During the City Nature Bioblitz Challenge I explored the familiar place of Centennial woods. This pin dropped on the map represents one of the species I found (Eastern Hemlock) which was about dead in the middle of my exploration. It was super nice to visit Centennial on the nice warm and sunny day I visited. It was awesome to be able to get outside and into nature after a busy week.
Using iNaturalist was super easy. It was easy to join your lab group and even easier to upload species that I found. All I had to do was take a picture and identify the species, and iNaturalist uploaded to Morgans lab and the City Bioblitz Challenge. I observed 7 species on iNaturalist (as seen on the left). While I certainly observed more species, some I wasn’t able to identify, or were hard to photograph like birds. While in the woods I saw tons of birds. I was able to observe Chickadees, Blue Jays, Gold Finches, Starlings, and more. It was hard to capture photos of birds making it harder to upload to iNaturalist.
What I found most interesting about the other observations in iNaturalist from around the world was that the top species were all found around me. Since this was a global event that nowhere near VT usually wins, I would have expected that the top observed species would be from elsewhere in the world. That being said the top 5 observations were the Mallard, Garlic Mustard (random), Common Dandelion, American Robin, and the Rock Pigeon. All of these species are common to VT and a large majority of the U.S. so in a competition with the rest of the world for species observations I expected a larger variety up front. That being said it was also cool to see some other observations from around the world, like the Indian Mango, which is funny to think about seeing in my day to day life because no mangos grow anywhere close to here. Overall this challenge was fun to go get out in nature and observe. Here are some bonus species photos below!
