Sassy Clues & Overview

Countdown: 0 DAYS TO GO – TOMORROW is the first of the 4 days of the CNCBC!

OK! No more fooling around!! Here are clues to where you can find Sassy TOMORROW, Friday, April 30 until 6:30P:

• What is 50 times 4?
• Where would you go to get your broken wing rehabbed if you are a raptor?
• The location is located less than one mile from the river with nearby town of same name.

After 6:30 PM, she’ll be moved to the next location. Clues for that location will be here posted here tomorrow morning.

Need a quick review on how to what the City Nature Challenge is, and how to participate?

All you have to do is:
1) Download the free iNaturalist app (get the Seek app, too, while you’re at it).
2) Create an account (must be 13 years old).
3) Go out and take some photos of flora and fauna within Bonner County, and upload them. They will be automatically included in the CNCBC between 12:01 AM on April 30th and 11:59 PM on Monday May 3rd.

When taking photos. Remember:

1. Get closer!
2. Shoot multiple angles and images.
3. Take photos that are sharp and in focus.

Here are some good tutorial videos:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials

Here are a couple of good ones from the Red Lodge, MT organizer:

• City Nature Challenge Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPXDVhxQIzo&list=PLefLi2ClwjA7nbR30gHb-wP4AekW7Pb1r&index=3
• City Nature Challenge Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DKai1XpvOg

Here is the FAQs doc:
https://www.calacademy.org/citizen-science/city-nature-challenge/FAQs

The City Nature Challenge 2021: Bonner County, ID (CNCBC) is in a competition involving over 400 sites around the world. There are no prizes to win, although there will be a leader board showing how many people, observations and species are counted in each individual challenge. You can watch the results live from all over the world here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021. And you can watch the Bonner County observations being made here: http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021-bonner-county-id (this is also a great site to get lots of info – see the About section and Journal entries).

Regionally, Bonner County, Boise, and Red Lodge, MT have a mini competition going on. We are all competing for a newly created Northern Rocky Mountain Challenge Trophy. It will be awarded to the site that gets the most people to participate per capita. Participation involves making at least one observation and uploading it. The winning site will be able to keep the trophy until next year. You can watch their results come in:

• Boise: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021-boise-area
• Red Lodge: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021-red-lodge-area

The City Nature Challenges have, in every place they’ve been conducted, set a new baseline for nature observations. Will that be true for the three regional challenges? Here’s the baseline as of Thursday, April 29, 2021:

• Bonner County: Observations: 3,919; Species: 1,078; Observers: 463 | County population.: 45,739 | % observers/pop.: 1.0%
• Carbon County (Red Lodge, MT): Observations: 4,521; Species: 1,480; Observers: 373 | County population: 10,725 | % observers /pop.: 3.5%

• Ada County*: Observations: 18,116; Species: 2,062; Observers: 1,647 | County population: 481,587 | % observers/pop.: 0.3%
  (*The Boise Area challenge will 242,160 as the population, since that number represents the 2020 population of Boise and Garden City - the two areas contained in their project.)

Locally, participants can win one CNCBC 2021 Trophy, and a CNCBC 2021 Champ Trophy.

• To win one of the CNCBC 2021 trophies, you’ll need to find Sassy, a cut-out of a Sasquatch -and- 20 unique species. She’ll be hidden in 4 different locations in Bonner County. You can only win one of these. To qualify, send an email with CNCBC 2021 in the Subject line to cncbonnercounty@gmail.com as soon as you’ve made the observations. Include your name, your iNaturalist user name, and contact information in the body of the email. The first person that does so on each day gets a trophy.
• To win the CNCBC 2021 Champ Trophy, you’ll need to make the most unique observations of different species over the 4 days of the competition.
• The trophies can be seen in a display case in the East Bonner County Library. Thanks again to Chad Butherus of Hard Art Studios, NE of Rathdrum, for donating the CNCBC 2021 Trophy, and to the Pend Oreille Chapter of the Idaho Master Naturalists for donating the CNCBC 2021 trophies and creating Sassy!

• The winners will be announced during a Facebook Live Event on Monday, May 10th at 4:00 PM. Here’s the link:
  https://www.facebook.com/events/782272925738524.

• The trophies can then be picked up at the library at 10:00 AM on Saturday May 15th.
• If the CNCBC wins the regional competition, Mike Bauer will accept it on behalf of the county, and it will be displayed in the library (but it will rotate around the county to maintain enthusiasm for observing nature, and to build momentum for future bioblitzes.

• Reminders:
  1) You don’t have to live in Bonner County to participate. So, folks from Benewah, Boundary, Clearwater, Idaho, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone: come help! Next year the CNCBC can become a North Idaho Challenge! Heck, we even want our Washington and Montana neighbors to slip over the border and participate!
  2) Dr. Jim Eakins of IDAH2O will be at the WaterLife Discovery Center (WDC) in Sagle on Saturday from 10:00 AM until 12:00 PM to teach about aquatic macroinvertebrates and how to ID them. Do not miss this opportunity to speak with one of Idaho’s leading watershed experts! Learn about the Master Water Steward Program he administers. The WDC is a great place to make some observations, too.

Posted on April 29, 2021 01:09 PM by geogehrig