on the ground during my last visit but today the Earth was completely covered in densely packed snow that was fully saturated with water. The stream was flowing the strongest I had ever seen it which is probably due to the melting snow and ice that is all around. All the plants are completely dead and barren now which is different than before because before you could still see the leaves that had fallen from the trees but now they are gone and buried under the snow.

Although the cold winter took away the fall foliage, life still seemed very present in the woods. Human tracks packed down all the snow on the bridge and erased any signs of wildlife in the area. The only nonhuman tracks right on my sight were domesticated dog tracks.

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However, on the way to my sight, I found signs of life across the icy path to the footbridge. The first set of tracks I came across I believe are deer tracks and they were on the side of the trail in the beginning half of the trail when entering the woods by the police station. I am almost certain that this image comes from a deer because the area I grew up in had many deer and I was just taught that these were what deer tracks look like and when you cross-reference the image on the Internet the pictures look similar.

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After the deer tracks, the next set of tracks I came across I believe are from a rabbit. I say this because in the lecture we learned about different types of gaits and this I believe was from a galloper. The picture shown is what I believe to be the two back paws from a rabbit.

TWIGS

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I have found a sense of place and familiarity in Centennial Woods but in the long scheme of things I have only been entering those woods for an extremely small fraction of my life. I think you can have a sense of place anywhere you feel a connection to, but some senses are stronger than others like how I have a stronger sense of place in Scituate, MA. This small-town south of Boston is where I have been living with my family for the past 7 years and where I grew up during the pivotal times of my life.

When I first moved to this town, I simply hated it. I couldn’t pronounce the town and was resentful towards the place because it uprooted me from my life in Norfolk, VA. I think my resentment stemmed from the fact that living in Norfolk was the place where I had ever had a strong sense of place. I had lived in other places before Norfolk, but I wasn’t old enough to create my own bonds with a place. After 7 years of living in this small town, I consider it my town. I love Scituate and all the people and places within town lines and am so grateful that I got to grow up there for some time. Going off the college made me fall in love with my town even more than I thought I could have. I live in a summer town which means that people come to vacation in Scituate, MA, and our population doubles. I could not understand why anyone in their right mind would ever want to vacation there but now I can appreciate it and see just how amazing the town is. Although I don’t know if I will be living there ever again in my life, I know that my sense of place to this area is so strong and I will be definitely coming back to visit.

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My house is about a thousand yards from a beach which is great in every way possible but at the same time the reason that Scituate might be gone in a few decades. Scituate is an epicenter for all nor’easters and storms that roll by New England and because the land is at such a low elevation, the town is constantly flooded. Scituate is a coastal community and depends on the ocean and beaches for the main source of income of the town; tourism. The ocean is also the major thing that degrades the town, but the heart and souls of the “townies” prove resilient and I know that the town of Scituate will never be abandoned no matter the extremities of climate change.

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Those resilient townies have a commonality amongst them aside from being extreme Patriot fans- they’re all white. Sure, there are some non-white residents Scituate, but that number is less than one percent. Scituate is the most Irish town in America and most people are Catholic. So, if you were to ask what an average Scituate person was, I would tell you that they are a white, Irish catholic with a last name like Murphy, Brown, or Sullivan. I had 4 Sullivan’s in my graduating class and none of them were related. These demographics bond people in this town but as a transplant, I felt it hard to adapt at first. My old school before Scituate was majority black and I was one of the only white girls, I’m not Irish, and I’m not religious so I was an outlier in the town. Almost everyone in the town is a member of the upper-middle class with many in the upper class and few in the lower class which can being daunting when you move from a poor area.

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From the outside, Scituate can be described as a “preppy” town but it is so much more than that. I have made my best friends for life in this town and they are considered my family. I learned to drive a car there, I graduated high school, and my fondest memories in life are there. Writing this I am nostalgic of my past 7 years in Scituate and although it is completely different from the UVM atmosphere I would not change the way I grew up for anything in life. My sense of place in Scituate is so strong not only because of my positive memories but because an equal number of bad things happened to me there. I grew into the individual I am in that town and I think I would be completely different if I didn’t grow up there. I know for sure I wouldn’t have gone to as many Superbowl parades as I have if I didn’t live there. I think being able to live in an area for a good part of your life is important for an individual to develop themselves and be able to create a bond with the land they are living on and although I didn’t welcome the idea of living in Scituate, I know that eventually embracing the town was the best thing I ever did.

