We had a great turnout for several in person DC City Nature Challenge programs at NOVA Parks! @turtleboy92 and I have made a concentrated effort to increase visibilty of iNaturalist and the City Nature Challenge throughout our park agency, including a creating TWELVE new places and biodiversity projects representing different parks. You can access the NOVA Parks umbrella project here.

Friday, April 26th

Meadowlark Botanical Gardens- Vienna, VA

While most folks wouldn't think about Meadowlark as a destination for the City Nature Challenge, it is a surprising powerhouse for wildlife. Not only are there forested trails, but quite a variety of bird life and pollinators utilizing the landscape. It is an incredible location for breeding neotropical migrant bird species such as Baltimore Oriole, Orchard Oriole , Purple Martin, and Yellow Warbler. It also hosts a greater density of year-round Eastern Bluebirds than most anywhere else I'm aware of. We had a small but determined group of five participants including a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary! What a great way to celebrate. Most of our observations occured along the Potomac Valley Collection trail and wild meadow area.

Orchard Oriole at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens

Algonkian Regional Park- Sterling, VA

As soon as I arrived at Algonkian, I noticed our very dependable Warbling Vireos singing along the riparian area next to the boat ramp. This is a fairly scarce species in our area, and Algonkian is a great park to find them in. Meeting up with a few locals there, we documented a few stands of poison hemlock (a non-native invasive) which had not been an issue there before. Now it appears to be spreading rapidly. A great example of how the City Nature Challenge can draw our attention to species that need to be controlled. One really cool sighting here was a raft of 58 female Red-breasted Mergansers engaging in interesting group fishing behavior. This is a species that winters along our coasts but can be seen following inland waterways during migration. It's also intriguing that the raft was entirely comprised of females! Piggybacking on the CNC program here, I visited again late Sunday night to join @cmlifelist for some microfishing at Sugarland Run especially hoping for some rainbow darters. No rainbows, but he did manage to catch a few tesselated darters and a green sunfish. We also spotted some crayfish, spiders, and toads. Hoping to try again soon!

Tesselated darter at Algonkian Regional Park

Saturday, April 27th

Gilbert's Corner Regional Park- Aldie, VA

Nestled along the very busy route 50 in Aldie, Gilbert's Corner is passed by incredible numbers of commuters daily. However, it is an underutilized park with excellent mixed habitat highlighted by scrubby meadow and hardwood forest edge bisected by Howser's Branch. While there are plenty of invasives present, the open habitat allows for the only population of breeding Prairie Warblers in the NOVA Parks system; a declining species of concern. Out of all the parks I created projects for this year, Gilbert's Corner was pulling up the rear in all-time iNaturalist observations at a meager 242 (species count 141). Myself along with a family eager to explore took it upon ourselves to at least double the all-time count in the span of two hours. Rain attempted to spoil our plans, but we succeeded- and (with more CNC uploads to go) now stand at 508 observations (species count 221) and counting!

Prairie Warbler at Gilbert’s Corner Regional Park

Monday, April 29th

Potomac Overlook Regional Park- Arlington, VA

For a Monday afternoon program, I wasn’t expecting to have a huge crowd; but we did get some dedicated master naturalists to show up with some varying skillsets! We were even lucky enough to be joined by retired Meadowlark Botanical Gardens manager and esteemed naturalist Keith Tomlinson! Keith showed us a section of the park that is very special to him due to the presence of fan clubmoss , aka “running cedar”. It’s not a rare plant by any means, but is far less common in the immediate DC area due to the plant’s reliance on undisturbed habitat. Other cool plant sightings included wild yam, early lowbush blueberry, cucumber root, and broadleaf enchanter’s nightshade.

Fan clubmoss at Potomac Overlook Regional Park

Bull Run Regional Park- Centreville, VA

I was absolutely thrilled to have an all-star squad of naturalists (including @serenella @ana_kaahanui and @dbarber) join me for an all out nocturnal adventure at Bull Run to end the 2024 City Nature Challenge with a bang! Some of us went all the way til midnight, furiously snapping away before the wildlife turned into the proverbial pumpkin. We had set up a mothing station, explored the vernal pools, did some owling, and even explored the world of flourescent organisms with UV flashlights. Some of the highlights include a larval marbled salamander, begging Barred Owl fledglings, fluorescing mustard lichen , and several spring fishflies (aka dobsonflies). I couldn’t think of a better way to wrap up a whirlwind weekend than an event like this and you better believe we will be back at it again next year… until then! ✌️

Marbled salamander at Bull Run Regional Park

Mustard lichen under UV light at Bull Run Regional Park

Spring fishfly “dobsonfly” at Bull Run Regional Park

You may still be uploading observations from your big weekend! That's okay! You're in good company. This is the week where we finish uploading and shift our attention to identifications. Do you remember the first time a real person stepped in and helped you with an ID on iNaturalist? Let's make that magic happen for the many new iNaturalist users brought in by this year's City Nature Challenge!

