March 16th
While home for spring break, I spent hours outside in the woods surrounding my home, mostly on many long snowshoes. However, with this assignment in mind, I took the time to spend an hour alone, making myself more observant of what actually is there. I have to say that since I have gone away to college, every time I come home I am more aware of my surroundings in these Montgomery, VT woods, and I am much more appreciative of the environment I got to grow up in! Since Montgomery is only about an hours drive north of Burlington, many of the same species occupy this forest and it looks very similar to my site in Centennial Woods. This forest is also a northern hardwood forest and the trees I could find included yellow and paper birches, beeches, ashes, sugar and red maples, a few striped maples, hemlocks, and white pines. There were also a few spruces and firs, more than at my spot in Centennial Woods likely because here we are even farther north and temperatures are a bit colder. I was intrigued by the interesting and prominent textures that I was noticing in the forest (see photos below). Each tree has a unique feeling- the paper birch is so smooth and soft while the ash is rough and has deep grooves. On my search for animal tracks I stumbled upon lots of clear raccoon prints (see more photos). Their human-like hand prints were evident and further could be recognized by their pacing gait pattern. I didn’t see any other tracks besides one little squirrel trail. Though I also didn’t I hear or see many birds in the forest, I had an amazing experience of seeing a big bard owl! I didn’t want to get too close and scare it away but I snapped a picture from afar. I’ve heard that owls are having a rough winter so I bet it was out looking for food. I watched it for about 20 minutes before it flew away! Just outside of the forest around our house there were very many chickadees, but other than that, I didn’t spot many more birds. The owl definitely made up for it all though!
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