Hello!

One of our fellow Amphibian Monitoring voluneers has been sharing the impact that iNaturalist has had on her volunteering and wildlife observations, and I was so inspired I asked to share her experiences with you! Here's the news from conwaysuz:

Custom Field Guides: In addition to volunteering Amphibian Monitoring, I also volunteer at Camano Island and Cama Beach State Parks. As soon as I learned about iNat I zoomed the map into the parks to see what campers have recorded. There aren't many sightings yet, but that gave me an idea. Why not use iNat to create custom field guides for the parks? I shared my idea with the park rangers and they liked it. Our parks are lucky to have had Beach Watchers (rebranded as Sound Water Stewards) monitoring for many years so they have very long "life lists" of marine organisms. The rangers and I decided to create two kinds of guides: for the citizen scientists each park has an “All Species” list that will likely eventually have over 200 plants and animals; for the casual park visitors we have more manageable lists with only about 60 “Common” species. To view our guides: from the top menu bar go to “Guides” (on the phone app it’s under “More”), then search on “Cama”.

If you are interested in doing something similar for your favorite park or wildlife area, even though you don't officially need permission to create a guide, I suggest as a courtesy to the land managers that you share your proposal with the staff and get their OK. They'll be able to help you with the list, and there might be threatened or endangered species they don't want to advertise.

First to Find: Here's my other exciting iNat news. During a recent shrimping trip we pulled up a cute little crab. I quickly snapped a photo so I could ID and upload it later. Back home I Binged and Googled lots of crab but couldn’t find my crab so I turned to Facebook. Several people thought it was a Cryptic Kelp Crab, Pugettia richii, but I wasn't convinced--my crab had "bloops" near its head and richii has distinct “points”. I decided to enter my crab into iNaturalist as a generic “True Crab”. The next day I decided to go with my FB peeps and edited the name to “Cryptic Kelp Crab”. The next day I chicken out and backed off the ID in iNaturalist to something from the “Pugettia genus”. Finally, a crab expert IDed my crab as a Pacific Lyre Crab (in a totally different family). It turns out I’m the first person in the iNat world to have that crab verified so I got to make my photo "the" species photo! Check it out here: www.inaturalist.org/taxa/459591-Hyas-lyratus

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences, conwaysuz!

Hello Amphibian Monitors! Please join me in celebrating the Bellevue Master Naturalists, who won our Team Engagement contest with the following lovely poem:

Froggie Love
March 2017:

Even in this cold and beastly winter
The amphibians take time for froggie love
Leaving jellied eggs below the surface
Of a pond that sedges poke above.

Clouds are partly lifting, so the humans
Risking brisky air and pending pour,
Wearing clunky boots and draped in cameras,
Gently wade in shallows at the shore.

Peering at the surface clear or murky
Slipping plastic sheet a tad beneath
They examine, they explore and part the waters
Checking under stalks and fallen leaf.

“I think I found one!” Much elated, shows the others
Cloudy purse with round black eggs, count five or six
Well-adhering to the stalk of old emergent
“Must be chorus frog,” they murmur, “Take a pic.”

The volunteer with camera snaps a photo,
Calls out the hue of eggs, the size of mass
And on the shore, the data are recorded,
With date and time and waypoint GPS.

Which organism is the more triumphant
Is it salamander, frog or newt
Whose reproductive talent has been proven?
Or the nature-hounds in data’s hot pursuit?

Submitted by Bellevue Master Naturalists

Intrepid Amphibian Monitors: Your team’s mission if you choose to accept it is to find a creative way to share about your monitoring season (for example: your findings, your site, the fun you’re having while monitoring). It could be a haiku, an infographic, a song, a video…your choice! I’ll have some impartial judges choose three winning entries, with those teams receiving fabulous prizes (including zoo passes!) and the chance to have your work featured on the zoo’s blog and social media channels. DEADLINE: May 15th! Please let me know if you have any questions!

Hello!

