For this assignment, we were asked to expand our treks out to the greater Burlington area (and not just out phenology spots) and do some wildlife tracking for a bit of a bio-blitz! We were asked to report our findings both on this blog and on the iNaturalist website, and I am beyond happy to say that I have a lot to report!
My exploration took me to Centennial Woods, where I began my tracking on Tuesday, February 14th. This Valentine’s Day journey took about an hour and a half, and immediately, we (me and my tracking partner, Ann) were presented with some difficulty. This happened to be the day after temperatures were in the high forties- low fifties, and a lot of prints that had been left in the snow were a mess of melted ice. Nevertheless, we were soon able to find tracks of various medium- sized domesticated dogs (shown below). Afterwards, we spotted some tracks that we were pretty sure came from an eastern grey squirrel (noted by the long “nails” present in the snow as well as the galloping pattern [image 2]). Lastly, we found some tracks that we think might be from a cottontail rabbit, although the snow melting had really harmed the integrity of the prints (image 3).
While that was all of the tracking I planned to do, I ended up taking a trip down to the waterfront Thursday afternoon to sit outside in the good weather. During this trip, I saw some more domesticated dog prints in the sand (image 4), but the real pinnacle of my trip was a spotting of a group of Canada Geese in the water (image 5)! They were really pretty, and they were actually the first observation I posted to iNaturalist. The picture of this posting is posted below (image 6), but I honestly had a really hard time with this posting thing. I’m not a tech whizz, and this was definitely a challenge for me. I had to get the photos from my phone to my computer, and then put those photos on the iNaturalist site. From file formatting issues to creating my iNaturalist account, there were challenges every step of the way. Nevertheless, I overcame these obstacles, and the observations are recorded! I thoroughly enjoyed this tracking experience, and sincerely look forward to next time! See you then!
