Centennial Woods Phenology Blog A UVM blog

It’s hard to believe we just finished out last week of class, which means one last phenology blog post! For this assignment we participated in the City Nature Challenge. We were supposed to take pictures and observe as many species as possible over the weekend. It was kind of hard to find time to go out and do this because I was scheduled to work around 20 hours that weekend, but Monday afternoon a couple friends and I went around campus and to the woods to take pictures.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of animals and plants I took:

We saw this chipping sparrow outside Jeffords hall on campus. iNaturalist could not identify the type of fern we saw in Centennial Woods but it looked super cool so we had to take a picture of it. Overall, iNaturalist was a very helpful tool in identifying plants and animals that I didn’t know. It was also interesting to see where everyone else was taking pictures on the map. In total I made 60 observations and identified 15 species.

Looking at the global challenge I found it interesting that multiple cities from Texas were in the top. When I think nature, I don’t exactly think Texas. Texas is quite big so it does make some sense. It was also very cool that Burlington was ahead of other more populous areas like Atlanta.

In conclusion, it was a great way to get outside and end the semester! Making this blog over the course of my freshman year was very fun and I plan on continuing to visit my phenology spot next year!

This is my final visit here for this year! It’s been super fun watching this site change over the course of about 6 months. Our assignment for this week was to make a final sketch of our place and note any final changes.

This is a rough sketch of my view of my spot. The main feature is still the creek that runs through it, with some fallen trees over it. Since I started coming to this spot, more trees have fallen to lay across the water. Most of them fell during the winter after storms came through and the wind and snow knocked them down.

One thing I was disappointed to not find at my spot was a collection of broken glass that I found before winter. The snow covered it and then once it melted I couldn’t find it. I think this collection was a part of its culture because it signified the relationship between humans and nature. I don’t consider myself a part of my place because I think it can function just fine without me there. I would consider myself a frequent and welcome visitor. My favorite part of going back to visit was seeing all the signs of spring!

This baby hemlock tree still had leaves during the winter but they were covered by snow and now it’s bright green! I also found these buds but I’m not sure what kind of tree it is. I think next semester I will still try and visit this spot when I want to take a walk. Centennial Woods will always remind me of my freshman year!

We went back to Centennial Woods today to look how our tree has changed over the past few weeks. Spring is making an appearance this week! Right now it is sunny and 50 degrees. That also means all the snow in the forest has melted.

You can see the ground is covered in leaf litter and there are sticks everywhere but no snow. Once I made it to my tree I looked again at the buds on its branches and found nothing much had changed since I last visited. My beech tree is still kinda budding, definitely no flowers yet.

My friend and I looked around to see if any other trees were budding and we think we found a red maple. We also took a picture of the pretty moss you can now see on the ground since the snow is gone!

It’s hard to believe the semester is almost over! Soon we will go back to our original phenology spots to close out the semester! Maybe by then the trees in my spot will all be budding and perhaps flowering.

It’s finally spring! Temps are getting above freezing so a lot of the snow is melting. This made traveling to my tree a little difficult because it was so muddy in the forest. The prompt for this week is to just make any updates about phenological changes about our tree. Nothing drastic has happened to my American Beech.

You can see the snow cover is significantly less than last visit. The bud also might be slightly more developed in comparison to my last picture, but there are no flowers and definitely no leaves yet.

I made another observation on iNaturalist.

Overall there was nothing super interesting to report but I am excited to see as the weather warms up a little more what phenological changes happen next!

I went home for spring break and observed the phenology around my neighborhood for extra credit. Home for me is Waxhaw, North Carolina. Waxhaw is one of the oldest towns in my county and is named after the Wysacky Native American tribe. It’s very different from Vermont March weather. Here it feels like spring! My friend and I went on a walk and I took some pictures of the trees that have buds or leaves.

I didn’t recognize the leaves or the bark of these trees so maybe they like the south better than the north. My favorite tree I saw while walking was this pretty purple tree that is flowering. I looked it up on the internet and I think it is called an “eastern redbud.” It is one of the first trees to flower in North Carolina.

I tried to take pictures of birds that I saw but they are very hard to photograph. I saw lots of red cardinals on my walk, which makes sense because they are our state bird! You can tell if they are males or females by if they are fire red or not (only males are). The last thing that caught my eye was something that I talked about in my blog post while I was home for Thanksgiving break, which is the kudzu problem we have down here. I walked the trail behind my house to check out the situation.

You can see the vines growing up the trees and over the ground. Unfortunately that is something that is present here all year round. It was interesting to see other phenological changes though and compare them to Vermont!

This week our assignment was to visit somewhere near our spot and find a specific tree! My friend Maeve and I went and found a couple of American Beech trees to observe.

