My site is in full bloom with the warming temperatures of Spring. All of the trees have a dazzling array of leaves, and many of groundcover plants, like sensitive fern, are beginning to spread out across the forest floor. My site is located in a less travelled region of Centennial Woods. The forested lands of Centennial Woods offer great hiking trails for the city of Burlington as well as habitats for an assortment of plants and animals. One way that nature and culture intertwine in my area is with the allowance of UVM students and the general public to utilize the lands. I don’t consider myself a part of my phenology site because if I am being honest it wasn’t that interesting of a site, so finding the time to visit the area was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do. There are way more interesting plots of land in the Burlington area that weren’t accessible to me until I had my car at school, if I was to do this project over I would have found an area at Rock Point or the intervale to travel to.
While everyone in NR-2 conducted the city nature challenge, I had Covid. Instead of staying in the quarantine dorms at school, I decided to go home to Connecticut for ten days to spend my time in isolation. Once I was healthy enough to go outside and hike around, I went to a local natural space near my home to check out the wildlife. This particular area is about a mile and a half away from my home, and has a very extensive acreage of forest that is maintained by a local land trust. This land is supposed to be off limits to the public, but I often go into the area to fish and hike, making it the perfect spot to visit when you have Covid. During my time hiking I saw a lot of species of plants and animals that would have made it into my iNaturalist report. I saw multiple red tailed hawks, edible trout lily plants, a plethora of trees, a mallard, geese, squirrels, turkeys, and white tailed deer. If you count the fish that I caught, I could have recorded a pickerel, northern pike, crappie, and largemouth bass. I found that my most memorable observations were the fish that I caught, because it is always a thrill landing a fish. This wasn’t my first experience using iNaturalist, but it is certainly a unique app. I have found that iNaturalist is great for identifying non-moving plant species, rather than animals and insects which tend to bolt away before you can get an accurate picture. I am a forestry major and have been able to utilize this app for identifying mystery trees by taking a picture of either the bark, bud, or leaf. This app is extremely useful for identifying species, and makes learning about nature more accessible. After looking at the collected data for the city of Burlington, it is not surprising that plants made up nearly two thirds of the recorded species. Behind this number of plants were bird species, and insects which are the other most numerous number of species, especially within the premises of a town/city. I am thoroughly surprised by the number of people that participated in this challenge worldwide, and it makes me happy to see people’s interest in nature.
