{"id":51,"date":"2023-02-17T10:12:05","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T15:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/?p=51"},"modified":"2023-02-17T10:12:05","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T15:12:05","slug":"bugs-squirrels-and-ducks-the-holy-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/2023\/02\/17\/bugs-squirrels-and-ducks-the-holy-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugs, squirrels, and ducks: The Holy Trinity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Burlington is a unique city in the sense that a surprising amount of wildlife lives within the city limits. I first traveled to the waterfront in the South End area and was excited to see a good amount of avian critters out and about. I went on a sunny day where temps were in the 40s, so wildlife was abundant, likely because they were excited to take a break from winter dormancy. However, most birds were flocking to small chunks of ice in Lake Champlain and were a good distance away from the shore, so photographing these birds wasn\u2019t exactly easy. Regardless, I managed to capture one mallard that was swimming relatively close to shore.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On a separate day I poked around the woods behind Trinity campus. This area is a very steep, ravine-like hill where a narrow river flows at the bottom. The weather was overcast and in the 40s and the ground was very <\/em>soft from immense snowmelt. I was hoping to find some animal tracks in the mud, but had difficulty finding anything significant. Instead I found some bugs and maggots living under the bark of a rotting downed tree. I did some research online to see if I could identify these insects, but results were inconclusive. iNaturalist recommended some species after I uploaded a photo, leading me to decide that the critter was a Fire-colored Beetle still in its maggot stage. There are many maggots that look similar to the one I spotted, but I settled on the Fire-colored beetle because of the dark red pincers and distinguishing pale orange, almost transparent body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even though the patch of woods behind Trinity wasn\u2019t thriving with activity on the day I explored, I still managed to photograph a squirrel running up a towering Eastern White Pine. The process of uploading to iNaturalist was easy and intuitive. I especially appreciated the suggestions of species pictured during the uploading process.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Burlington is a unique city in the sense that a surprising amount of wildlife lives within the city limits. I first traveled to the waterfront in the South End area and was excited to see a good amount of avian … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"znaley","author_link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/author\/znaley\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/znaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}