Thanks so much to all the teams who have been submitting so many wonderful observations to iNaturalist! I'm delighted to share that we are growing the number of King County amphibian findings on iNaturalist in a major way. In just two months, our Amphibian Monitoring teams have contributed:
--97 of the 535 observations of amphibians in King County
--7 of the 9 species in King County that have been submitted to iNaturalist

Keep up the amazing work!

Keith Douville is a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Biologist who has spent 5 of the last 10 years with WDFW’s Aquatic Research Group, working throughout Western Washington on amphibian-focused projects. Keith has also worked with beaver restoration in the North Cascades and was an Americorps volunteer for 2 years in Washington. Keith says,
"I find this project beneficial because of the quantity of data we otherwise would not see and the opportunity that it provides for citizen scientists to contribute. I think the iNaturalist platform will be a positive step in combining all our efforts observing the amphibians this spring!"
Thanks Keith, for your time and enthusiasm!

Hope you all are enjoying some of that early spring weather. Happy surveying!

Well, the rain is still expected, but it's finally warming up past 41 degrees, making conditions better for surveys. Spring is starting to feel more like a reality than just a wish. Observations are starting to really pick up throughout the iNaturalist community in Washington and our project. And, our kudos this week go to @conwaysuz - nice photo and data fields in this observation http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5495428 Good survey!
Over the next few weeks, I'd like to introduce you to our awesome curators. We have some great experts supporting our project and helping volunteers identify what they see. These folks work for Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) as professional biologists and researchers with deep experience in amphibians, aquatic habitats, conservation, community engagement and volunteer projects – we’re grateful for the time they commit to this effort.
Some of you may have already "met" one of our curators, communicating with him in the comments on one of your trickier egg mass identifications. Marc Hayes @demonpumpkin is a research herpetologist with 44 years of experience, the last 26 of which have been in the Pacific Northwest. He leads the Aquatic Research Section in the Habitat Program’s Science Division at WDFW. Marc has a great passion for amphibians and has been a lead researcher on Oregon Spotted Frogs for most of his career. Several folks on his team are also helping to review observations so we'll "meet" them in future journal posts.
Hope you're all having fun!

Check out this observation https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5425951 Great job!
That observation has 2 great photos: egg mass is still in the water on the white board background with the dime for scale and the egg mass appears free enough of debris so that the photo can be identified. Our curators have let me know that some of the photos are a bit more difficult to verify - blurry or out of focus, detritus on the egg mass obscures the egg forms, background and egg mass are too similar (no white board used), or reference scale is lacking. If you are having difficulty with photos, check out some of the observations where our curators have weighed in and the observations are marked "Research Grade."

You guys and gals are doing great - keep up the good work!!

Hello Amphibian Monitoring teams!

There are a plethora of amphibian-related events coming up to attend with your team, family or friends:

Saturday, March 25 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm
Shadow Lake Nature Preserve
Celebrate World Water Day by spending an afternoon learning about wetlands! Use a real microscope to look at aquatic organisms, play nutrient tag, and take a tour of our 5,000-year-old peat bog!
Register here: http://shadowhabitat.org/Home/tabid/394/ModuleID/3879/ItemID/301/mctl/EventDetails/Default.aspx

Fri, March 31, 2017, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Festival of Frogs at Brightwater:

https://islandwood.org/event/festival-frogs-brightwater-0

April 8, Saturday, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
Amorous Amphibians Nighthike at IslandWood:
https://islandwood.org/event/amorous-amphibians-night-hike-islandwood

Nice work, Amphibian Monitoring volunteers! So far, 10 individuals from 9 teams have recorded 29 observations of three different species. Let's see how many more we get this weekend!

Has your team monitored but not posted your findings yet? If so, please upload your photo and data as soon as possible to ensure that none of it goes missing.

Happy monitoring!

Woodland Park Zoo and Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife are excited to see the observations rolling in (leaping in?) from sites all over King County! Teams have already seen three different species, pending verification by our curators, and one member has even been able to upload some sound recordings.

The weather should be great for monitoring this weekend, so keep those observations coming!