I started our first BioBlitz by watching our bird feeder 
during breakfast, followed by a 40 minute long walk around our 6 acres. Eighty years ago, our property was part of a farm. Most of it was pasture, judging from the lines of barbed wire that still criss-cross the woods. It was abandoned sometime in the 1930s, and grew wild until the house was built in the late 1980s. Most of it is still growing wild, and now contains a mishmash of weedy fast-growing trees, feral European escapees from gardens, and a few young climax species. Because spring just arrived in Western Massachusetts, there aren’t as many plants in evidence as in high summer, but the woody things are still easy to find.
My species list is below the fold:
Plants
Eastern white pine Pinus strobus
red maple Acer rubrum
sugar maple Acer saccharum
black birch Betula lenta
black cherry Prunus serotina
black oak Quercus velutina
Northern red oak Quercus rubra
apple Malus domestica (an old orchard survivor)
American beech Fagus grandifolia
bracken fern Pteridium aquilinum
Ground pine Lycopodium obscurum
Lilac Syringa vulgaris
Forsythia Forsythia sp.
Highbush blueberry Vaccinium corymbosum
European honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum
Herps
spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer
Birds
Red bellied woodpecker Melanerpes carolinus
Downy woodpecker Picoides pubescens
American Tree Sparrow Spizella arborea
Black-capped Chickadee Poecile atricapilla
American Goldfinch Carduelis tristis
American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos
American Robin Turdus migratorius
Tufted Titmouse Baeolophus bicolor
White-breasted nuthatch Sitta carolinensis
Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis
Mourning dove Zenaida macroura
Mammals
seen-
Eastern chipmunk Tamias striatus
red squirrel Tamiasciurus hudsonicus
Eastern gray squirrel Sciurus carolinensis
identified from scat and other signs-
Eastern mole Scalopus aquaticus
white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus
black bear Ursus americanus
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