May 5th

For the Burlington BioBlitz, I went into Centennial Woods, as well as spotting several species around campus. My experience using iNaturalist was good, I found it easy to use and helpful in identifying plants I didn’t know. I tried to document a variety of species – I submitted observations of a tree that I didn’t recognize, lichen, moss, two bird species (a Black-Capped Chickadee and a House Finch), and a Gray Squirrel taking some seeds from the bird feeders at the trail crossing in Centennial.

It was interesting to look at reports of observations from other cities and see that many of the places in the leaderboard were extremely large metropolitan areas. Most of the cities on the leaderboard are in the US, but I was surprised to see Cape Town and Hong Kong doing well. It looks as though the city of La Paz, in Bolivia, is going to win, with over 81,000 observations.

Some of the animals and plants I observed.