A UVM blog Phenology Blog #2

As we progress further into spring the Winooski River rises more and more, covering the dolostone of Salmon Hole. The vegetation is now fully back and looking beautiful. For someone new to the area, I have been associating Salmon Hole with the Domino’s, this vegan restaurant that Noelle likes, and the Mill. As far as human-nature interactions here, as its name suggest people have been fishing for salmon here for centuries. This is also an accessible water source for drinking, and also power for the mill and from the dam. Now Salmon Hole is mostly for recreation and aesthetics. I wouldn’t say I’m part of Salmon Hole, but I would consider myself part of Burlington now.

The red maple has now bloomed out of its bud stage and is now showing greenish red leaves and “helicopters”. The very ends of the stems were still red, but most of the stem has dulled.

Conveniently, I was already planning on going back home so it was no trouble to return to my red maple sapling. The buds had developed a lot since I’d last seen them, and some even had flowers starting to peek through, but there weren’t enough to where I would call the tree flowering. The flowers were bright red though, just like the buds.

The red maple I visited for the last phenology assignment hasn’t changed much. The ends of the branches have seemingly become redder, however the bud has not significantly developed. The tree is a sapling, and it looks like it has grown. There are more stems and beginnings of new branches.

Over break, I found a red maple sapling in upstate NY, where I live. It had started budding, displaying its characteristic red buds, differentiating it from a sugar maple.

For this assignment, a friend and I walked along the waterfront about halfway to Rock Point. It was an unusually warm day so there was plenty of mud to look for tracks in. We were very interested to see what kind of wildlife we could find closer to residential areas. At one point I saw this huge, long-dead tree that had a hollow center. We weren’t able to identify the tree, but there were marks on it to suggest an animal had been living in it.

I was very excited thinking I had found wolf tracks in the mud, since the path was very straight and the prints were about 4 inches. However, due to the large claw indents and close “x”, I decided it was more likely a domesticated dog.

There were several birds, they were too quick to get a picture but we guessed American Goldfinch, American Crow, and Common Robin. There was also an abundance of gray squirrels.

Probably the most interesting discovery was the incredibly large pile of scat we found. After some very impressive tracking we found the culprit: a large brown horse… just walking around by the Echo Center.

Since I was last at Salmon Hole, the biggest change has been the snow cover. There were roughly four inches of wet snow pack, making it easy to see animal tracks, but hard to find any visible scat (though there was lots of yellow snow). Several mid to large-sized animal tracks were visible, including deer and domestic dogs. There were two different bird chirps that I could hear, but none were visible. While 90% of the plant life was dead, there were green grasses and moss growing in the cracks of the rocks, and berries growing on some mid-story bushes. The water close to the rock shore was frozen, and many high-traffic spots became icy in the main area.