Monday Evening

The four-day observation period of the City Nature Challenge is almost over, but you have till midnight tonight to make more observations if you really can't resist just one (or two) more. The warm weather today and yesterday really pushed spring along - it seemed as though American Redstarts, Gray Catbirds, and House Wrens arrived overnight, and so many more wildflowers were blooming on Monday than Friday. Even American Toads had started trilling this afternoon on our field trip to the Westfield River in Chesterfield Gorge.

Thank you to all our field trip participants and leaders! It was great fun meeting some of you and learning something from everyone.

Tomorrow starts the six-day upload and identification period of the Challenge. Please check that you have uploaded to iNaturalist all the observations you made these four days and added an initial identification to each one of them.

Once you finished that, it's really helpful if you go to the website and add identifications to other people's observations. Here's the link to all the Western Mass CNC observations that still need IDs: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=city-nature-challenge-2024-western-mass If you're really ambitious and have finished everything you can do for our local project, here's the link to the CNC observations throughout New England that need IDs: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=city-nature-challenge-2024-north-and-south-america&place_id=52339

If you'd like help learning how to make identifications for other on iNaturalist, we're running two workshops you will find useful:

"Name That Species" with iNaturalist
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
10 AM – 11 AM; Du Bois Library, UMass, Amherst

This in-person workshop takes place in the Learning Studio of the Science and Engineering Library. We'll get to know the built-in iNaturalist tools for species identification, as well as the rich online and print resources available at UMass for field guides and species ID tools. Similar guides may be available at your local library. You'll leave the workshop having contributed to at least one species ID. To sign up, follow the link to the event page and register with your name and email.

"Name That Species" with iNaturalist - VIRTUAL
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

This workshop takes place entirely online over Zoom. We'll get to know the built-in iNaturalist tools for species identification, as well as the rich online and print resources available at UMass for field guides and species ID tools. Similar guides may be available at your local library. You'll leave the workshop having contributed to at least one species ID. A two-screen setup is strongly recommended, to have Zoom open in one screen and your own iNaturalist account open in the other with the web interface, but it is not required. This workshop will be recorded and posted openly on the web. Registering indicates assent to be in a recorded session. To sign up, follow the link to the event page and register with your name and email. You will be sent the Zoom link.

The global organizers of the City Nature Challenge will take a snapshot of our results at 9 AM, Monday, May 6th. By early afternoon on the 6th, they'll send us the Official Results and we'll report them to you. Already, we are ahead of our results from 2023 and we expect the number of observations, species, and observers to grow even more over the next week. Thank you all for your participation!

--Lynn Harper and Melanie Radik, co-organizers

Posted on April 29, 2024 11:20 PM by lynnharper