Great effort, everyone! There was a surge of activity over the last weekend of the Great Nature project, taking us to our current contribution of 1419 observations and 711 species added by 81 NatureWatch NZ users. That's close to 10% of the 7427 species currently uploaded globally, which we reckon is a decent effort by the Kiwis.

If you've still got other photos you took during the week of 15–25 May, you've got a couple of days to upload them for them to be included in National Geographic's official global tally.

We'll highlight some of the most important observations over the next few days.

After this year's online effort, we're inspired to think big. Next year, with a little sponsorship, we could organise a nature watching event in every major centre across NZ.

Lisa Bennett found a pair of velvet worms (peripatus) on a farm in Featherston, South Wairarapa.

Velvet worms are a bizarre and ancient group of invertebrates, perhaps most famous for catching their prey by puking sticky mucilage at it. iNaturalist founder Ken-ichi Ueda describes them well: "the weirdest and most awesome terrestrial invertebrate of them all".

And they look amazing. Check out the purple feet!

Here's today's most colourful species, the spectacularly purple pouch fungus (Cortinarius porphyroideus). It was found by absoluteandy in the beech forests of the Wairau Valley in Marlborough.

Notable mention has also got to go to wmblom's observation of an orange pore fungus in Waitakere, Auckland.

This cave weta in garden in Christchurch was the first observation globally in this year's Great Nature Project, run by National Geographic.

What wild things can you find in your garden today? Or over the next week? This global BioBlitz runs from today until 25 May.