Diario del proyecto City Nature Challenge 2019: Washington DC Metro Area

Archivos de diario de abril 2019

16 de abril de 2019

Just 9 days until the City Nature Challenge starts on April 26!

Thank you to all 115 people who have joined this project so far! We're so excited to have so many people committed to organizing events for the City Nature Challenge, spreading the word, participating all over the region, and identifying what we find. What an awesome group effort!

Wednesday, April 17 is our last scheduled organizing call (agenda here), but we may have one more next week if people have last minute questions.

I think this will be our biggest showing so far—we've already got nearly 1000 people who have made observations in the region since April! That's more than participated in last year's City Nature Challenge here!

Please continue to spread the word by reaching out to your contacts across the region to make sure they know to get out & observe. Thanks for helping grow our community!

Publicado el abril 16, 2019 03:21 TARDE por carrieseltzer carrieseltzer | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

24 de abril de 2019

Bookend events!

We've planned several exciting events bookending the field observation days of the City Nature Challenge.
A good warmup to the Challenge is a kickoff event called The District of Nature, which the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum is hosting on Thursday evening, April 25th, from 6:45pm-8:30pm. Register here:

http://go.si.edu/site/Calendar?id=102723&view=Detail&s_src=nmnh_email_midmo1903_image_er&s_subsrc=DistrictOfNature_190425

After the field days shut down on Monday, April 29, we have the rest of the week to identify observations, and we'll try to get as many as we can correctly identified to species level. You can do this on your own, and you can also join one of the ID Parties scheduled around the area. We got about 50% of our observations last year to Research grade, and we'd like to do better this year! See all upcoming ID events here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IL04MQHA5e5c0B0wcUrztZHSOFZM-DTjyNzDgzr6ayY/edit?usp=sharing

Whether you attend for the ID aspect or the Party aspect, it should be fun and informative!

Publicado el abril 24, 2019 11:11 TARDE por dbarber dbarber | 4 comentarios | Deja un comentario

27 de abril de 2019

It has begun!

Despite thunderstorms, drizzle and tornado warnings, DC area iNaturalists have been in the field today and are off to a great start. The count at midnight, 24 hours in, is 4068 observations, 278 observers and 811 species. The top ten species are Virginia creeper, mayapple, Virginia spring beauty, jack-in-the-pulpit, Christmas fern, garlic mustard, poison ivy, common blue violet, tuliptree and American jumpseed.

Our phenology this year is ahead of last year’s. Redbuds have more leaves this year and flowers are dropping off, while most trees were only in flower last year. Flowering dogwood is already looking faded on the first day of the 2019 challenge, whereas it was fresh through the 2018 challenge. Bluebells and toothwort have already gone to seed now but were in their prime for last year’s challenge. This could mean good things for our species count, since more insects may be out and more grasses and sedges may be showing their all-important flowers and fruits.

Top observers at this hour are @jmgconsult, with 483 observations/189 species; @capitalnaturalist with 152/123; @karyn-nrd with 141/81; @belby with 122 observations and @scottgraham with 74 species.

Raising our eyes to the global landscape, new cities have burst on the scene with some very impressive performances. Tena, Ecuador, La Paz, Bolivia and Cape Town, South Africa are all ahead of traditional heavies San Francisco, San Diego and LA Counties in number of observations. Cape Town was first in number of species until a few minutes ago, now second to San Diego County; and Tena is first in number of observers. Well done, newcomers!

Tomorrow’s forecast is windy but dry. Enjoy your nature day tomorrow! And when you get home, don't forget to pitch in with ID's and welcome new observers.

Publicado el abril 27, 2019 04:21 MAÑANA por dbarber dbarber | 1 comentario | Deja un comentario

28 de abril de 2019

Midnight Update: Day 2

Today was a spectacular day! It was sunny and comfortable if rather windy, which does make taking focused shots of plants a bit harder.

Today's top 10 species were the same as yesterday's (all terrestrial plants), just in a different order. The top bird is the robin, closely followed by the cardinal and Canada goose. The most frequently observed mammal (often in the form of tracks) was white-tailed deer, then Eastern gray squirrel and Eastern cottontail. The most frequently seen insects were Eastern tiger swallowtail, six-spotted tiger beetle, and pearl crescent. Top herps are common box turtle, Eastern rat snake, Eastern red-backed salamander. Frequent fungi include turkey-tail, false turkey-tail, dryad's saddle.

We've got 17 spongy oak apple gall observations already, while last year there was only one. In contrast, by this time in last year's challenge we had logged 20 juniper-apple rust galls, while this year we only have four. We've got lots of black cherry leaf galls, along with several other types that need their ID's confirmed.

If you'd like to do some mission planning for your forays tomorrow, you can see what hasn't been spotted yet in this year's CNC, or see geographic breakdowns via the links in this document. So if you know where to find any of the missing organisms, go seek!

