If you haven't already, make sure you join this year's project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2022-washington-dc-metro-area
The observation period begins at midnight on Friday and goes until 11:59 pm on Monday evening. Observations anywhere in the enormous DC metropolitan area will count!
Further updates will be in the 2022 project, so be sure to join. We can't wait to see what everyone finds this year!
It's the time of year when we start organizing again for the City Nature Challenge! If you'd like to stay in the loop, please do one or both of these things:
We'll have monthly meetings on the 3rd Wednesdays of the month at 11 am Eastern Time. On Wednesday, January 26, we'll have a special meeting for people who are new to City Nature Challenge organizing. Join the Google Group if you're interested in those meetings!
Thanks to everyone who participated in the 2021 City Nature Challenge. Hope you can join us again for 2022!
A huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped organize, participated in, and identified observations from the 6th annual City Nature Challenge! Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we had over 10,000 more people participate compared to last year, and for the first time ever, we made over one million observations in the four days of the challenge!
Here are the collective results from around the globe:
Observations: 1,270,767
Species: 45,300+, including more than 2,100 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 52,777
Most-observed species globally: Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
Since you can't click the links in the infographic, here are some of the interesting observations from around the world:
Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)
Lixus placidus weevil
Turkish Snail (Helix lucorum)
Witches’ Cauldron (Sarcosoma globosum)
Blainville’s Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma blainvillii)
Purplish-backed Jay (Cyanocorax beecheii)
Sargassumfish (Histrio histrio)
Southern Lion (Panthera leo ssp. melanochaita)
Common Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista philippensis)
Euglossa macrorhyncha bee
Adelpha zea butterfly
Short-clubbed Wasp Orchid (Chiloglottis reflexa)
The City Nature Challenge also contributed to the most observations uploaded in a week on iNaturalist again - and also gave iNaturalist the first two weeks ever with over one million observations uploaded!
Thanks everyone! Continue to help IDing those CNC observations - it takes awhile to get through them! We're looking forward to CNC 2022!
We hope you can join us for a virtual City Nature Challenge celebration tonight, May 10th, at 7pm EDT! Register here.
We especially hope that the following folks will be able to join so you can be there when we recognize your contributions:
More than 400 identifications for other people:
@tca12345
@mmmmbugs
@carrieseltzer
@tlit46
@jmgconsult
@tminatbe
@klsnature
@nanjemoycreek
@billhubick
@catimoses
@lucareptile
@jraiford
@tammy38
@vincent12
@davidenrique
@esummerbell
@tsn
More than 200 species observed:
@izafarr
@capitalnaturalist
@casadoray
@dbarber
@lucareptile
@jacobogre
@jmgconsult
@tomarata
@lisam
@peggyo
@ashley_bradford
@birderkellyk
@annagypsy
@cmuzyk
@hthrd
@zhelicarol
@robinf
@margaretchatham
@stella20009
@krosenthal
@ronwertz
Cool observations:
@teresaleonardo
@tminatbe
@dtread1
@tkphd
@spaguitty
Have you ever helped add identifications for other people's observations? Can you aim to do as many identifications as the number of observations you made during CNC?
Huge thanks to all of the identifiers so far, but especially @tca12345 @tlit46 @mmmmbugs @nanjemoycreek @tminatbe @billhubick @klsnature @lucareptile @catimoses @jraiford @davidenrique @tammy38 and @esummerbell who have added over 400 IDs for others. You can see the leaderboard here.
We worked hard and had fun at our ID party on Wednesday night! Here is the recording of the session: CNC 2021 Virtual ID Party If you haven’t discovered the Suggestions function on desktop iNat, it’s worth a look. Start at 2:10 to get past the intro straight to the demo.
Here is a short tutorial: How to use iNat’s Identify page
This link will take you straight to the CNC-DC 2021 observations that still need ID.
Remember that you have through the weekend to upload photos and sound files taken during the observation period, and to do IDs. The final tally is taken at 9 am on Monday morning!
Adding photos or sounds on the web uploader (short tutorial)
Amazing work by some super-observers who have uploaded more than 500 observations each so far! @izafarr @capitalnaturalist @casadoray @jmgconsult @lucareptile @stella20009 @tomarata @ashley_bradford @birderkellyk @jacobogre @ronwertz @cmuzyk. You can see the top 500 people on leaderboard here.
Special recognition for these people brand new to iNaturalist who added more than 40 observations: @alex_benson1 @leofetterolf @aqualily @jsky @klnordai @normann @dwilliams_su
Our fun CNC Celebration is Monday evening May 10th, 7pm! Register here. Now accepting nominations for fun award categories! Please submit your stories & favorite observations here. Due May 8th. Some will be featured at the celebration.
Please share your observation and favorite action shots here with caption details so we know how to credit the pics.
Great job, everyone! We are currently #2 out of 400+ cities in number of participants (observers) and number of observations! This is our highest rank on the global leaderboard in our 5 yrs of participation.
