This week I explored the nature of UVM’s campus a little bit more outside of Centennial Woods… 

The City Nature Challenge’s BioBlitz took place from April 30th until May 3rd! During this period of time residents from Burlington/Winooski as well as residents of communities spread globally across more than 40 countries participated in documenting the species that live with them in their respective urban areas!

I spotted some flowers across UVM’s campus that were starting to bloom, but I was also excited to sight Paper Birch and Norway Maple which we learned about last semester in NR1. There were also some trees I wasn’t too sure about their ID. I was most excited to try and get a good picture of a bee but I failed to get a clear enough picture or one that was close enough (given the timing of this post there is still time for me to do it by the end of the day though!). My most memorable observation was the bird noise that I did not think I’d be able to capture given the amount of white noise that is on campus. 

Using iNaturalist was really easy to use for this BioBlitz and was exciting when people would identify the species that I spotted if I didn’t know what it was! I’m still waiting on that bird ID but I’ll hopefully know soon enough. Through iNaturalist you can also look through the reports made by other people throughout the world! I got to see what some species in other urban areas are like. My favorite picture that I saw was from Attica Greece of a Red Deer! (Pictured below).