{"id":120,"date":"2021-05-03T18:13:21","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T22:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jhfish\/?p=120"},"modified":"2021-05-03T18:13:21","modified_gmt":"2021-05-03T22:13:21","slug":"city-nature-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jhfish\/2021\/05\/03\/city-nature-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"City Nature Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I spent time this past weekend exploring other parts of Centennial woods beyond my phenology site although I was limited to the northern half because the southern part of the woods is in South Burlington. I spent much of this time trying to become more aware of birds and identify them using the songs I have learned recently. I found that while I can fairly easily pick out a familiar song by ear, it is hard to record it for iNaturalist if other birds are singing at the same time or the one bird only sings once or twice and then stops. I was very excited to finally get a recording to log my observance of a white-throated sparrow after hearing the song probably 15 times without being able to record it in time! I think my favorite observation was finding raccoon tracks along a stream because I felt accomplished in having learned to recognize the tracks and also because I so rarely see raccoons. Overall, I think I took a much closer look at the woods around me which was a rewarding experience to both see the number of species I could observe and name and to appreciate the biodiversity around me. I also realized just how many species I see around me all the time but I do not know what they are. Before this, I had heard of iNaturalist but had never used it. I think I will continue to use it in the future to help me identify and document the biodiversity around me wherever I am and contribute to citizen-science based knowledge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the participation of other cities around the globe, I was struck by the dedication of people to this event and the cause of celebrating biodiversity. As of the time I am writing this on May 3rd, Cape Town has almost 54,000 observations by over 1200 people. Overall, there have been over 900,000 observations of over 35,000 species. I found that my 43 observations of 40 species were dwarfed by some of the most committed people who made over 1000 observations and some of over 500 species. I find it fitting that dandelions are the second most observed species because they are found all over the world and are covering fields and yards with bright yellow flowers right now. I also found it interesting to look at the distribution maps of some of the commonly identified species and how widespread some of them are. I found many species that were observed on every continent except Antarctica including common dandelion, mallard, ground ivy, western honey bee, and house sparrow to name a few. <\/p>\n\n\n\n