NR1010 Partridge Phenology24-25 A UVM blog

During the Urban Bio-Blitz that took place over the past 4 days, I have had several opportunities to get out in nature, and make some observations. On Sunday (4/27) I went for a walk in the Trinity woods, during which I recorded several different species in Inatrualist. I recorded a couple different woody species that were pretty common in the area, including chokecherry and baneberry bushes. I also spent some time searching for different animals, but the only ones I came across were a few robins feasting on worms freshly brought to the surface by the rain.

This afternoon –Monday (4/28)– I went down to salmon hole in Winooski. In contrast to the Trinity woods, Salmon hole felt much more lively. Notable species I observed here included several honeysuckle bushes, and a garter snake.

Overall, using Inatrualist to document species went pretty well. I think my biggest issue with it is that it’s just hard/ impossible to get a clear picture of all of the species I want to document, for example, at salmon hole, I saw a medium sized dark colored bird sitting on a rock with its wings spread. Once I got home and looked it up, I discovered it was most likely a Double-crested Cormorant, but since I couldn’t get a clear image of it I didn’t feel like there was any point in posting it since it was unverifiable.

After my walk at Salmon hole, I looked at the global standings and reports from the Inatrualist Bio-Blitz. In particular, I looked at La Paz, Bolivia which had the most observations of any zone at the time of my writing this. One thing I found pretty interesting was that a lot of the observations seemed to be peoples houseplants. The diversity and species selection was also much more robust than Burlington, but this kind of expected when you consider how close Bolivia is to the equator.

Recently with the changes in weather I have been spending more time outside, enjoying the local nature, and last Saturday I decided to take a trip down to Rock point.

The conditions during this trip was pretty normal for spring, 60 , cloudy and rainy–perfect for observing the manny changes taking place in the environment. On the hike i observed several different species of birds including the American robin, Cardinal, and, and Hermit thrush. I also saw a juvenile Fisher who was playfully jumping around on a collection of rocks. It seemed that the fisher ,like me was also enjoying the nice weather that day.

As for the plant life at rock point, The changes seemed more subtle. I think the place I visited in Rock point is a limestone cedar bluff , which was mainly made of eastern white cedar trees. Because these trees are evergreens they do not go through the full process of leafing in the spring as they keep their foliage year round. I do think that the trees definitely looked greener, which would make sense as they are beginning to photosynthesis again with the coming of spring.

I took my phenological walk on April first, and during this time I observed phenological changes of several Tree species around campus. Overall the trees all still seemed dormant, and for the most part, had not yet begun to bun or leaf yet. The trees that did have small but noticeable changes was white oak and red oak.
About a quarter of the white oak trees I saw had some leaves, and some of them also had several fruits. The Red oak trees I saw has some seed/fruit droop under the tree.
After my walk I took some time to explore the NPN’s website, and the most interesting element i found was the data maps that showed when each parts of the US experienced their bloom return, and leaf return. This map also showed how early the phenological change was compared to historic data. I think this is relevant to climate change because we know that even small temperature changes can lead to large phonological imbalances in animal and plant life cycles.