Day One Re-cap
Kia ora Ōtautahi!
It’s the end of day 1 of the City Nature Challenge - thanks to everyone who got out and about in Christchurch today to document our local biodiversity! Christchurch posted the first observations of the global event just past midnight, and the final cities to join around the world are just getting started now.
As of about 11:00PM, we've tallied 950 observations of 388 species from 36 observers, with identifications being provided by 76 iNaturalist.nz users - a solid start! @jennysaito is at the top of the observation and species leaderboards for Christchurch this evening, with 217 observations of 92 species. Impressive! The most-observed species so far is the mighty fantail. The creepiest species I learned existed today, courtesy of @fuligogirl, is "Devil’s Fingers."
This year we are one of 5 New Zealand cities participating in the City Nature Challenge. Overall, there are 2858 observations of 942 species from 134 observers across Aotearoa. You can see the New Zealand overview at: https://inaturalist.nz/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021-aotearoa-new-zealand if you haven’t discovered it already. If you have already discovered the overview, you’ll probably notice that Pōneke/Wellington City is at the top of the Aotearoa leaderboard. Can we overtake them on Saturday….?
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There are lots of interesting nature events happening across Ōtautahi tomorrow, so I expect a big diversity of species to been found. We've got invertebrates being looked at under microscopes in Tūranga (our central library), an expedition to Magnet Bay with the Canterbury Botanical Society, a walk through the Christchurch red zone, some tide pooling at Taylor's Mistake, and an exploration of the South Brighton spit, amongst many other things. (See the events page if you want to tag along on any of those trips.)
(I'm off to Living Springs in Lyttelton Harbour looking for weeds, with Lincoln University's third year Applied Ecology and Conservation field trip.)
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