City Nature Challenge 2023: Washington DC Metro Area's Journal

Thank you all for being part of the 2023 City Nature Challenge! The DC metropolitan area ranked 5th among 482 cities for the number of people involved, despite our less-than-favorable weather!

We were 7th for the number of observations and 9th for number of species. You can explore the different cities and their observations on the umbrella projects on iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2023

Please register to join our virtual celebration on Thursday evening from 7-8:30 pm and submit your stories here.

There are many, many other ways to slice the results, so there's a big spreadsheet that you can make a copy of to investigate further.

Here's my focus for the next few days and some (tips for new users):

--Finish uploading observations from my phone. (Note to new users: DON'T FORGET that you can easily add multiple shots of the same organism to one observation. Can and should, in fact--identifiers appreciate multiple shots that show different aspects of the creature, AND those robust observations are a better use of their time than IDing multiple obs of the same individual.)

--Check my smartphone camera roll against my posted observations to catch photos I missed uploading. (Go to "Your Observations" and sort on the "Observed" column in reverse chronological order. You may want to open up the filter at the top of the page and select one day at a time.)

--Eliminate duplicate observations. (Remove the one that the fewest people have interacted with, out of respect for their time and effort.)

--Add observations from my camera. My GPS tracking was not working so I'll have to add locations by hand.

--Research species ID's for my observations that I identified only to genus. Some won't be possible but I think I can figure out a few. (Good resources are the Flora of Virginia, Go Botany/The Native Plant Trust, and many others. These days, you can often get helpful information by searching on "X vs Y"; for example, "sanicula canadensis vs marilandica." You'll get a ton of resources that you can apply your critical mind to and get some good insights. Many times, of course, the community of iNat identifiers suggests species ID's, but there's so much volume during the City Nature Challenge that we are all challenged to keep up. If someone helps you out, be sure to @mention and thank them in your observation! They'll appreciate knowing that they helped you learn something new!)

--Work on identifying others' observations. ( Here's a little piece that can be helpful in giving constructive identification help)

--Keep checking my notifications so that I can learn from and respond to ID help that the community gives me. (On the desktop, right-click on each notification to open it in a new window or the notification list might disappear before you get to them all.)

The official global count is taken for each city at 9am local time on Monday. I'm hopeful that we can find a few more species for the DC area in all those thousands of observations we have!

If you have any workflow tips or hints for new iNatters, please share them below!

Now that we've all had a chance to dry off, it's time to switch gears.

Upload: You may still have observations to upload--that's okay and very common! As long as your observations were made Friday - Monday they will count!

Identify: Many identifiers are working hard to get identifications done on as many as possible by the time the official numbers are run next Monday morning at 9am local time. Can you pitch in? See this page for resources for identifiers, and consider joining us for our virtual ID party this Thursday May 4 from 7-8:30pm! Join the Zoom meeting here. We'll share tips and tricks to help iNat's functionality complement your own identification knowledge, whatever your level of expertise. Then when you're ready you can join a breakout room to work on ID's.

Celebrate: Next Thursday May 11, 7-8pm, we'll have a celebration of all things CNC! It will be an opportunity to share your favorite observations and funny stories. Watch this space for more details.

....and maybe the first sunshine many of us will see! My local forecast calls for a precious few hours of sun in the morning and then partly cloudy. Time to look for flying insects finally! Remember we have several more days to upload and identify so if your time today is limited, you can focus it on outside time. For all the deets on dates, see the City Nature Challenge FAQs at https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/faq .

Hats off to all our identifiers! Identifiers make iNaturalist a community, so much more than just a citizen science platform or an ID app. The top dozen identifiers this morning are @mmmmbugs, @tlit46, @klsnature, @margaretchatham, @nanjemoycreek, @tminatbe, @johnbotany, @davidenrique, @carrieseltzer, @kyle_klotz, @igor_kuzmin, and @droidwrestler. There are 582 identifers in all who have helped with observations in the DC metro area. Thank you all!

I like to think that finding the silver lining is my superpower, and boy has it gotten a lot of practice the last few days! We've had two days of near-constant rain, and in some spots thunder making us run for cover, plus cloudy, gloomy skies that cut several useful photography hours out of each day!

Still, I've noticed some silver linings:

--Because I've been wearing rain boots, not hiking boots, I can go several steps farther into wet areas, getting me to some closer shots than I would have had in my normal footwear.

--When I'm wearing rain gear head-to-toe, I'm less worried about ticks, so I've been going through some tall grasses I would normally have avoided. This led me to my favorite observation of this CNC so far.

How about you? Did the rain, or your rain workarounds, lead to any nice surprises this year?

After a beautiful non-rainy day, the DC Metro area is back in familiar territory with respect to our numbers. At this writing we are 6th for number of observations, 9th for number of species and 3rd for number of observers. Only one observer ahead of Houston! Here's the point in the City Nature Challenge where we can get on our neighborhood listservs or nature-interested local Facebook groups--where members often post pictures of weeds, wildflowers and wildlife they see--and suggest they post their pix to iNaturalist for ID suggestions and UPLOAD them so they become part of the City Nature Challenge.

