Welcome to the Wild Burlington Newsletter
The (mostly) weekly newsletter covers a wide range of natural history topics. You’ll discover the wild world around you with the help of professional naturalist, Teage O’Connor. So if you’re interested in tracking the changing seasons, connecting to your local landscape, and learning more than you ever wanted to know about twigs, then this is the newsletter for you!
Plus, you’ll also get nature quizzes, notes on upcoming events (like the Wild Burlington Lecture series), contests, and awareness activities that will engage you with the wild world. And it’s all delivered right to your inbox.
The newsletter is the perfect learning tool for naturalists of all abilities!
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Be sure to check the archives for back issues.
And shoot me an email if you have an idea for a future blog post, newsletter issue, or podcast episode!
The Wild Burlington Archives
You can also check out the blog for more natural history and the natural history section for field guides, essays, and other explorations of Vermont’s natural history.
Camouflage, part 1
In my natural history classes, I emphasize the role that awareness and keen observation play in developing the skills of a naturalist. If we don’t see, hear, taste, smell, and touch the world around us with a refined palette, we miss out on all those rich, textured layers of intoxicating beauty, mystery, and intrigue that write the story of place.
Poison ivy leaves & Sexual dimorphism
One of the challenges with poison ivy ID is that there’s so much variation from one poison ivy plant to the next. And that old adage "Leaves of 3, let it be" also lumps PI with so many other wonderful 3-leaved (technically 3-leafleted) plants, like wild strawberry, jack-in-the-pulpit, sorrel, etc. So a few years back, I put together a short quiz to test people’s Poison Ivy ID skills against some common lookalikes. While I love plant ID, I’ve long been more interested in the connection between leaf shape and the underlying ecological adaptations. I thought I’d take a closer look here at why there's so much leaf variability in poison ivy…
Lamprey running the gauntlet
Sometimes you get lucky, finding yourself in the right place at the right place. Of course it helps having the awareness of a naturalist, knowing how to look. And so it went last Thursday when I found myself in the right place at the right time looking in just the right way! (Warning: be forewarned that there's a closeup image below of a lamprey's mouth that my wife informs me is rather unpleasant, even disturbing).
Nibbled red oak branchlets
In like a lion, eh, Spring? The weather has been totally fantastic here in Burlington. We've got garlic shoots coming, grackles moving through in big numbers, house finches with nesting material see image below), and buds starting to green up on our lilacs. But of all the spring phenology events, my favorite is amphibian migration. My friend Ian sent me photos from some Eastern newts and spotted salamanders moving last night by North Beach. And it looks like we could be in for another early Big Night this year. The weather looks perfect at this point for a big movement of amphibians tomorrow night (Friday, March 26)!! Read on for more.
The mystery revealed: Owlets
Thanks to everyone who ventured a guess. It was fun reading through all the responses, which fell into four main groups: spongy moth egg masses, mammal fur, some sort of filamentous fungus, or owlets. Cue the drum roll...
Mystery photo!
While out at Rock Point this morning, I stumbled across a strange "thing" attached to/growing out of/clinging on to the trunk of a big-toothed aspen trunk. The clump about the size of a large grapefruit and about 15' up the trunk. So what is it?
Big Night(s)!
In like a lion, eh, Spring? The weather has been totally fantastic here in Burlington. We've got garlic shoots coming, grackles moving through in big numbers, house finches with nesting material see image below), and buds starting to green up on our lilacs. But of all the spring phenology events, my favorite is amphibian migration. My friend Ian sent me photos from some Eastern newts and spotted salamanders moving last night by North Beach. And it looks like we could be in for another early Big Night this year. The weather looks perfect at this point for a big movement of amphibians tomorrow night (Friday, March 26)!! Read on for more.
Shrinkadees: What is a species?
When I was writing about chickadees last week, I kept thinking to myself: “What really is a chickadee?” Yes, I know what they look and sound like, but do our diminutive black-capped chickadees really have the same “black-capped chickadee-ness” as those slightly larger 19th century chickadees? And if our Vermont chickadees continue to shrink, at what point do they reach that critical morphological/genetic tipping point where we no longer classify them as Poecile atricapillus and instead mark them as some novel new species, perhaps P. minimus or P. anthropocenii?
Shrinkadees
This morning there was a chickadee in my backyard singing, “Hey Sweetie”. It had fluffed up its feathers, so it looked just slightly more intimidating than it would otherwise. Puffed or not, this was still a small bird, likely weighing about as much as a AAA battery. More than just being small relative to this naturalist, this early morning chickadee was about as small of a chickadee as you’ll find during the year.
Nesting smallmouth bass
I finally got back in the water for some early summer snorkeling. The surface of the lake was rather murky from all the pine pollen that's in the air right now, but the water was relatively clear below and so visibility was somewhat decent. And now that the water's above 60º, the smallmouth bass have all come up for the spawn and so I got to spend some time with my old friends!