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At first, my phenology location was just a pretty place that I chose to sit and start a school project but as I continue and continue to visit the same place, I feel more familiar with my surroundings. As I went to this spot earlier in the fall, it felt like a warm and cozy place that was a good place to get away from the busy school life. Now as I have seen my place transition towards a more winter landscape, it almost feels more intimate and that I am welcomed presence in the place. When snow falls the world goes silent to me and being in the woods as it was snowing was a silent paradise where I was just observing the world around me.

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            Sitting in this area looking at the trees above you, you can feel really small in this large world. I feel that when I think of life outside of my area, I feel like I’m thinking as the world as a whole because I know in the back of my head, I am sitting here for a college course. I think about how lucky I am to be taking the classes I am compared to my friends who are stuck in buildings all day. It is also apparent to me to think about what this place would’ve been like 100 years ago just because we’ve spent so much time in class talking about the history of Vermont. I’m not sure if there would be any of the plants or trees in my area back when the land was being used industrially or agriculturally. It is crazy to learn about a place and experience it in real-time but also have insight into what this place could’ve looked like decades before I was born. This ideology compels me to also think what the future holds for my spot in Centennial Woods. There is a high amount of human activity in this area and a city surrounding the woods, so this affects what happens to the woods. The activity can either degrade the land or preservationist actions can be taken to further protect the woods.  

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Welcome to the little spot of mine located in Centennial Woods in Burlington, VT! My spot is located on the middle of a footbridge which is right over a stream running through the woods.

How do I get there?

To get to my favorite spot in Centennial Woods you need to begin at the entrance located by the campus police station. From there you enter the woods by the sign and walk down the path. The path is on a downwards incline and you follow it until you get to a clearing in the woods that has an abundance of Eastern White pines. Once there you take the leftward path and there should be a small footbridge about 20ft. from the pine clearing. After you cross that footbridge you really start to feel yourself getting deeper into the woods and away from civilization. Soon you’ll arrive at another clearing but this time the trees in the area are paper birches. Just after the birch clearing there is a long foot bridge. If you go half way across the bridge there is a clearing in the trees and there you go; you’ve arrived.

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This place definitely has changed its landscape overtime and you can tell because of the mysterious feeling you get when you are there. My spot is located on a footbridge which shows that human involvement in the area is obviously high and it makes you wonder what it looked like before humans came into the picture.

the 5 senses

5 senses come into play when spending time in this place. The first thing you’ll really notice when you’re sitting on this footbridge, taking nature in, is what you hear. When it is just you in the woods by yourself you hear just how alive the forest is, even when you can’t see a lot of organisms. You can hear the cicadas making the air hum as they try and hold onto the last days of summer. Bird activity is very high in this area and you can hear all of the birds calling out to each other and flapping their wings above. The most distinct sound in this spot is the flow of the stream. On days after a heavy rainfall the stream is moving at fast rates or on normal days it is slowly pushing along. Regardless the stream velocity the sound that comes about is a very peaceful one that reminds me of a day spa vibe.

The next sense that comes into play is smell. Due to the moving water in this area, the first time I came to this spot it reminded me of a spring day even though it was one of the last summer days in Vermont. The smell is fresh and earthy and the only way to experience it is to get outside.

Visually, you see the moving stream snake its way through the landscape, eroding the banks of tall grass and small beech trees. If you look just past the brook you see a bunch of larger Norway maples who’s colors are shifting from green to red as the fall season encroaches upon us. To the left you see the transition from an area with water to a dry wooded area with many tall pines and to the right you see smaller shrubs entangling themselves with the foot bridge.

There isn’t much I would recommend tasting here but I will say you can taste the air in the same way that it smells. The air just tastes cleaner even though you are still so close to a city.

Sitting on the dock you can feel just how worn out the wood on the foot bridge is and think about how many people cross it a day. You can feel the Earth of the river bank between your hands and how rich the soil feels as compared to an arid landscape. Overall this sight is pleasing to every sense in every way imaginable.