Let's Keep the Energy Going!
As you know, the observation period ended at midnight last night. Since then, many of you have worked tirelessly to help identify observations. Thank you!!!
Our numbers have been rising, but they are still below last year's. However, the contest is not over yet. Any picture taken during April 27-30 can still be entered into iNaturalist up until May 4 at 9:00 a.m. That's another 36 hours to enter your observations and to add IDs.
Why should you help identify observations?
1) It makes people feel good. Imagine if no one looked at your submissions and you never found out what what that weird looking bug was? Would you want to keep participating? Would you learn anything new?
2) In order for an observation to become "research grade" it needs to have three things: a photo or sound recording, a geographic location, and a community ID (meaning that at least one other person agrees that it is a red-tailed hawk, striped skunk, or asian ladybeetle, etc.) Research grade observations are important because they are the most useful for scientists AND they are automatically fed into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. How cool is that -- a whole world of researchers using your data!
3) It raises both our count for species identifiers. Let's face it, we're probably not going to beat San Francisco in number of observations, but what about species? The difference is a lot closer in that category.
4) You might have fun! Have you heard about the ID Party we're hosting tomorrow night at Angel City Brewery? It's going to be a blast. Come, hang out with us, help with observations, and maybe drink some beer. It's May 2 from 4:00 - 9:00 p.m. See the link for more information. Reservations have officially closed, but feel free to come anyway.
How can I help if I'm not an expert?
1) If you're a beginner -- there are always many observations that simply list "bird" or "plant" and many more that don't have any sort of label. If you can make,at least one general suggestion, you're helping to narrow it down. We do have experts looking, but they can't find that rare lizard if no one has even added the label, "lizard" to the observation.
2) If you're intermediate -- pick one category and dive deep. Narrow your search results to that one category and either confirm someone's guess or suggest something different. My husband decided that he was going to look at brown widow spiders. After years of nighttime spider hunts, he knows them really well.
3) You might learn something new. Poking around in iNaturalist invariably leads me to learn something new and at tomorrow night's ID Party, we're going to have scientists from the museum share tips for identification. So come to hang out with us, help with observations, boost our numbers, drink some beer and learn something new!
We're almost in the final stretch. Whether you make your identifications from the comfort of your own home, while riding the train to work, or at tomorrow's party, we hope that you'll join in the ID phase of the City Nature Challenge.