This is my beech tree! We had to double check and make sure it was not a young maple because they can look kinda similar. Beech trees have smooth bark and look gray and brown. This beech was definitely a beech because it has the disease on its bark. I also looked at a twig from this tree and it had pointy tips which are a sign that it is a beech twig.

I also uploaded my findings to iNaturalist. Looking forward to seeing this tree change over the next few months!

Our assignment for this week didn’t have anything to do with our physical phenology spot, instead we had to go out tracking somewhere in Burlington. Over the weekend my roommate and I decided to make a trip downtown out of it, so we got breakfast at Burlington Bagel Bakery before taking a walk by the waterfront to look for tracks or animals there.

We didn’t find any signs of animals at the waterfront except for lots of dog tracks. I wanted to find something more interesting so my roommate and I abandoned our search for now. Later that afternoon, I went with some friends down to Rock Point to investigate more.

We heard lots of birds and saw this chickadee in the woods. It kinda camouflages with the branches. We also found a lot of tracks that look like the picture below. Our best guess was bunny tracks based on the prints and the direction they were heading, but it might have been a type of squirrel too.

To conclude our trip to Rock Point, we checked out the Thrust Fault at the edge of the lake to have some fun. The snow and ice made it look really cool and much different than when we first came here for class in September. It was a very fun outing!

It’s a new semester at UVM which means a new phenology assignment! I went back to my spot in Centennial Woods to observe changes and look for any animal sightings. Walking into the woods was really pretty!

Once I reached my spot the obvious thing that I noticed was the everything was covered in snow. There was no leaves left on the trees like last time. I did notice some red berries on a specific type of tree, but I did not recognize them.

The creek was not frozen like I was expecting, but it is supposed to get colder in the next few weeks so perhaps it will freeze then. The main focus of our trip today was to look for animal tracks! There didn’t seem to be a lot of activity happening when I went, but I did find one set of tracks (plus a singular handprint?).

The tracks are smaller than my feet and there were no obvious fingers or toes attached to the print, so my best guess is these are bunny or squirrel tracks. I lost the tracks when they went under a bush. There was nothing else notable near my spot but maybe there will be more changes when I come next time!

Here’s to a good second semester!!

My last visit for the semester took place during a particularly muddy day. My spot has not changed drastically since November, but I did find some interesting and notable things to share!

To start off, we have almost no leaves on the trees anymore! The trees that still had two or three leaves on them were mostly sugar or striped maples, but probably 99% of the leaves are on the ground now.

Speaking of leaves on the ground, they are starting to decompose! Some leaves have holes in them and I found some small fallen tree branches with fungi growing on them. The most obvious plants still holding on for the winter were lots of ferns. Otherwise, not much green left in my spot.

It’s a little easier to try and track animals now that you can see through the trees. I saw what appears to be the start or perhaps abandoned bird’s nest up in the trees. If there were any animal tracks in the past few days, the rain we had has definitely washed them away. I got excited when I saw something that could be animal scat on the ground but pretty sure it’s just dog. I did spot something interesting in one of the pine trees!

Not sure if this is from bird activity because I did not see any birds flying about. In fact, my spot was fairly quiet in comparison to when I first started visiting. The animals know winter is coming!

I think that wraps up my blog for this semester!

It’s finally Thanksgiving break!! For me, that means going back home to North Carolina. I live in the suburbs about 30 minutes from the city of Charlotte. Our assignment this week was to compare a spot from home to our spot in Burlington! I visited the woods across the street from my house where I used to play as a little kid.

https://goo.gl/maps/esmHPi7ajCz4ntab8

This is a link to the google map pinpoint of my location!

It was very nostalgic going back to these woods because my friends and I used to come here all the time! It has definitely changed over many years and even over the couple months I have been away in Vermont. One thing I noticed is that the kudzu problem has gotten worse. Kudzu is an invasive species that surrounds other plants in the community and blocks their ability to receive sunlight. It ends up spreading everywhere and killing a lot of plants. The area in this picture used to be clear enough to run through.

Besides the kudzu, I also noticed some ecological similarities between my two locations. I found lots of red and white oaks and red maples here in Waxhaw. It’s a lot easier to identify them here because our trees still have some leaves on them! One other thing to compare is the type of soil present here. Our soil seems to be a type of red clay, so it probably has a lot of iron present! It tends to be more red after it rains and we have not had rain in a while, but you can still see the distinct color.

It was nice to come back home and see how things have changed since I left. I had never looked at the ecology of my forest before and it made me look at my old playground through a new perspective. One thing for sure is there is definitely no snow on the ground here, it’s a nice 56 degrees!