Happy belated Earth Day! This past week I’ve gone back to Salmon Hole and beyond to explore more of the Winooski watershed, and I saw some spectacular species along the way! I mostly explored in my phenology site, but I followed the Winooski all the way down to the Intervale, where I ended my adventure for the day. The trail was fairly straightforward but I saw some amazing species that I’ve never seen before! The most memorable observation I had was that I saw a beaver swimming in the water within ten feet of where I was standing. I hear a massive splash near me and at first I thought it was a rock or branch that had fallen in the water, but then I saw the beaver’s head bobbing above the surface! It had smacked its tail on the water, likely to warn its fellow companion that I was nearby. Here’s a photo of the one I saw!
Some other memorable species I saw were double-crested cormorants, mallards, mergansers, groundhogs, raccoon tracks, squirrel tracks, and lesser periwinkles.
My experience with iNaturalist was, for the most part, gratifying and rewarding. It was nice to be able to post a photo and see how other people could remark on what they thought it was, and the feature that identified the closest species was very useful. The only thing that was bothersome was that none of my observations uploaded to my labs’ project page, although they loaded on the project page for the entire class. Overall, it was a great experience and I will definitely be using the app again on future explorations into nature.
Being a part of something as massive as the City Nature Challenge was so amazing and just cool, for lack of a better word. Seeing how so many people contributed to their projects was almost an out-of-body experience, that so many people are just so fascinated by nature they want to take as many photos as possible and collectively identify them together. One of the coolest pages I saw was a city from Holland; they had so many bird species that I had never heard of and it was so awesome to see their observations and learn about the species. The sheer diversity of species was truly awe-inspiring and I’m so grateful that I got to participate in such a great, global project.