One Day After

As of 00:01 on 5/2/2018, DC is 5th for observations with 21,490, 8th for species with 1624, and 4th for observers with 846. Our observation count was temporarily inflated because of some unintentional duplicates of white-tailed deer and grey squirrel photos, an issue which has been corrected. We are just 7 observations ahead of NYC and a couple hundred behind Klang Valley (but remember they’ve all gone to bed out there in Malaysia). That means—get your observations uploaded! Don’t wait until the last minute! You never know what will happen. You could drop your camera into the Potomac River (not that I’ve ever done that). Or those New Yorkers could stay up later than you and upload a bunch of new photos (not that I’ve ever done that either).

The top ten species tonight are common blue violet, mayapple, garlic mustard, flowering dogwood, common dandelion, Virginia spring beauty, American robin, poison ivy, eastern redbud and tuliptree. It’s nice to see only 2 exotics in the top ten. Bald eagle sightings are at 30.

There are two more species identification events, one at Blandy Farm in Boyce, VA and one at Shirlington Library in Arlington. Thanks to @kearins and the staff at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History for hosting the ID event last night—it was fun!

Re: identifications, my strategy has changed in the last day. At first I was going for volume, figuring that many CNC participants were new iNat users, and I wanted them to get the quick feedback that is part of a good iNat experience. For speed, I identified things that I didn’t have to look up or research (except where curiosity got the better of me). Now that the field work is done, I’m focusing on looking for species that have not yet shown up in this year’s CNC, in hopes of raising our species count. Now I’m finding it hard to ignore the many observations of species I know that just need one more click to get to Research grade (and sometimes I can’t help myself).

To find new species, I’m looking more closely at observations from areas that are off the beaten path, like Jefferson County WV and Charles and Calvert Counties in MD. West Virginia had just 3 observers for CNC 2018, and thank goodness for them! @jacobogre and @botanygirl, longtime iNat users, both stopped by Harper’s Ferry for a while during a mostly Maryland weekend. @rock_flipper, not an iNat user before April 27, was in the field all four days, mostly in WV, and totaled 753 observations! @rock_flipper, I want to shake your hand, and to thank whoever told you about iNaturalist and the CNC. In southern MD, @hbfeducation and @oofmydoof scored some aquatic finds which may be unique among CNC 2018 species, so thank you both.

If you’re done with your uploading and ready to ID others’ findings, first take a fresh look at the April 28 blog entry to see what species are still missing. The links in @carrieseltzer’s article lead to dynamic information, so the lists of missing species are getting smaller--but they can still help focus your identification adventures. Then choose a picture that you think has a chance of being one of the missing species.

For example, look at the fern that I claim is a purple-stem cliffbrake, which is currently on the missing list because my observation has not been confirmed (hint, hint). I ran out to photograph it on Monday afternoon, lay face-down in the scratchy towpath gravel and risked dropping my phone in the C & O Canal to shoot it. Open up its page and click Compare. You will see my photo side by side with images of the same taxon that are known to occur in the same topo quad. If you’re skeptical, you can expand the place or the taxon level to see what some other possibilities might be. Eventually you will decide that I did indeed find a purple-stem cliffbrake and you will click Agree (hint, hint). Shortly afterwards, purple-stem cliffbrake will drop off the missing list and the DC CNC will have one more species to our credit. This is an amazing functionality of iNat and I've learned a lot using it. (This has to be done on your computer; the smartphone app doesn't do all this.)

Good night, rest up, and back at it tomorrow!

Posted on May 2, 2018 05:40 AM by dbarber