Over the four days, I was working Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, as well as had a lot of assignments that needed completion. As such, the only day that I could really get out and observe was Monday. Before Monday I was able to make some observations, but the path I took to and from work (which is on campus) had me walking past the same plants over and over again, so I wasn’t seeing any new plants. Monday morning was the schoolwide walkout in support of survivors of sexual assault, and I took a few plant pictures along the way. That afternoon, my friend and I headed into Centennial Woods, home to my phenology spot and a wonderful natural place that is very close to campus. As we walked along the path, I took a picture of every plant I saw that weren’t grouped together. That way I didn’t just have thirty pictures of Eastern White pines that were growing next to each other, but I did end up finding a few clusters of Garlic Mustard (though I didn’t know what they were while I was taking pictures) throughout the woods, documented only once per area.
While we were in the woods, I stopped by my phenology spot by the stream, and as I was approaching it I could see that the branches from the previous visit had either fallen or been knocked over. Upon closer look, the deer spine and leg bone were now resting on the ground. Even though it was disheartening to see the branches strewn about, being able to look at the bones up close was really cool.
Using iNaturalist was fairly easy for me, what I did was take pictures through my phone’s camera (or you can use a camera camera) and then went back at a later time to upload all of the pictures to the app. It did take a fairly long time to input all the observations one by one, but other than that it worked pretty well 🙂 I am looking forward to next year’s City Nature Challenge, perhaps there can be a Rubenstein-wide competition.
