Welcome to my Phenology blog spot for 2023, a spot in the woods I found close to campus just off a trail that cuts between the Burlington Country Club and a Bio-Research Complex. To get to this spot I walk down the bike path alongside Spear St, past the UVM Dairy Barn, and turn right onto a road that leads into the Bio-Research Complex. A snow-covered dirt path leads off into a strip of woods running parallel to the golf course, and I walk on this till I find my spot.
I first noticed this specific area earlier this year, I run a loop around the golf course that takes this path, and there’s a big, dead, white pine that sits just off the path in the woods. It’s short but wide and has a lot of branches coming out of the trunk around my shoulder height, so it looks a little out of place where it’s surrounded by smaller hardwood trees like striped maples and basswood.
This spot has been visited by more than just me when I get there. My phone died in the middle of my trip so I didn’t get pictures, but squirrel tracks surround the bottom of the tree, and the snow is slightly dug up at the base, where scattered walnut shells are lying, remnants of the squirrel finding it’s hidden food for winter.
In the area around I see the distinctive red berries of the Japanese Barberry, an invasive plant that has thrived in the Northeast. The red berries are the only color I can spot in the brown and white, other than a patch of yellow snow left by what looks to be a deer that has left behind tracks. As I leave, snow starts falling a bit more heavily, and continues for a while longer, likely covering up the tracks that I saw, and burying the squirrel’s winter stores even farther under the inches of snow that already cover up the ground.
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