I chose to explore two main areas of Greater Burlington, those areas were the Intervale and Lake Champlain. I went down to the Intervale for the Spectacular day of Nature where I saw many different species and got to interact with nature in a productive way. What I was able to do was remove invasive weeds and plant fiddleheads instead which are native and much better suited for a floodplain environment. It was a great experience.
At Lake Champlain, I had walked down with my friends to get some delicious creemees and enjoy the peace and tranquility of the lake. At the Lake though, I was able to observe some awesome species such as Junipers and Mallards! I loved watching the Mallards float around with each other with not a care in the world. I could watch those guys for hours. Luckily I was able to snap a pic so you could hopefully gain half the enjoyment I did.
My experience using iNaturalist honestly was not the best and I have never been the hugest fan of the app. I’m not sure whether it is because of my cell phone and its terrible reception or if it’s just not a great app. Personally when I use it, 90% of the time it will not give me a suggested species and I have to manually enter in which species I think it is. This is often very discouraging because I don’t know a lot yet and am typically trying to learn when using this app so when nothing comes up, I often give up trying because I don’t possibly know what the species could be.
Something I found amazing about looking through other participants postings was how many species that I’ve seen in a plant store being found out there in real life. Oftentimes it’s hard to imagine that certain really cool looking plants even exist in the wild but they do and there’s people out there finding them every single day. Shaw’s Agave is one of those species that made me think of this. It looks like one of those fun succulents you’d buy at a fancy plant store but there it is just sitting outside pretty in the wild. This stuff is pretty amazing to me. I one day look forward to traveling and finding all the insane species that I can’t find here. But first I’ll find everything I can find here.