Nearing 1,000 participants!

We have been keeping the pace up all the way through to our last day of the City Nature Challenge! Remember we have until the end of the day to continue snapping photos and recording audio of the amazing biodiversity of South Florida. We have had some phenomenal weather today, which was especially nice after the rain and wind yesterday.

At the moment our participant count is at 931 observers... so, so, so close to hitting 1,000! If you know any nature lovers, take a minute to get them on iNaturalist and help them post an observation or two to take us over that threshold! If you know of any school kids that need community service hours, remember the Frost Science Museum has an initiative for recognizing observations posted as community service... after all, when we post to iNaturalist we are helping our community to learn about the biodiversity in the area and you never know who you will inspire to get outside and appreciate nature. Here is a link to Frost Science's page about Citizen Science community service hours:
https://www.frostscience.org/museum-volunteers-for-the-environment/get-involved/service-hours-at-home/

As the day draws to a close, don't forget to check a nearby weedy patch to bump our observation count, too. I hit a vacant lot on my way home from work and documented lots of neat butterflies like dainty sulphur, barred yellow, Horace's duskywings and baracoa skipper. It's amazing how a little patch of lawn weeds will provide habitat for so many beautiful butterflies. Here are some of the butterflies we've posted during the City Nature Challenge so far:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2023-south-florida-cncsoflo&quality_grade=research&taxon_id=47224
That's 44 species in just 4 days!

Although the observation period closes at 11:59PM tonight, we have until Sunday, May 7th to post our photos/audio taken from Friday to Monday and also help identify the enormous amount of observations we have posted. If you have any questions about how identifying works, feel free to message me.

-Joe MDO & the CNCSOFLO team

Posted on May 1, 2023 08:54 PM by joemdo