I pulled my bike out of the melting snow that had collected around the wheels, it had been over a week since I’d ridden her, and I missed the feeling of flying down the damn streets. Though it certainly made things faster, the bike ride was a bit treacherous, especially when I got down to the waterfront. Most of the bike path was covered in snow and ice, and I had to dismount out of fear of crashing a number of times.
This afternoon was the first time that I’d seen my phenology site properly covered in snow. It looked like a snow plow had pushed up snow at the water’s edge, creating a pretty big bank. Of course, this was just accumulation from the lapping, freezing, lapping, freezing pattern of the water on the beach.
I saw two sets of animal tracks while I was there, one of which seemed to belong to a domestic dog. These tracks were accompanied by a smattering of urine, and sort of just meandered around the beach without any clear purpose, before heading back up towards the bike path.
I did see what I thought were snowshoe hare tracks, and these were much more interesting than the dog tracks. The hair tracks had a galloper pattern, with much bigger hind feet. I followed the tracks, which abruptly ended when they came to a bank. Upon inspection, I found two holes in that bank, one or both of which I can only imagine were the hare’s burrow. I though about sticking my hand in, but thought better of it.
Finally, I tried to identify some of the trees at my site using the twig identification guide. I felt like I was cheating a bit since I already knew what they were from last semester, but I did my best to identify them using the tree guide, and not from memory. I identified staghorn sumac and willow, and I knew from last semester that there is also silver maple and dogwood.
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