BackyardBio's Boletim

A happy March to all of you and welcome to the countdown in the lead up to our BackyardBio global nature campaign!

Building off the success of our September pilot project we've gone bigger than ever - inviting museums, zoos, conservation groups and a wide array of teachers worldwide into the fun. With partners on six continents we're poised to make this one of the largest nature campaigns on the planet!

And while INaturalist will play a huge role as we roll out the campaign, people can get involved in other ways too! On social media with #backyardbio people can share images on twitter, facebook and instagram! And, through the BackyardBio Website people can learn about how they can connect their group with others worldwide to share their biodiversity images and stories directly!

Be sure to check out our sub-campaign on The International Day for Biodiversity -May 22nd - where through the INaturalist "Snapshot of Life" campaign we're trying to paint a comprehensive picture of life on earth through images from communities internationally! Check it out at our project page

Join in today! And bring your friends! The more people we have out exploring the more fantastic wildlife we'll discover together!

My name is Susan Hewitt and I live in New York City. I have been fascinated by nature since I was a little child in England. I grew up at the edge of the suburbs of London, and these days I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in NYC, in the US.

I wanted to encourage everyone to bear in mind that nature is everywhere, even within the concrete canyons of the big city. You just have to look really carefully, and really thoroughly, and eventually you will start to notice all kinds of different organisms. And iNaturalist can help you work out what those organisms are, if you yourself sometimes have no idea what you are seeing.

Here in NYC we will be moving into Spring very soon (March 20th will be the first day of spring), and right now we are having a few warm days, perhaps to get us used to the idea that winter is going to be saying goodbye. However, our spring is rather slow and rather late compared to some other parts of the Northern Hemisphere, especially those places that are further south than we are, so it will take a while before everything looks spring-like here in NYC.

In cities I usually recommend that people look around really carefully in parks and gardens (basically that means almost any square, rectangle, or triangle of green that you can see on the map) to discover what you can find that is wild. Not everything in parks and gardens is planted or intended to be there.

If your city is on a river, or on a coastline or estuary, there are almost certainly also a few places where you can safely get down close to the water, and in those places you can maybe find some evidence of what organisms live in that water, and which wild plants like to live next to the water.

I hope you can enjoy nature as much as I do. It's all a lot of fun to find -- birds, fungi, weeds, wildflowers, insects, spiders, other creepy crawlies, seashells, seaweeds, crabs. It's mostly outdoors of course, but in addition to the outdoors, a number of interesting kinds of (mostly quite small) critters live in basements and dusty corners of your home.

Good luck! Have fun!

Yes, nature is everywhere!