The Great Cicada Blitz (NSW, Australia)'s Journal

We have made it out of the outside of a very dry winter here in Sydney. Plants have been putting on new growth early and flowering has well and truly begun! Several Silver Princess cicadas (Yoyetta celis) have been heard calling around Sydney's Inner West, central and south coasts over the past week.

So I thought it's a good idea to keep an ear or two out for cicada calls, and don't forget to list them on our iNaturalist Cicada Blitz project. It remains to be seen what sort of a season we will get this year, especially if it remains dry and the threat of a big bush fire season proves true or not.

A reminder that you can still purchase Cicada Photo Guide books on eBay here: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/122663502609 or search on eBay "cicada photo guide book". It is a handy educational guide to some of the common cicada species you might come across in the Greater Sydney Region. It will help you with identifying species for recording on iNaturalist. It's also a great gift for any budding entomologist!

Good news! You can now upload audio files from your device onto the iNaturalist observation. It's still a little bit of a process but you no longer need to upload to SoundCloud, which is a big bonus.

To upload a recording to your observation, you first need to load the iNaturalist website on your phone's web browser. Once loaded you need to go into the browser menu and select "request desktop site". Then navigate to your observation and select "edit" up the top right of the screen. On the edit screen, on the far right under the "Add Media" column, select the "Add Sounds" tab. Ensure the Source is set to "Your Computer", and then select "Browse". Navigate to where your audio file is on your phone and add it. Then hit "Save Observation" at the bottom of the screen.

As easy as that! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions and we can troubleshoot.