February 18, 2023
Blog Post #6
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✩ Timeline of Our Walk ✩
╰┈➤ To make our observations, me and my friend decided to walk down from Church Street to the Lake Champlain Waterfront and see what we could find. We hypothesized that we wouldn’t see much diverse wildlife because of the time and place, but we actually saw a few common animals in the city! Firstly, as we were walking by Burlington High School, we saw a flock of Herring Gulls flying overhead (Figure 1). Afterwards, we went to the lookout spot at the edge of the city that overlooks Lake Champlain and the mountains. We were hoping to see Champ from here, but we did spot a grey squirrel (Figure 2) and what looked to be the pawprints of a fisher or maybe a domestic cat that had stepped in the same track twice (Figure 3). I say this because this track looks like it has five toes, which would rule out a canine or feline, but it didn’t seem like there were other 5-toed tracks around, and it seemed to have a leading toe. Once we made it all the way to the waterfront, we saw a bunch of mallard ducks by the Echo Center, about 4 males and 2 females swimming and nesting (Figure 4). We recorded all of our findings on iNaturalist as we saw them and I overall really liked the experience, especially when you get to hear feedback on your pictures!