And what happens to observations after the computer vision ID suggestions? Well, that's what sets iNat apart from all the ID apps, and that's what next week is all about. Our amazing worldwide community of identifiers--real people--refines and improves identications and often offers helpful insights. We have two virtual events next week to come together and work on identifications. This helps as many of our regional obervations as possible accurately reach research grade, and it helps and welcomes all the new users who come to iNat during the City Nature Challenge.

I hope you can join us on Zoom either Tuesday, May 2 or Thursday, May 4, both at 7:30 pm! Even if you have little experience and low confidence with identifying, you can always help by sorting observations into broad taxa so that the specialists can help. Register here: https://bit.ly/iNatnightRegister2023 .

We're expecting more rain tomorrow. If anyone has lessons learned from observing in the rain on Friday, please share them below!

Congratulations to @margaretchatham and @picklejar for jumping onto the leaderboards this afternoon! It takes dedication to stay out in weather like today's! My day got much better once I found my rain pants (which were right where I put them...in that very special place so I'd know where they were...where it only took me 20 minutes to find them :-D ) Still, it was not a day I'd have spent outside all day without a good reason.

What's your focus for the City Nature Challenge this year? Me, I'm trying to see as many of the spring galls and leafminers as possible. While looking for those, I'm trying to catch one observation of each other species I see along the way. And only one--unless it's a species I particularly like, or I'm still learning, or I forgot I already got one, or I'm confused about what it is. We'll see how that math works out.

I'd love to hear from you. Do you have a goal? A focus? Or do you just folllow your nose?

Wow. Today was always going to be my county-of-residence observation day, and with this weather I don't mind being close to home. Today's MO: go out and observe, come home, peel wet clothing off and run it through the dryer, eat a lot, drink warm beverages, attempt to recharge phone (TIL this doesn't work when phone is wet), re-outfit and go back out.

HUGE shout out to all the observers who have been in the rain and cold today in the name of curiosity, science, community, personal stats, or whatever it is that drives you--I respect all those motivations!

I'm thrilled to see master naturalists looking so good on the DC area leaderboards. In the lead for observations at this moment are @tonyiajohnson, @capitalnaturalist, @jgingold, @nanjemoycreek, @corinne-swdc, and @aqualily. Out in front for species count are @capitalnaturalist , @tonyiajohnson, @nanjemoycreek, @jgingold, @simplyenough and @corinne-swdc.

Looking forward to seeing what @jmgconsult is seeing out at Calvert Cliffs today, and all the finds that people have yet to upload when they come in from the field! Keep up the great work everyone!

There's a lot of buzz right now about this weekend's weather forecast. Don't despair! Here are some tips to keep you learning and contributing to citizen science even in disappointing weather.

In the rain, expect fewer insects flying. Figure out where they're hiding--crevices in tree trunks? Underneath leaves?

You can also find plenty of arthropods staying safe and sheltered inside galls and leaf mines! If you get good pictures and identify the host plant, you don't always need to see the creature itself to identify it. Win/win--you get a good species observation and you don't disturb the creature.

See galls that can be found here in April and May.
Get the deets on gall observing.
See leafminers that can be found here in April and May.
Tips on photographing leafminers! (expand bottom right corner of page)

Keep an eye out for burrowing animals, large and small, that have abandoned their wet homes--earthworms, salamanders, millipedes, etc.

When the rain brings out the frogs and toads, capture their songs using these tips for audio recordings. ( bit.ly/iNataudio )

In the rain, many flowers close up. Use this opportunity to practice photographing details of leaves and stems, which are often needed to get plant ID's to species anyway.

If it's just too nasty to go outside, check out the biodiversity in your basement or garage! Add your observations to the Never Home Alone project!

Read up on incised fumewort so that you can recognize this fast-spreading new invasive in the field.

Finally, try your hand at identifying: Here are DC-CNC observations that need a hand (this will populate after the challenge starts at midnight)

Let's do this!

Hot off the press! How to Record Good Audio for iNaturalist compiles best practices based on @jraiford 's experiences recording and identifying audio observations on iNaturalist. Give it a try when you're in the field!

Here, you'll find many Resources for Walk Leaders including planning questions to help leaders prevent common mishaps, a tip sheet for use in the field, FAQ's for event organizers, and more.

Are you helping your organization promote a CNC event? Our Resources for Event Promoters page lists social media handles, graphic resources you can use, a sample press release, and info on how you can list your event on our Events map so others can join you.

If you're looking for an event to join, check out Field Events --more than ten new events have been added in the last week.

What happens if it rains? According to power iNat user @jmgconsult , the plants will still be there, the birds and bugs may be in hiding (but still around), and the frogs will be singing. Be prepared by bringing rain gear, and know the water capabilities of your smartphone or camera equipment. Because our rain is often brief and/or patchy, don't assume scheduled events are cancelled--many are likely to continue as planned unless there is thunder and lightning. Check with your individual event's organizers when in doubt.