City Nature Challenge

The City Nature Challenge is an event on iNaturalist where people all over the world can make observations in nature and “compete” against each other. I found it interesting to look at the map of the places where global observations are coming from. It’s pretty much all over the world, mainly in the United States and Europe. It was also cool to see the different kinds of exotic plants and animals from around the globe.

For the City Nature Challenge BioBlitz assignment, I chose to walk around campus and revisit Centennial woods. I ended up logging about 12 observations on iNaturalist. I have used iNaturalist a lot in the past, so it was very easy for me to navigate the app. I tried to observe plants are animals that were specifically intriguing to me.

I was able to identify some birds such as Black-Capped Chickadee, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, American Goldfinch, American Crow, Red-Bellied Woodpecker, and Pine Siskin. Below are some of my other observations with a caption of what iNaturalist identified them as.

Grape Hyacinths
Corydalis
Eastern Boxelder Bug
Dutchman’s Breeches
Forsythias
American Red Squirrel
Garter Snake
Christmas Fern