Winooski River Phenology Project

City Nature Challenge 2025!

On the first day of the BioBlitz, Friday, I biked up the Island Line Trail from the ECHO Center to the Winooski River Iron Bridge up by Derway Island. I stopped so many times I think the round trip actually took me about 4 hours.

I really like using iNaturalist especially when there is a certain plant I’m having trouble identifying. Sometimes even iNaturalist doesn’t know, but I like seeing the options it gives me and using my best judgement based on those. I found it really easy to keep track of my observations even when I didn’t have service since you have the option to add pictures afterwards and keep the correct GPS location.

I encountered many bird species but was able to capture 6 on camera. The most frustrating part about using iNaturalist is needing to get a reasonably good picture of wildlife that doesn’t like you.

My bird photography is questionable, but they are in the pictures I promise. I actually passed a man on the bike path who told me to look out for the bald eagles, but I unfortunately did not see any after stopping and watching for about 10 minutes. I encountered the most birds when I stopped to walk around the cemetery, but the only bird that enjoyed my presence was the Blue Jay.

I also encountered plenty of Eastern Gray Squirrels.

I saw many trees in their early spring stages, such as the Common Serviceberry and Box Elder beginning to bloom. The non-native Golden-Bell has already bloomed in someone’s front yard.

Just now, April 27, I checked the live results of the City Nature Challenge. I was surprised to see San Antonio holding a strong lead! Cape Town has fallen behind this year. I loved seeing how many cities were participating globally, and was sad to see my city was not participating.

Phenology Walk!

I went to collect data on April 6. Generally, there were no buds breaking, but there were a few trees with flowers starting. The red oak had started to flower, but the white oak was still holding onto its leaves from last year. The maples had not started flowering at all and their buds were closed. I liked doing this activity because I otherwise would not have really recognized that trees are starting to flower, indicating spring is closer to really coming. I also liked seeing the pattern between oaks and maples.

Looking at the NPN website, I was really interested by the pattern observed on the Spring Leaf Index Anomaly map. There were almost horizontal stripes of “20 days late,” “no difference,” and “20 days early” (in terms of the normal time for leaves to break) across the United States. It also indicates that while leaf break has not hit Vermont yet, it is making its way through New York. New York is highlighted as having earlier-than-usual leaf break this year, so I wonder what the normal time for Vermont is. I’m intrigued by what this pattern on the map stems from, and how it is being impacted by climate change. A lot of the North is seeing earlier than usual leaf break, so I think we will see that in Vermont. This can be tied to climate change as warming temperatures throw off phenological cycles across the country.

Last Sunday, February 16, I went to Centennial Woods after our big snowstorm with hopes for lots of animal activity, but I failed to find a single track. Even the animals were staying in. I did find a spot that could have very well been a burrowing spot under the fresh foot of snow. In addition, I saw evidence of a woodpecker on a few trees.

Yesterday, February 22, I traveled out to Rock Point to search for animal tracks. Along the road through the property, we came across plenty of tracks seemingly belonging to a deer. These looked like hooves to me, so I assumed deer, but I feel like they may have been large enough to belong to a moose. I was having a lot of fun identifying with my non-Rubenstein friend and uncovering the mystery.

We didn’t come across a great deal of very clear tracks, I think because of the deep snow. I found putting observations on iNaturalist really easy, especially since I was able to wait until I was back to upload them and they would save my GPS information from the photo, allowing me to save my phone battery.

This set of tracks disappeared into a tree, so I am assuming it was a squirrel. The tracks were too big to be a red squirrel, so I am guessing it is a gray squirrel.

This was a story I had trouble following because I wasn’t quite sure what these tracks belonged to. Most of the tracks I saw did not have any sort of real footprints, but this appears to be an animal that hops and burrows in the snow.

This one I really had no idea, but it appears to be dragging itself a little or maybe has a tail. Maybe something as small as a mouse, but I couldn’t see any clear footprints. Overall, I had a great experience with iNaturalist and loved trying to put the clues together and working with others to rationalize our ideas.

Over break, I visited the Three Sisters at Sugarcreek MetroPark in Bellbrook, Ohio, with my dad. The Three Sisters are 580-year-old white oak trees. Neither my dad nor I had visited here before, but we’ve been trying to explore the different MetroParks in the Dayton area.

Honeysuckle visibly dominates the understory of this forest, as it is the last tree here to hold onto its leaves. There was sparse new growth for the native trees of this forest. The overstory consisted of a mix of white oak, sycamore, cottonwood, sugar maple, black cherry, and chestnut oak. There are little to no coniferous trees in this forest, which is similar to my phenology spot by the Winooski River. The soil in Ohio felt more clay-like, in contrast to the sandy soil in Burlington. Most of the groundcover has died off by now, but it appeared to be grassy in this opening where the white oak trees were. It appeared that there were a lot of fallen trees in this forest, and with most of the new growth being invasive honeysuckle, it makes me worried for the future of this forest.

What was most notable to me when I was picking somewhere to visit for my assignment was that Sugarcreek MetroPark was once completely farmland. The Osage orange trees seen planted in rows once acted as fencing for their cattle before barbed wire was invented. The MetroPark system in Dayton is similar to the urban natural areas in Burlington, in that conscious land use practices have restored this forest after its clearing, allowing for use by the public.

Overall, I was really shocked that these trees had been 40 minutes away from my house my whole life and I had never seen them! I can’t imagine what they have seen in their lifetime, and I am curious about the history of land use in the Greater Dayton area as it compares to what we have learned about Burlington. I am extremely grateful to have these urban natural areas available to me at home as well as in Burlington.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JP1EwWk2wsT9EBJ4A