Publicado el abril 28, 2019 04:56 MAÑANA por dbarber dbarber | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

29 de abril de 2019

Midnight Update: Day 3

We've had another beautiful day to iNaturalize, starting out cloudy in many areas followed by sun and breeze. It just felt great to be outside.

We've got one more day to make observations and recruit observers. When you get into work tomorrow and someone asks you why you have that healthy glow and twinkle in your eye, are you going to tell them about your weekend adventures? About how you found amazing things just because you were paying attention? About how even when the world makes you feel cynical and weary, there's always something in nature that can astonish and refresh you? You can share the fun by recruiting one new iNat user tomorrow, connecting them with our community and getting us over 1000 observers for this year's CNC.

Did you notice that there was a friendly competition the last 2 years around who would make the first observation as the clock struck midnight on Thursday? I wonder if there will be an equivalent contest around who will make the last observation just before midnight tomorrow...If you're contemplating this, here are some strategies you could consider to make observations after dark:

  • flashlight-illuminated backyard flora
  • basement creepy-crawlies
  • audio recordings of insomniac mockingbirds
  • compost critters
  • dead bugs from your windowsill
    Let's see what people come up with!

Remember that while observations need to made (that is, photos or audio recordings taken) by midnight on Monday, we have until the end of the week to upload and identify observations. The sooner you upload, the more eyes will see your work and the more likely you are to get ID's. If you can help with ID's, great! Even if not, please stay tuned to iNat for the rest of the week and check to see if someone has suggested ID's on any of your mystery observations, so that you can accept those ID's if they seem reasonable and get your observations up to Research grade.

At midnight we have 19,150 observations, 1,749 species and 996 observers. While it's a little odd to talk at midnight our time about how that stacks up against other cities because of global time differences, you may be curious so here's what we've got: DC is 8th for observations, 10th for species and 5th for observers. Really great considering how many cities are participating, and many of the frontrunners have got tropical forest or fynbos going for them, or else they're, well, California. Thanks to all the observers, organizers, event leaders, spouses and partners who hold the fort down while we're in the field, and of course all the identifiers!

Publicado el abril 29, 2019 04:38 MAÑANA por dbarber dbarber | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

30 de abril de 2019

The observation period is over!

....But not the CNC fun! More on that in a bit. At midnight, the counts were 25,788 observations, 2,050 species, 1,186 observers, and 488 identifiers. Our midnight standings were 9th for observations, 11th for species and 4th for observers. Mighty fine, and that is FAR from the end of the story!

We have until the end of the week to upload evidence (photos and audio recordings) of our observations made between Friday morning and Monday night. There are lots of things you can do to keep our counts growing!

  • Make sure all your own observations are uploaded.
  • If you were one of our dozens of event leaders, follow up with your participants and remind them to upload.
  • If you encouraged friends/colleagues/neighbors to participate in CNC, follow up with them.
  • If you know someone who regularly takes smartphone or digital pictures of wild things in nature, encourage them to upload to iNaturalist. For smartphone images, the time, date and usually location are attached to the photo (or audio recording) as metadata, and items that meet the date and location criteria for CNC-DC will be automatically added to the project.

Although new uploads need to be done by the end of the week, the sooner they are posted, the better chance they have of getting confirmatory ID's. Many eyes are reviewing observations this week, and identifiers are working both on their own and attending ID parties around the metro area:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IL04MQHA5e5c0B0wcUrztZHSOFZM-DTjyNzDgzr6ayY/edit#gid=0

Here are a few tips for working through ID's quickly:

Many observations just have ID's to genus. This is a common error among newcomers, and even experienced iNaturalists can do it by mistake if they're in a rush or working on a small smartphone screen. You can search on, for example, "Toxicodendron" and most of those will be poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans)--look for a brown-stemmed vine with the middle of the 3 leaflets bearing a visible stem. Possible lookalikes are box elder (green-stemmed tree with 3 or 5 leaflets) or fragrant sumac (middle leaflet has no stem). Similarly, our "Lindera" is Lindera benzoin, northern spicebush.

Other things to search on to pretty easily help your observer get to species:
Cottontail = eastern cottontail
Deer = white-tailed deer
Liquidambar = American sweetgum
Spring beauties = Virginia spring beauty (look for long straplike leaves to make sure it's not Carolina spring beauty)
Dogwood = usually flowering dogwood (look for tree with large 4-part white or pink flowers--fading and browning by now--with a dent or stain at the tip of each "petal"; be aware that there are other dogwoods in our area though)
Skunk cabbage = eastern skunk cabbage
There are others; feel free to post a comment about other common errors you have noticed.

Happy identifying!

Publicado el abril 30, 2019 12:09 TARDE por dbarber dbarber | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario