A UVM blog Julian de Castro’s Phenology Blog

This is my third time visiting Centennial Woods. This time was different, however. Now that the weather is getting warmer, the snow is starting to melt and the sun is coming out more often (ironically the day I went wasn’t sunny, but the last few days have been). I’ve started to see the paper birch I’ve been looking at and other nearby trees to be growing new branches. You can see it by the reddish-brown buds coming out of the existing branches. It’s nice to see how nature is starting to wake up from its hibernation in winter, and with the birds chirping again and flowers starting to bloom, its marking the change into spring.

My revisit to Centennial Woods took place during the transition from winter to spring. The cold 20–30-degree days of winter were behind us, are beginning to be replaced by warmer 40-degree days. Because of this, the snow on the ground has begun to melt, making the Centennial trails very muddy and slippery. Despite that, I still made my way to the tree, which didn’t seem to show any major changes.

When comparing the picture, I took of my tree in my first visit and the picture I took now, there doesn’t seem to be any noticeable differences. The bark still has the same color as last time, and there haven’t been any new twigs growing around the base. The only twigs and branches I could be very high on the tree.

Overall, my visit to Centennial was a bit slippery, but overall, my tree was the same as the last time I saw it. Hopefully as the weather gets warmer deeper into spring, I will see much more leaves and foliage growing on the paper birch I have chosen.

During this visit to Centennial Woods, I was tasked with finding and identifying one out of a set of chosen trees. The tree I chose was the Paper Birch, since compared to the other trees in the area, the unique bark it has makes it stand out.

I could tell that this was a paper birch by comparing its unique characteristics to those in the same species. I knew it wasn’t a river birch because the bark doesn’t have the striking salmon pink color river birches are known to have. I knew it wasn’t yellow birch because yellow birches are much thinner and slender in size, while this paper birch is much thicker. Finally, I knew it wasn’t a grey birch because it doesn’t have the noticeable black patches like grey birches commonly have on their bark.

I decided I would go back to Rock Point for my INaturalist project, since it was my phenology spot last semester and I enjoy walking around there. I went on a relatively warm day compared to the ones before it, so most of the snow had melted and the ground was incredibly muddy and moist. I also noticed that a small river had been formed from the melting snow leading down towards Lake Champlain. I even took a photo of it.

It was cool to see naturally flowing water making its way into the lake and let me see the many ways Lake Champlain gets supplied with water. Alongside this, I witnessed many other natural phenomena that I recorded with INaturalist. Here are a few of the photos I took:

I identified this berry as a type of gooseberry. I noticed the alternate branching as well as the striking feature of the branches themselves have thorns on them.

I stumbled upon this burrow while walking on one of the Rock Point trails. There weren’t any tracks around the burrow to help me identify what made the hole, but I am led to believe it could be a fisher or a groundhog.

This track I spotted I am torn between whether it could be a white-tailed deer or a moose track. The track itself was around 4 inches, which leads me to believe it is a moose track, but I am unsure since moose being around Vermont are on the rare side. Overall, it is probably a white-tailed deer, but because of the overall size of the track itself, it could be a rare moose.

The Location I chose this semester was Centennial Woods, not too far away from UVM’s central campus. In order to get there, you have to walk in the direction directly across from the Davis Center entrance, then you can just follow Carrigan Drive until you get to Centennial Court, and Centennial is right next to it.

Wildlife Pictures:

Bonus: Small Snowman!

As the seasons have changed much more compared to my last visit to Rock Point, the foliage and overall forest has changed a lot. One of the most visible and obvious changes is the lack of any leaves on any trees, with the exception being the Northern White Cedar trees. Apart from those, all of the surrounding maple trees as well as any other smaller understory trees and bushes are all but sticks now.

As you can see from these photos, there isn’t much left in terms of vegetation or foliage in Rock Point. It may be hard to see from these pictures, but one other thing I noticed while back here was that although the leaf litter was roughly the same as last time, it was a lot more compact. I didn’t hear myself crunching on leaves as much as I did last time because it felt that the ground was a lot colder, which in turn made the leaf litter frozen and compact.

This leads me to my next picture and next point, being the dirt and ground in certain places was actually already frozen over. It usually happened in areas where water accumulated enough to where the ground around it was very moist and muddy. One thing about these ice patches I noticed was that they seemed to be on or near the main trail, which I thought was interesting. This is probably because the trail itself much flatter compared to the surrounding forest, and the trail is more susceptible to being packed and stepped on, causing water to accumulate around the flatter parts of the trail.

As the last Phenology Post of this blog, I have to look back and consider what this spot means to me, and what I like most about it. I think my most favorite part of Rock Point is the view I can get of the sunset setting over Lake Champlain. The day I visited Rock Point for the last time, I managed to get a really good view and picture of this sunset. Seeing the beautiful, orange sun set over the lake, with the quiet, stoic mountains in the background made me really grateful to have chosen this as my Phenology spot.

The location I chose for my Home Phenology project was East Bradford Park, a small but nice place that is connected to my neighborhood. I’ve gone through this park many, many times in my life, from playing baseball and soccer games on the fields, to hanging out with friends on the playground, or running on it during quarantine out of sheer boredom. I have a lot of memories associated with this place, so I wanted to take my NR 001 knowledge and my time at Rock Point to see how they compare to my home location.

One of the reasons I enjoy walking/running around East Bradford Park is the views it gives of the entire surrounding area. As you can see from this picture, one can get a great view of the sunset walking on the trails here. It doesn’t show in this picture, but from at the top of this hill, you can see the entire neighborhood and see all of the forests that surround the park.

From this photo, we can see a little bit of the phenology and forest composition that takes place here. From my own experiences walking around here, the understory is much denser than anything I’ve seen at Rock Point, which was surprising to me since Rock Point is much bigger and vaster than the park. As you can see in the picture, there is an abundance of shrubbery and small, Viney trees in the understory, making it very dense to walk through for both humans and animals. As for the overstory, it is pretty thick as well. It is hard to see since there aren’t any leaves, but there are many large trees that dominate the overstory, making very large shadows over the understory beneath it. I would say this is pretty similar to Rock Point, where large Maples dominate the overstory while the understory does not consist of much besides small plants.

Upon Sitting down at my Phenology site, I was met with the whipping winds coming from the cliffside. These winds constantly hit me in the face, but I found them to be more relaxing than annoying. I could hear the trees around me rustling and creaking due to the wind, with some even making loud squeaking creaks due to how high the wind was. The waves crashing against the cliffs were a calming sound which complemented the wind. I can see the other side of the lake, an unknown yet beautiful place with an even more beautiful marine ecosystem separating me from it. While my location was shrouded in clouds, I could see other places that only knew sunny skies and nice weather that day. My location is a place that can seem harsh and disorienting, but when one stops to listen and feel, it can turn Lone Rock Point into a place unlike any other that allows you to see places whose environment is much different.

Birds-Eye View Drawing By me

The most noticeable change that I saw when going up to Rock Point this time was that almost all of the trees apart from the ones near the shore were all without their leaves. When I first went there, there were a quite a few leaves on the trails, but now the entire forest is covered in maple leaves. Only the cedar trees growing out towards the lake still had their leaves. Another thing I noticed is that most small flowers and vegetation has mostly withered away. The unknown flower I saw a lot of in my first visit is nowhere to be seen now, and lots of small shrubs or plants have either lost all of their leaves or died due to the colder weather.