For this Phenology blog, we were assigned to explore the greater Burlington are with our NR 2 friends. My group decided to explore Centennial Woods. When walking through Centennial, we observed many animal tracks. There were a lot of signs of active animals throughout the woods. I have used iNaturalist in the past so this was very exciting to go back and explore the new features that is on the app. The app is very user friendly. If you are unsure of your observation, the app provides suggestions and other users can go back into your posts and make suggestions about what the observation is.
Most of the tracks we observed were mouse and squirrel tracks. When observing squirrel tracks, it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between rabbits and squirrels. One way to tell the difference is, when following squirrel tracks, they usually lead to a tree. Furthermore, they have two small front feet and two longer back feet. When observing these tracks, we made sure to use our red tracking guide to help us differentiate. The biggest factor when deciding what animal created the track was the size and the direction it was going.
