Month: May 2022

It’s so crazy that today was the last time I’m going to visit my phenology spot this year. But I definitely was able to end off the year with a bang because today was a BEAUTIFUL day. My phenology spot has come back to life! So many plants are in bloom! Ferns are beginning to unfurl underneath the Hemlocks, and the Red Maple by the bank of Centennial Brook has started to flower. Debris from the Sugar Maple blossoms was scattered all around the tree, hinting that White-Tailed Deer were likely present and feeding. Centennial was alive with bird calls coming from all directions. They all blended into each other and were really difficult for me to distinguish, but I definitely heard an owl which was really cool. Moss and lichen were visible once again in the Hemlock stand both on living trees and organic debris on the ground. Centennial Brook is no longer covered with snow and was running freely today, though the water level was looking much lower than I remember it being. I even saw a Water Strider seemingly fighting to get upstream. The point of land that juts out against the bank was very damp, and much of the underbrush hasn’t regrown yet. The buds of the staple Red Osier Dogwood at my phenology site have begun to bloom. Canada Mayflower and Creeping Buttercup have started peeking above the underbrush. A new Burdock plant is also beginning to grow. The existing Burdock Plant hasn’t started to bloom yet and is still brown and dormant. The grassy area on the other side of the brook is also visible once again and was covered in growing Wood Horsetail grass. I also saw a Goldenrod Gall Fly sack, which I learned how to identify in lab. It was really cool to realize that the hole in one of the damaged Hemlocks was likely made by a Pileated Woodpecker! I’ve been watching the spot for signs of life all year, and now having the knowledge to make an educated guess about what likely created the hole and inhabited it was really satisfying.

In what ways do nature and culture intertwine at your place? Do you consider yourself a part of your place? Why or why not?

Nature and culture intertwine not only at my phenology spot, but across nearly all of the world’s ecosystems. Human connection with the environment is an enormous part of our culture and there is evidence of our values throughout the natural world. We use natural areas for recreation, education, and to benefit our overall health and well-being. The trails that I walk to reach my phenology spot are covered in shoe prints, I see fellow peers exploring the woods around me, and installations like electricity lines and power grids are constant reminders of the ways human activity and the environment intersect. It is because human impact is so clear that I don’t really consider myself a part of my phenology place. It’s been hard for me to really connect with Centennial Woods, the sound pollution from roadways and jets overhead and constricted area are a constant reminder that I am in Burlington. I hope that as I spend more time in Burlington in the coming years I come to feel more at home in the landscape here. When Burlington truly feels like home, I will definitely begin to consider myself a part of its beautiful natural landscapes.

BioBlitz! Yay! On Saturday, I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time outside making observations for the City Nature Challenge. In the morning, I went for a run through the Burlington Country Club. I didn’t see much wildlife at all though, only one Grey Squirrel and one Canadian Goose, which is pictured below. Later that day, I went for a nice long walk at Red Rocks Park in South Burlington with my friend Molly. It was a really beautiful afternoon and I’m so grateful that I got the chance to hang out in one of my favorite places in the Greater Burlington area. Most of the visual observations I made were of plant species. I surprisingly didn’t see a ton of wildlife at Red Rocks, but I was able to spot some really beautiful plant life and here some cool bird calls. My iNaturalist experience on Saturday was one of the best I’ve had yet. It was really nice to be able to identify flowers and plant species with ease as Molly and I came across them. We spotted lots of Eastern Chipmunks and Grey Squirrels scampering around in the understory. We also found a Pileated Woodpecker going to town on a tree by the overlook, which was really cool to see especially after we’ve been learning so much about them in lecture. It was a real challenge to take good pictures of wildlife when they were camouflaged in their surrounding environment and often being spotted from far away though. I also saw some really beautiful flowers, like purple and white Round-lobed Hepaticas and Dutchman’s Breeches. I really love pine trees, so being in an environment so dominated by pine species like Hemlocks was awesome. I also saw a lot of ferns covering rock faces in the park. iNaturalist identified the fern species shown below as a Polypody Fern. iNaturalist also helped me figure out that one of the other plants I observed was a member of the Trillium genus. We heard a lot of bird calls while at Red Rocks. I wasn’t able to identify them myself, and I haven’t been able to get them to upload to iNaturalist since I saved them as movies, but I put them as videos below. 🙃 Altogether, I identified 9 animal species (Grey Squirrel, Canadian Goose, Eastern Chipmunk, Pileated Woodpecker) and 5 plant species (Round-lobed Hepaticas, Dutchman’s Breeches, Eastern Hemlock, Polypody Fern, Trillium) that particularly stood out to me, but I must have encountered hundreds (if not thousands) more.

I decided to look into how Boston was doing in their City Nature Challenge. It was crazy to see how biodiverse an area that is so heavily urbanized and developed could be. When I looked at their iNaturalist board, more than 12,000 observations had already been made! There were observations made for everything from ferns to crabs to beavers and the top contributor had made 500 observations. I then decided to take a peak at Costa Rica’s progress in their City Nature Challenge and was blown away. At the time I checked, there were nearly 1,300,000 observations made of almost 48,000 species. It’s wild to see how the endimicity and biodiversity of the tropics is reflected so clearly in the City Nature Challenge. Costa Rica’s City Nature Challenge also had over 55,000 participants, which was still really inspiring. This was a really cool event to be able to participate in, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the nature clocks that are developed using the data that citizen science collected!