For the bioblitz assignment this week, I took the time to explore more of the spaces around campus that I haven’t seen much of. I walked down College Street and then on S. Williams Street in a bit of a square, and then came back up to the main campus. On this trip, I documented two different species of birds, 4 small plants, and 7 trees.

While it was hard a lot of the times to get the birds in good framing, I was able to get this picture of a Song Sparrow near Waterman. Along with this, I also got a picture of the American Robin:

From reports across the globe, I really just thought the biodiversity that was shown was fascinating. The sheer variety of species and how many participants there were was surprising but it definitely made for a cool experience!

For the tree species, most of them were still budding and didn’t have any leaves yet. The needled trees, like the Cedars and Pines, were starting to develop pinecones!

A fruiting tree that I saw a lot of was the Crabapple tree, which I thought was interesting since we saw these in the Fall as well.

I found that using iNaturalist was surprisingly easy, and for some of the species that I was unsure about, it was super helpful to see animals that looked similar and lived in the area. Uploading my observations was an easy process, and the time and location stamps were a useful feature. It’s nice to see that the weather’s finally seeming like Spring!