If you're an experienced identifier, you may be able to work more quickly on your own. Here's an easy link to get you to ID mode for CNC-DC observations:

ID CNC-DC 2024 Obs

If you're just getting started on ID's or are seeking further good company, join us for one of our virtual ID events, Tuesday or Thursday this week! 7pm.

Join Zoom HERE!

Both nights we'll have virtual breakout rooms and more easy links to help you focus on groups like plants, amphibians, birds, unknown, etc. We'll also have a welcome room where you can get your basic questions about iNaturalist answered until you are ready to move into an ID room.

Just since the last Journal post, we have moved up to 10th place in the world in both #observations and #species. Again, this is not a competition (heh, heh), but LET'S GO!!

With a few thousand more observations today, we can ease past Dallas-Fort Worth, Hyderabad, India, Cochabamba, BO, and Cape Town, ZA. Take a walk, turn a log, peer into a flower, record a bird song, flip a leaf, snap a shrub, scan a pond, click click click.

La Paz Bolivia just monumentally surpassed 100,000 observations. Magnificent! See live results coming in HERE: https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/live

Today is the final day of this year's City Nature Challenge. And, the DC area with >25,000 observations and growing is in 11th place out of hundreds of regions, see HERE: https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/live

Let's be frank, this is foremost a collaboration to document the world's biodiversity. Still, let's go Washington DC area!! We're less than 100 observations behind San Francisco and halfway to being in second place. La Paz, Bolivia is in first place with more than 80,000 observations, which warrants celebration, picturing all that biodiversity!

Remember, a fly, a worm, a mosquito, a wild clover, a beetle, vines, grass, trees, fungi, anything living and wild (except for teenage Homo sapiens) counts.

ENJOY the day in your breaks from your desk, your groceries, or whatever else you've got to do, and let's pile on the observations like drops of coffee filling our mugs.

Behold the beauteous biodiversity in our neighborhoods!

Early Sunday morning, we're about halfway through (the daylight hours of) CNC2024. Some of us got some surprise rain yesterday, but fortunately nothing like the downpours we endured last year!

There are more lovely field events happening today and tomorrow--see Field Events .

Now is a good time to get on those facebook pages where people are always posting pix of birds/weeds/plants they was hiking/critters in their yard etc. and asking for ID.

Sometimes I comment something like this:
If you post this photo to iNaturalist you'll get an instant computer vision suggestion, then when you upload you'll get feedback from a helpful community of citizen and professional scientists, AND your observation contributes to science! All observations through Monday night will count towards the City Nature Challenge, an annual bioblitz taking place worldwide and right here in the DC area!

Many people don't yet understand that iNat is much, much more than a quick ID app. Part of our work to build that iNaturalist community is our ID events, happening Tuesday and Thursday of next week. The observation period will have ended at midnight on Monday night April 30, but we have until next Monday morning (May 6, when the results are announced) to get observations uploaded and identified. Whether you are an expert identifier or complete newcomer, there is room for you Tuesday, April 30 and/or Thursday, May 2 from 7-8:30pm.

We'll offer a quick tutorial on using iNat's amazing ID tools to make the most of YOUR knowledge level. The we'll get into virtual breakout rooms to work on the group of your choice--birds, plants, spiders etc., or just moving Unknowns into broad categories so the experts can find them. We'll also keep the main Zoom room open for people with general iNat questions or who need help uploading their observations. Join us at this link both nights!
Join Zoom Meeting
right here!

We had glorious weather for Day 1 of the #citynaturechallenge2024!

Over 6100 nature observations of 1100+ species were made by more than 500 people in the DC metro area.

Here is the promo video:
https://youtu.be/EZ8w9kPreKs?si=LVCKZ8TPdNSm6Io4

Find out about events in the area:
https://citynaturechallengedc.org/events/

Looking forward to seeing what we discover over the next 3 days!

naturenerdsunite

Thanks to Carrie Seltzer, @carrieseltzer, for this great template anyone can tailor for use on their neighborhood listserv. Tips for tailoring the links to your neighborhood follow the text below:

"Happy Spring, neighbors!

The annual City Nature Challenge is this weekend, running until midnight on Monday, and it would be great to have strong participation from our neighborhood. Here's how to get started:

1. Download the iNaturalist app (free for iOS or Android) & create an account
2. Take photos of wild plants, animals, and fungi
3. Upload to share with the iNaturalist community
4. Learn more as your finds get identified!

For inspiration, you can check out the [species that have been recorded in our neighborhood] so far, and help fill in the [gaps on the map]. You can also join one of many group events throughout the DC Metro area. Find details on events here:
here!
Please help spread the word to anyone in the DC area! Join the project and watch the species count grow starting on Friday.

