Diario de gabbyp

This week, I went on a walk in Northside Berkeley. It felt good to be out like an explorer. I came across some white flowers which I now know are called alyssum and were probably introduced anthropogenically to this area. They fall under the 'plant' iconic taxa. My second observation was of a foraging bird, the California towhee which falls under the 'bird' iconic taxa. It is a very small, agile bird. The last observation, which I did not expect to see at all was a mule deer, which falls under the 'mammal' iconic taxa. Unexpectedly, even though I've heard stories of people seeing them all the time around the Berkeley campus and near their houses, I saw a group of 3 deer, my first deer sighting in Berkeley, foraging in a very green and somewhat secluded space of the Northside hills. It was a very exciting first expedition as an inaturalist explorer. I felt, possibly, like Darwin felt with his discoveries.

As I took a walk Tuesday afternoon, I had my eye out for flowering/bare and/or leafed out/bare plants. The first observation I made was of a plant with dried up leaves and lacking flowers, so I identified it as 'bare' under flowering phenology. Next, I found a tree with very bright, pink flowers and completely covered with large, green leaves so I identified it as 'flowering' under the flowering phenology (and which I could also identify as 'leaved out' under the leaf phenology). The following plant was also extremely leafy, although lacking in flowers, thus I identified it as 'leaved out' in the leaf phenology. My final observation was of a very dry-looking tree which falls under my 'bare' identification for leaf phenology. I tried to observe plants that seemed to be wild, without direct and constant human control. It was very interesting to see how different plants respond differently to their surrounding environment, including climate. We have this stereotype that spring is supposed to bring up all flowery plants, but this shows how amorphous plant form can be depending on the type they are and their surrounding environment.