{"id":70,"date":"2020-04-26T13:44:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T17:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/?p=70"},"modified":"2020-04-26T14:03:29","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T18:03:29","slug":"march-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/2020\/04\/26\/march-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Figure 1. My dog Daisy amid scattered cone scales at the base of a spruce tree. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My new phenology blog spot for the remainder of the semester is about 40 yards away from the east-facing door of my father\u2019s house in Williamstown, Orange County, VT. On this day it was warm and sunny with just a little wind, and it had snowed two days prior. The ground was still covered in snow, so I did not detect nor record any ground flora during this observation period. The ground was surprisingly free of mammal tracks, despite it having been two days since the last snowfall. I would imagine any tracks were obscured from melting and the marks made by the snow which fell from the canopy. The immediate area contains a dense community of tall spruce trees; any small mammals in the area, like the squirrels and chipmunks I\u2019ve seen\u00a0around, may have remained in the canopy for a while without an incentive to traverse the snow-covered ground. While I didn\u2019t see any small mammal tracks, I did see cone scales littering the snow at the base of a few trees\u00a0(fig. 1).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2. The terminal twigs of a spruce tree branch. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As\u00a0noted, the trees in this area were mostly spruce\u00a0(fig. 2), but I have yet to determine the exact species; hopefully I can find some cones once the snow melts (California Academy of Sciences, 2008).\u00a0The bark of these spruces is flaky and colored in different mixtures of yellow, brown, and grey (fig. 3). I wonder if these variances in flake size and color are\u00a0a product of genetic variability within the group or are indicative of different species. There were two other trees I saw in the immediate area\u00a0which were completely enigmatic to me; they were almost as tall as the surrounding spruce, with dark brown, vertically furrowed bark at the bottom which turned white and birch-like farther up the trunk\u00a0(fig. 4). The\u00a0lower\u00a0branches seemed dead, and the higher ones looked like they had a haphazard, alternate branching pattern.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3. The bark of two different spruce trees. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Figure 4. The bark of a mysterious, birch-like tree. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There were also some birds\u00a0out and\u00a0about on this bright, sunny day.\u00a0I could clearly hear the warning call of a black-capped chickadee as well as a descending minor third call coming from another pair of birds.\u00a0 As it happens, this call and response came from black-capped chickadees as well.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 5. Field notes from this phenology outing. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

References <\/p>\n\n\n\n

California Academy of Sciences. (2008).\u00a0iNaturalist\u00a0(Version 2.8.7) [Mobile application software].\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macaulay Library. (2010). Black-capped chickadee\u00a0song [Song]. On\u00a0Voices of eastern backyard birds\u00a0<\/em>[Album].\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My new phenology blog spot for the remainder of the semester is about 40 yards away from the east-facing door of my father\u2019s house in Williamstown, Orange County, VT. On this day it was warm and sunny with just a little wind, and it had snowed two days prior. The ground was still covered in … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “March Madness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5835,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5835"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/eschoque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}