When visiting my site in Centennial Woods this week, there was actually not a lot going on. It was a weirdly warm day, 51 degrees, and sunny. much of the snow from the recent storms has melted leaving a muddy path as well as a rushing brook. The brook was flowing very quickly but it was still very clear. I could easily see the rocks along the stream bed. There was still some ice sticking out over the water but it wasn’t even close to covering the surface (see Figure 2.). One animal species that I wanted to focus on was the gray squirrel. I saw multiple squirrels while I was in centennial and they were running wild. I was able to spot the squirrels nest where it lived up the top of a large oak tree. When I approached the oak tree containing the nest of leaves I didn’t notice any tracks around the tree even though I saw the squirrels in the tree, but this is most likely due to the fact that the snow was very hard and a bit icy. The squirrels spend most of their days out foraging for food or digging for their stored food, and at night they try to stay safe and warm in their nests. Aside from the acorns that they eat, I also saw one of the squirrels eating some small red berries that were left on a nearby tree to the brook. As a smaller rodent, the squirrels do have to worry about multiple predators in Centennial. One of the predators that the squirrel interacts with is the red-tailed hawk. While most red-tailed hawks migrate south for the winter, some do stay and they are still a major predator throughout the rest of the year. Since the last time at was at my phonological location in centennial woods there has been more snow and more continuous cold weather other than the few warm days. This means that by now most of the animals that hibernate should all be doing so, so there would be less animal activity overall. there were still tons of human tracks all over the place and dog tracks as well (see Figure 1.).
