Diario del proyecto Mass Audubon's Winter NNO

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Hi everyone!

I was lucky enough to sit and watch a Barred Owl yesterday resting (cautiously) for about 30 minutes yesterday! I have a photo of them, and am wondering about posting owl sightings and locations on iNaturalist.

In the past I have heard of efforts to not share owl locations as to help support them to stay private without too many people coming to look for them. I'm wondering if that is a specific practice for certain owls and not others, and if any of you have any thoughts or practices around this.

Thanks for your help!
Hannah

On 1/20 I visited the edge of a nearby swamp. While observing I noticed a log that had been torn to splinters. Who did this? a bear, skunk, or other mammal?
After finding a hollowed out acorn shell in a witches broom and imagining the chipmunk that may have called it home for a bit, I wondered how are witch's brooms formed. So I went to Wikipedia today: "This can be caused by cytokinin, a phytohormone which interferes with growth regulation. The phenomenon can also be caused by other organisms, including fungi, oomycetes, insects, mites, nematodes, phytoplasmas, and viruses". Wow, so much diversity that can change a tree or bush resulting in a singular mutation! And I had naively assumed that all witch's brooms were caused by only one certain insect, fungi, or hormone, etc.
Also, there were numerous shrubs of the same species in the swamp. What characteristics or adaptations make this particular shrub survive so well in the swamp?
Photos of shrub and witch's broom have been submitted.
Ginger

I love that plant life looks so different in winter, and identification can be much more of a (fun) challenge because the usual methods of using leaves or flowers to identify them is not an option for the most part in our area.

I was walking through a very tiny preserve near my house that I hadn't been to since early October. Since a lot has died back for the winter, I was able to take a path that I couldn't during the summer months because it's not well-traveled and usually more overgrown than I'm comfortable with. I spend a lot of time looking at the ground when I'm walking in nature, and I came across a large, long brownish seedpod. It was only one half of a pod, about 5 inches long and 3/4 inches wide, had a very thick/sturdy feel with a velvety outside, and indented spaces for two seeds.

My first thought was that it was dropped here by an animal or a bird because I had never seen one of those before, but as I looked around I realized there were more of these littering the ground, varying in length from 3 to 7 inches. Some of them had seeds in them, or space for more seeds than the first one I'd found. The seeds were very bean-like, around the size of a lima bean but mottled brown/tan and more round in shape.

I started to look up and all around to figure out what grew these pods, and soon saw a few still hanging from a vine that was growing all high up and all over the trees in this one spot. Of course, being winter there are no leaves on it, and even though it was hard to distinguish it from the other invasive vines I tried to take a photo to include in my iNaturalist observation. So far I still have no idea what it was, and I think I may have to wait until things start leafing out, and make a point of taking that path before it gets too overgrown. My guess is that it is something invasive, because this preserve is so full of invasive species. I wonder if the vines die off completely for the winter, and need to start again by seed in the spring?

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68332076