Seeing without sight

Inconveniently enough, the day I decide to go out to make observations with all my senses sans my eyes also happens to be the day I get my first cold of the semester.  Dagnabbit!  In the way of auditory observations, my place does not have much variation.  The salmon run dam and rushing water are actually very loud and prevent me from hearing any human activity besides the occasional dump truck or other big truck.  Besides the river running along, crows and gulls tend to make up the rest of the noise — the geese, cormorants, and ducks that I saw today weren't too talkative...to me at least.

Cormorants chatting away on their lunch break.

The tastes and smells I experienced were even less diverse.  I brought my lunch with me (artichoke and feta sandwich — yummy!) but besides that, I tasted nothing in the air and honestly didn't want to go licking the foul rocks where so many fowl reside.  As for smells, I couldn't help noticing that I couldn't actually notice anything.  I decided that this winter-summer transition is one of the only times where Burlington actually smells like Burlington.  It isn't the crisp freshness you smell in the winter, not the quite the springy tree-smell of spring, certainly not the BBQ-saturated air of summertime, and not the decaying yet brisk scent of fall — these days are simply Burlington days.  In the way of things I felt, I could only feel cold.  Today it was just under 30º and quite windy by the open river.  The air was cold, the rocks were cold, the water was cold, and the trees were cold.  My hands were so cold that I couldn't really get a good feel for whatever it was I was trying to touch — except this one really cool piece of driftwood.  I saw it from the edge of the river and it looked like it had been tossed around by a good amount of water because it was as smooth as a gourd.

Gourd/tree?  No; just a tree.

Finally, one last photo that I really like because it shows, on a very small level, the raging river and a couple pieces of remaining ice as we slowly transition into spring.

...well, maybe not

Dearest Vermont,
Last week I talked about how spring was clearly in the air and it was great to be able to feel the change in seasons.  Now that it is actually spring, you decided to dump a bunch of snow and a good amount of cold on us.  My inner-skier thanks you.  My inner ecologist, however, is somewhat confused.
I would appreciate if you made up your mind.
Lovingly,
Jay

Although it is great to go wander around the woods in some fresh snow and then come home to drink some hot cocoa, listen to some old Avett Brothers and Old Crow, and write about nature, I honestly would rather have done this during the weather we had over the weekend.  However, complaints aside, this was a great day for experiencing nature in all her craziness.  With respect to the animals I saw, I was disappointed by the fact that I could not see any tracks — the great thing about fresh snow is that you can usually see great tracks; the terrible thing about fresh snow on top of icy snow is that the fresh snow can simply fill in the tracks.  So, on that note, I used mostly my ears (I thought I heard a field sparrow [Spizella pusilla] but the chirp was too slow so I am not sure just what it was) and my hunter's eyes — looking out for any movement in the woods and on the water.  I did find a bird I had not previously been able to identify: the common merganser, Mergus merganser.  I had seen this funky duck a couple times before but had never been able to identify it.  Also, in the same spot as the mergansers, I saw a little flock of what I thought were cormorants, but in the heavy snow I was not able to see them clearly and looking back at the pictures, they might actually be some sort of goose (now wouldn't that be a big mix-up?!).  See for yourself:

A few geese?  A few cormorants?  Who knows, but there are a couple
mergansers on the right side for sure!

Almost breeding season, birdies!

Additionally, I saw some great evidence for some, well, less intelligent animals.  I don't like to think of any animals as smarter than any others — there is no way I could build a beaver dam; however, this particular beaver definitely did not think this project through thoroughly:

Evidence of an over-ambitious beaver; this tree had a
DBH of about 66 inches

One more little thing to think about...because I sure did.  As I was eating my sandwich and wandering around the rocks, I noticed a little seed pod.  Of what?  I am not sure, perhaps a walnut (check it out below).  It got me thinking about ecosystems and first successional ecosystems in particular.  As this seed passed me by, it brushed along the coastline and then just carried on down the mighty Winooski.  How many times had this happened?  Probably millions in the life of the river and rocks!  It got me thinking about islands and how they first got populated — how many seed pods simply went right by the coastline of Hawaii before one finally got stuck there and started to take root?  I can't even fathom how many!
In the amount of time it takes to start an ecosystem, in the amount of time it takes to shape a landscape, in the amount of time it takes to evolve a certain characteristic, the 3 hours I have spent wandering and blogging are nothing more than a blink.

Spring is almost here!

Over my Spring Break, I joined my roommate at his home in Ithaca, NY.  If you didn't know, this also happens to be where Walt is from and throughout the week I began to imagine how difficult it must have been for Walt to leave Ithaca for Burlington.  Within the first couple days I was there, we went to Taughannock Falls (pronounced Tuh•ga'•nuck; see following picture) and I instantly thought of Rock Point and how overwhelmed Walt must have been as a young man growing up with such diverse geology as the Ithaca Gorges.

Taughannock Falls is the tallest waterfall east of the Mississippi; it is 33 feet higher than Niagara.

After our geologic adventure to this famous gorge, we ventured over to the Cornell Plantations to explore a variety of tree species and hike around doing some tree ID.  Finally, and most relevantly, we went to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to take a look at some birds.  Sadly, I didn't bring my camera but we did see a variety of bird species including mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), Canada geese (Branta canadensis), crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), and a couple cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum).  Additionally, there were a variety of stuffed (anyone know a verb form of "taxidermy"?) hummingbirds on display that had some exquisite feather colorings.

As for my place, today I went out and didn't see much in the way of birds except some more C. brachyrhynchos and many many gulls (Larus canus I believe; there are so many gulls, it is hard to find the right one).

A flock of L. canus

On my way back I also saw a very rare bird, one I like to call Helicopterus medevacus, or the MedEvac helicopter.  This got me thinking and I realized that I have no idea what inspired the invention of the helicopter; there is really nothing in nature that spins like that and actually flies — many seed pods can act like parachutes to catch the wind, but nothing really uses a propulsion system like a helicopter's rotor blades.  Food for thought.

Cheers!