Last month's winner, "rebelgirl73", selected 10 photo-observations as finalists from over 200 February images. With your help, one of these will be crowned the montly winner. Please comment indicating the numbers of your favorite shots. You get 3 votes. Place them wherever you'd like. You can put them all with one photo-observation or spread them out. The choice is yours. And be sure to get your photo-observations entered this month for a chance to be the March winner!

1. http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1262511
2. http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1252127
3. http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1257895
4. http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1208973
5. http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1228819
6. http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1221663

Congratulations to Joshua Lincoln for winning the February photo-observation of the month contest. Last month's winner, rebelgirl76, selected 6 photo-observations as finalists for popular vote by iNaturalist Vermont users. His image of a Red-breasted Nuthatch with a seed in the end of its bill on a snowy day edged out the others on a close vote. Check it out at http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1208973. Make sure you get outdoors and record the biodiversity around you and submit it to iNaturalist Vermont, a project of the Vermont Atlas of Life, and you could be a winner this month!

One of my favorite tree species is American Sycamore. Vermont is at the northern edge of the species range, where it is found on floodplains along rivers and streams. We've done a nice job so far of mapping them out on iNaturalist Vermont, and we've even extended their known range up several tributaries. Now is a great time to discover these trees. An American sycamore tree can often be easily distinguished from other trees by its mottled exfoliating bark, which flakes off, leaving mottled surface of greens, whites, grays and browns. The bark of all trees has to yield to a growing trunk by stretching, splitting. Sycamores have bark tissue that lacks the elasticity of some other trees, so it doesn't stretch as much to accommodate the growth of the wood underneath. It simply splits and falls off.

Keep your eyes open for these beautiful trees and help fill in the map of their range in Vermont.

Map of American Sycamore on iNaturalist Vermont: http://tinyurl.com/kryvze7

Are Chickadees the key to the creation of an effective Bumble Bee Nest Box? Likely, and you can help us figure this out.

Desiree Narango, a graduate student studying chickadee's in urban Washington, D.C., has found that bumble bees (likely Bombus bimaculatus) will nest in the used or abandoned moss nests of Carolina Chickadees. Approximately 1/4 of the these nests had a bumble bee nest and there is indirect evidence that the queen may actually chase chickadees out of nests during laying.  The actual use rate could be higher as nests boxes were not regularly checked after determining that the nest was abandoned by the birds.

Given that no effective bumble bee nest box exists in North America this is a call to action to flesh out the possibilities of this technique.

Yesterday, Sam Droege, a native bee specialist at USGS in Maryland, and his interns gathered moss and found enough old 4" plastic pipe to make 20 nests.  Today they will assemble them, load them with moss and put them outside. You should too! These experiments can help us learn more about this possibly awesome way to keep bumble bees.

You can learn how to build these PVC pipe nests from Narango's directions posted on her web site. You don't have to pre-load the nest box with wood chips as you would for a chickadee, but just load them with moss for the bees. Place them outside and monitor them. Send us your location for the nest pipes and the results (did bees nest or not?) and we'll pass all the results to Sam Droege.