By Tracy Winn A Coverts Cooperator from Addison County  American toad. Photo credit: Brad Winn. Have you ever wondered about the creatures, great and small, who share your land with you? My myriad and amazingly diverse nearest neighbors here in Granville – from the fire engine red Milkweed Beetles, to the American Toad who thrives on those drawn by our porch light, to the moose and bears benefiting from the sanctuary of our wet woods and berried acres – are a major focus for my curiosity. I’ve been learning about them for 30 years. But when a milk snake shed its skin in our breakfast nook, I understood how little I really knew about my neighbors. I didn’t even know milk snakes lived here. And worse, the Vermont Atlas of Herpetology had no record of milk snakes in Granville. I dug a little deeper and found that records of nature were spotty or altogether missing for my town. Surely, I could contribute some of what I was learning about this place. But I wasn’t sure how, other than by sending photos to the curators of various Vermont nature atlases. This is where Vermont Coverts came to save the day. At the Cooperator training I attended, another Cooperator, Betty Secord, described the BioBlitz (an inventory of nature) she’d organized on her property. Betty provided me with the means for gaining a better understanding of who shares this place with me and a way to contribute to the scientific record. Following Betty’s lead, I organized my human neighbors and friends (aged 9 to 90, literally) to participate in a day of citizen science by doing a rapid species assessment and cataloguing every living thing they could find on our acres. I invited conservation biologists to lead seven teams of five people in scouring our acres for trees, plants, fungi, invertebrates, birds, mammals, and herps. We used the iNaturalist app, which allows anyone with a smart phone to record what they’re seeing and where they are seeing it, thereby contributing to a large database of nature. We had a blast and made fascinating discoveries. The botany team found, among many other species, a one-flowered cancer root. The bird team, busy identifying a Northern Parula Warbler, found a newborn fawn at their feet. We logged 635 observations between 10 AM and 4 PM on June 19. Many of those observations have been accepted into the Vermont Atlas of Life. If you would like to see the full photographic catalogue of our observations (which are both gorgeous and fascinating) go to our iNaturalist project page. Vermont has wonderful resources for helping to organize your own BioBlitz. Vermont Center for Ecostudies and The North Branch Nature Center helped me with mine, providing everything from expertise in iNaturalist to nets and magnifying lenses for use in the field. The network of biologists working for the state helped me find leaders to teach participants about what they observed and, of course, Vermont Coverts put the word out, and Lisa and several cooperators came to help us enjoy the day of discoveries. I encourage you to find out who you’re sharing your land with!  The invertebrate team at work. Photo credit: Tracy Winn. Comments are closed.
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