Audobon

Audubon - Huntington, Vermont

The Audubon was founded at the start of last century and is one of America's earliest organizations dedicated to the conservation of birds, other wild life and essential habitat. Audubon Vermont is unique in its multidisciplinary approach with site-based environmental education and a strong grassroots chapter network at its core. The Audubon is very focused on education as it holds Year-round education programs that reach thousands of Vermonters of all ages through school, camp, family, and adult programs and workshops. As we were arriving, a class of elementary school children were leaving after getting a tour of the maple sugaring house. 

This is the maple sugaring house that is located at the start of the trails at the Audubon.

Inside the sugaring house you can see the boiler that boils the sap collected from the trees at the Audubon. An employee was giving us a tour of the sugaring room where we talked about how it takes about 40 gallons of sap to boil down into one gallon of syrup.

This area adjacent to the sugaring house is called the sugarbush and is managed to ensure that the sugar maples and red maples are getting all that they need to grow and remain healthy. These are some of the trees that have been tapped. Sap is collected into a bucket.

This area is a stream with cat tails dominating the wetland area. There is a meadow adjacent to this area that is a great breeding ground habitat for certain insects and birds.

There was significant beaver evidence through out our walk at the Audubon.

This pond, which is frozen at this time of year, is heavily influenced by beaver activity. Their feeding and dam activities have altered the hydrology and vegetation in this landscape for several decades. There is a beaver-made bridge which allowed us to cross the pond. Beavers make dams as a habitat that is safe from land animal predators.

After crossing the pond, we came to a beautiful, very fast flowing stream that we could hear flowing from afar.

Huntington Gorge

The Huntington Gorge is a 10,000 year old land formation in Huntington Vermont. The area is currently a popular area with beautiful swimming holes and waterfalls. With a high water level, the area can be extremely dangerous and has claimed the lives of 2 dozen people in the past sixty years. The Gorge is considered a sinus gorge and is comprised of blue schist that lends itself well to water sculpture. There is much sand and dirt in the water from snow melting which is giving it a brown/green tint. 

These three pictures really demonstrate the impact that the fast flowing water can have on the rock, carving deep pathways into the schist.

The moist environment and mist from the moving water creates an ideal environment for moss to thrive.

The the fast moving water will move big rocks and boulders through the stream that will crash into he schist, creating large wells or holes in the rocks

LaPlatte River Marsh Natural Area - Shelburne, Vermont

In the Town of Shelburne, the LaPlatte River Marsh Area is a 211-acre preserve that was established in 1997 and is owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy. This area encompasses a rich diversity of native species and natural communities such as wetland natural communities, cattail marshes, swamp, and extensive flood plain forests dominated my silver maple. We identified several types of trees and found the majority to be hemlock, pine, oak, ash and several hardwood species.

Upon entering the forest, we noticed that several trees in a concentrated area had been cut down in an effort to eradicate an invasive species.

In this same area, we noticed several trees to have been chewed down as evidence of beavers.

We saw several trees with large holes and significant damage from due to the population of pileated woodpeckers.

Walking further along the trail we approached the silver maple flood plain. All of the silver maples in this area were killed when water flooded too high and removed too much of the bark. When bark is removed entirely from around a tree in one section, the tree will not survive.

The trees were rotting and some were completely hollow.

We found a dead rodent of some sort. We were not able to identify the animal but know that is about the size of a squirrel and had fur.

We saw several white tailed deer tracks along our walk. The tracks had a large print of a buck and smaller prints of what could have possibly been a doe.

These are shells found beside the LaPlatte River which flows into the Shelburne Bay