NR1010 Partridge Phenology24-25 A UVM blog

Over the past 3 months My phenology site has changed significantly from a lively forested creek bank to a much more quiet, bare area. I think These two photos, taken 53 days apart do excellent job of showing locational change over time.

I think over my time visiting here I have grown to appreciate a lot about this location as a whole but I think the most special part about this location to me is how close it is to Burlington, yet how “natural” it feels. This spot is an amazing escape from the city of Burlington and is a very peaceful place. every time I have come here I’ve left feeling less stressed and more rejuvenated.

Since the last visit to salmon hole the last of the foliage has fallen. For the most part there is no persistent understory vegetation, except for a few remaining red berries on a couple of oriental bittersweet bushes.

the day before visited my location received a few additional inches of snow, further hiding the leaf litter bellow. The snow did however reveal an animals tracks through my site. The footprints and track pattern makes me think that these tracks were left by a snowshoe hare. Aside from the hare’s track I didn’t noticed any other signs of animal activity.

Since my last visit to my phenology location I have noticed several notable changes, temperature change, seasonal leaf loss, change in wildlife, no geese, less birds, no squirrels or chipmunks seen, lower tide. Another interesting change I noticed is how much more noise pollution there is from the road. I think this is because of the lack of leaves to dampen the sound.

The Phenology location I chose over break was a small patch of woods in my backyard next to an abandoned field. To be more specific this location is in southeast of Pennsylvania near the tristate area with Delaware and Maryland. There are not that many phenological differences that I observed in this location, as it is very similar to the original sight in salmon hole. One of the small differences that I noticed was that there were more trees in the new location that still had leaves, and there was still a good amount of green leafy underbrush.

Some ecological differences I noticed was that the new site has less noise pollution, and at night less light pollution. Another difference is the level of disturbance. In salmon hole the forest surrounding my location is grown in and has manny late succession trees like sugar maples. In the new spot the abandoned field is still in the early stages of succession as the main plant is tall grass and smaller shrubs.