I know I titled my last phenology site post my “final” one, but here we are, back again! I visited my phenology site January 30th, around 5:15pm. It was getting dark and the weather was cold and snowy. There were about 7 inches of snow on the ground, just enough to cover my pant cuffs. As it had been snowing for a good amount of the day, there was a finer powdered snow on top of the old snow. With this, there were no footprints to be found, other than my own. The evergreens have held onto their needles and the northern hardwoods stand remains leafless. Seeing the location of this site, I wouldn’t imagine there to be much wildlife other than birds, most of which have migrated south for the winter. The extremely busy route 2 and Interstate 89 are noisy and dangerous for animals to cross on foot, and there’s no real reward on the other side. I hope that I’ll be able to see more birds in my site during the spring, potentially even the bird of prey I saw on one of my first visits to the site.
