november 29, 2020
When I was driving back to Long Island from Vermont, one of the first things I noticed was how many more leaves were left on the trees in New York, compared to the bare trees I saw further north. I am still seeing this, as the colors in my backyard looks more like the view from my dorm window back in late October. Although there aren’t nearly as many wildlife species on Long Island as there are in Vermont, since I have been home, I have already seen deer, opossums, and raccoons. While at my at-home phenology site, I tried to take note of different plants I saw and compare them to the ones I saw at my phenology site in Burlington. One thing I looked into that stood out were the different invasive species. There are some similarities including honeysuckle, barberry, and Amur maple, but on Long Island, common invasive plant species include bamboo, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese wisteria, and California privet. There is no invasive bamboo on my at-home phenology site, but there are large patches all over many parts of my town and others that surround it. I never really noticed the small differences in each state’s ecology or phenology prior to this project.