Now we need help with identifying everything we found! Please register to join us on Wednesday evening. You'll learn more about using iNaturalist and how to distinguish some of our local species.
Wed, May 5, 7 - 8:30 pm
Virtual ID Party: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/city-nature-challenge-virtual-id-party-tickets-151437420401
Hope you can join us!
Today is Day 4 and the final day to observe for this year's challenge. We've got until May 9 to upload and identify photo and audio files.
Did you know that both the Android an the iPhone apps now allow recording of audio files within the app? Update your app and give it a try! Audio is how we'll know if you have a fish crow or an American crow. In fact, we don't even need a photo!
At the moment, DC is doing beautifully in the global standings: 2nd for number of observations, 8th for number of species, and second for number of observers! I've been doing my part for the Species tally by recording every little gall and leafminer I can find. Big thanks to @megachile and @ceiseman for patiently and diplomatically handling my observations. If you want to give it a try, add your observations to the "Galls of North America" or "Leaf Miners of North America" project and be sure to note what plant species is the host. Shots of front and back of leaf, holding the leaf up for backlighting, and magnification will all get you a better chance of an ID to a species that not many other users have recorded (yet!)
Looking forward to the next week, we have some fun virtual events coming up. Wednesday, May 5, 7 - 8:30 pm is our Virtual ID Party. Register here! You can help with IDs and learn new species and iNat tips.
Monday, May 10, 7 - 8:30 pm is our Virtual City Nature Challenge Celebration! Register here! We'll be sharing CNC highlights and recognizing leaders in some fun categories.
Enjoy your day and I hope you find something new and amazing!
What a spectacular day we had yesterday! Wherever you were in the DC observation area, you probably had sparkling sunshine alternating with puffy cloud cover, and brisk breezes all the way through to advisory-level winds in some spots. This made for challenging photography conditions (hard to focus and respond to rapidly shifting light conditions) but it offered a really invigorating day to walk around and explore! In the Potomac Gorge, after some alarmingly high late afternoon winds that made us consider running for cover, @carrieseltzer and I walked back on the C&O Canal towpath littered with twigs, branches, limbs and entire trees that had blown down. This gave great opportunities to look for galls and leaf miners in formerly unreachable branches that had been delivered to us at ground level.
Later on, I made a point of looking beneath leaves along the C&O Canal to see who had taken cover there. We had been seeing mayflies all day, and I was happy to see so many of them apparently safe and undisturbed under the leaves. Red ones! Green ones! Black ones! Golden ones! Transparent ones! Large ones and tiny ones! As I uploaded the photos last night and saw that mayflies are an entire order with 42 families, 400+ genera and 3,000 species, I thought, so much for getting any species ID's but at least the pictures and the memories are pretty! And then when I woke up at 5:30 this morning, I was amazed to see that @tortes had stepped in and actually named some. Many thanks! It's incredible what the iNat community can do. I'm particularly enjoying the coloration similarities between Little Dark Hendrickson and the Brood X cicadas that will be emerging any day now.
It looks like yesterday was a great day for many others as well. On the leaderboards at this moment are @jmgconsult, @capitalnaturalist, @casadoray, @ronwertz, @zdanko, @lkhandley and @peggyo. And many, many thanks to top identifiers @tca12345, @tlit46, @lucareptile, @tminatbe, @jackierai, @nanjemoycreek, @davidenrique, @catimoses, @alex_abair and @rinwolfe: It's your efforts that make iNat feel like magic.
Top ten species observed are Virginia creeper, poison ivy, tuliptree, mayapple, Virginia spring beauty, black cherry, jack-in-the-pulpit, Canada goose, garlic mustard and common dandelion. Virginia bluebells, which have been in the top 10 in some previous years for CNC-DC, are almost done with flowering this year and are way down the list at about number 86. It will be interesting to see how this year's later date and phenology will result in different species being more frequently observed compared to previous years.
Are you ready? Only 25 hours until the observation period begins! With this heat wave, tomorrow evening may bring out some insects to lights that night owls may want to stake out if you want to get the first CNC observations at 12 am. I plan to be on my porch at midnight!
Need more iNaturalist pointers? Check out the resources page. And practice on Thursday!
Do you want to join more virtual or small in-person events? Check out the events page.
Are you feeling overwhelmed with options of where to go and/or what to focus on? If so, pick just one place to focus your observations. Try to document all of the species that you can find and document there to the best of your ability. Could be wild visitors in a garden, a tiny park, your yard, or a favorite trail. There's biodiversity everywhere!
Do you want to target species we missed last year? Check out last year's links comparing what has been found in April & May to what we found during CNC 2020. As the CNC gets underway, the links showing what we might still be able to find this year will become useful.
Thank you all for your efforts to get others engaged and spread the word! Have fun and be safe! I can't wait to see what we find.
Our regional organizers have scheduled an inspiring variety of virtual and safely distanced in-person events. Read all about them and register on our regional website.
See resources large and small for observers, identifiers , teachers, parents and event leaders here.
Spread the word! Please share events and resources with your friends, families, and neighbors!
