April 30 marks the beginning of the City Nature Challenge, a friendly competition between cities all over the world to observe biodiversity in urban landscapes. I was pleased to participate in Spectacular Day, a celebration between Burlington and Winooski to appreciate the natural world, and exhibit reciprocity by planting native species and harvesting invasives. This celebration took place in the Intervale, a species-rich region that boasts a silver maple floodplain forest.

This beautiful Willow tree provides shade to a pond containing turtles.

The fiddlehead of an ostrich fern, a staple of the floodplain forest, begins to unravel.

An Eastern Boxelder Bug scurries up a friend’s hand. As the name implies, these critters are often found on or around Boxelder trees.

Using iNaturalist was a convenient way to identify and catalog species of flora and fauna. I enjoyed the team feature and thought that the interface was perfect to support competition between lab groups. I also appreciated how accessible global data was. It was interesting to see the numbers of people, species, and observations, however, I wish there was a way to find more details about each cities findings. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed participating in Spectacular Day and contributing to the Burlington-Winooski area biodiversity catalog.