Milestone: 500 species observed! Plus: tips to help us identify your observations

Good afternoon City Nature Challenge community!

Congratulations on reaching the incredible milestone of 500+ species observed!! That is an incredible accomplishment, and it has really been a joy to watch your observations come in. I have learned about some new species and bird behaviors just from reviewing your pictures and notes!

Tips for more identifiable observations
We are hoping to pinpoint the specific species for as many of our observations as possible. In many cases, this requires multiple pictures of the same organism. Try to document as many characteristics as you can, with pictures from multiple angles.

For plants, take pictures that show the flowers, leaves (tops and bottoms), stems, etc. If you are photographing a tree, try to capture its silhouette, bark, leaves (if present), and any diseased looking parts (pathogens can be clues to what the tree is too!)

For fungi, zoom in as much as possible to provide detail on the color, texture, and shape of pores/gills. For mushrooms, in addition to taking a picture of the top, try to photograph the underside of a mushroom. (Note that picking a mushroom will not kill the organism, as the mushroom is just the visible fruiting body of the fungus.)

For example: the top of this polypore looks like it could be a number of mushrooms:

Looking on the underside gives a lot more clues to what makes it unique:

It can also be helpful to make note of what environment the organism is living. Identifiers may ask you questions about where you saw something - please keep an eye out for their questions.

Prize reminders

As a reminder, we are offering one-year household memberships to Wild Ones (our local Chapter is the Mountain Laurel Chapter) to:

• The two people who observe the greatest number of unique species (most species observed as opposed to most total observations)
• The two people who make the most identifications during the ID period of now through May 6 at 9:00 AM EST

@Hexagonaria and I are recusing ourselves from the prizes, since we are the organizers. Each participant can only win one membership, so if someone wins in both categories, the prize will go to the person with the next highest number of species identified.

Enjoy a great afternoon outside, everyone!

• Sarah (@chiforager) and Chase (@hexagonaria)

Posted on 28 de abril de 2024, 05:45 PM by chiforager