The results for the entire Washington Metropolitan Area and more than 700 other cities around the world will be announced on Monday, May 6. "

You can paste this text into a draft email for your neighborhood and then--

To provide links for your neighborhood:
--Open up iNaturalist on the desktop
--In the top bar, go to Explore
--On the map, zoom into your neighborhood. (If you can't see the streets for all the observation pins, click the grey "Filters" button at top right and click, for example, the snail button to show only mollusks. Now close the filter. )
--Click one of the orange buttons--the square or circle with dotted line--to draw an approximate boundary around your neighborhood.

--Go back into the Filter and UNCLICK the snail button. This will show all obs within your shape.
--Copy the resulting url from your browser and use it for the [gaps in the map] phrase.
--In the wide gray bar near the top, click "Species."
--Grab that new url and use it for the [species that have been recorded in our neighborhood] phrase in your email draft.
--check your draft to make sure that the links for [City Nature Challenge] and [here] copied. If they did not, here they are:
--[City Nature Challenge] https://citynaturechallengedc.org/

--[here] https://citynaturechallengedc.org/events/
--Hit Send!

Big thank-you to Carrie for making it easier for all of us to get our neighbors excited about the CNC! And maybe we'll get some new lifelong iNat users as well!

As we count down to City Nature Challenge 2024, I’m reliving the excitement of the event a year ago. The challenge is a glorious treasure hunt for living creatures as big as a chestnut oak or small as moss in your sidewalk cracks, as common as an eastern gray squirrel or rare as a Virginia big-eared bat. Once we slow down enough to spot them, we’re hard-pressed to walk outside in any corner of the DC area and not encounter some animals, plants, or fungi.

The nearly 40,000 observations made by people across the DC area last year included almost 3,000 species, a reminder of the biodiversity in this urban but lush landscape. Some of my favorite sightings last year, in City Nature Challenge 2023, were organisms that are common around us, but that we tend not to see unless we’re intentionally looking, like this fledgling killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) taking some of its first steps, or this beebalm flower (Monarda spp). Both were spotted near Middleburg, VA.

Then, there are those organisms that are by nature elusive, that lurk in shadows, crouch in crevices, or shelter under rocks. It takes a bit of persistence and a lot of luck to find those during the City Nature Challenge. Turning over rocks, lying on the ground to get a new perspective, or just sitting still …for a long time brings them to light. My favorites are the secretive turtles.
This napping eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina ssp. carolina) nestled in leaf duff was found near Silver Spring, MD, not far from to a bus stop. This bevy of northern red-bellied cooters (Pseudemys rubriventris) was jostling over basking space on a log near Wheaton Regional Park.

Of course, the introduced species show up during City Nature Challenges too, which provides valuable data to resource managers on their distribution and spread. Introduced species often show up in force, having been released from the predators that would have nabbed them in their regions of origin. Some of the invasive culprits that made an appearance in the 2023 Nature Challenge are the western (European) honey bee (Apis mellifera) that has spread around the world through bee-keeping; and the multifora rose (Rosa multiflora) that was introduced from Asia to the U.S. for soil conservation and has since earned the title of “noxious weed.”

Contrast these species to some native counterparts, such as a sweat bee observed in Huntley Meadows Park. It’s from the Subfamily of bees (Halictinae) native to North America, the original bee pollinators before European honeybees got a foothold. Or a native plant – the swamp rose – (Rosa palustris) in the same genus as the invasive multiflora rose. The native species tend to have higher ecological value in their habitats where they coevolved in relationships alongside other native species.

You’ll also find species that are just plain weird! You shoot a photo of them, load it up, and wait …for others to identify them. Thanks to the millions of people with iNaturalist accounts, even the strangest organisms are eventually identified, such as these from the 2023 challenge: a fungus that looks like a bunch of wilted carrots, juniper-apple rust (Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae); a fly that looks like a character in a James Bond movie, common snipe fly (Rhagio mystaceus); and the flamboyantly iridescent six-spotted tiger beetle (Cicindela sexguttata).

So, get out there for the City Nature Challenge 2024: Washington DC Metro Area. It’s coming up fast. And lots of critters will be out and about. And there are always the spectacular sightings of native species that have become so rare that every data point is a beacon of hope.

You can see all of the 2023 observations HERE!

It's just a few hours until the City Nature Challenge starts here in the Washington DC Metro area. It has already started in many parts of the world! For a peek at participating cities worldwide, see participating cities here .

While many members of our iNat community do much of their exploration on their own, there are many group events you can join as well. Our local organizers have teed up a variety of fun group observation events this weekend--see our regional website . We also have two virtual identification events next week where all experience levels are welcome--learn more here.