Nova Scotia - Our seabound coast's Boletim

The rain started here in HRM around 6:15 just as I was out trying to take a few photos of moths - I have had to get out earlier and earlier as the local song sparrow has identified my white sheet as a great breakfast location and I have caught him several times with a mouthful.

A great activity for a rainy morning is to compare personal counts against a list of what other iNatters have found in the same area around the same time. The iNat COMPARE tool is still 'developmental' but it does provide columns that one can view.

Click here to view the iNat URL that will show counts of species found by All iNatters anywhere in NS, by MKennedy, by NickBelliveau since August 3rd. If you wish to view your counts either add another row or replace useID with your iNat handle.

Just a quick note to encourage all to keep posting observations - currently we are hanging around the top of the leaderboard but these stats do change frequently and overnight Team Russia jumped ahead of the Great Southern Bioblitz (Australia) to the top. Our Nova Scotian team is currently in 3rd place.

As of this morning we have 397 species - any chance we can reach 500 species? Good to have a goal! (I am slowly adding all of the common species...)

Normally we have 3 days or so to upload images but as this challenge is part of a virtual conference the rules are different. The award ceremony will be conducted during the section’s social event at 4:00 PM EDT on Aug. 6. https://www.esa.org/saltlake/program/national-biodiversity-championship/

Yesterday our team of 5 was registered to compete in the 2020 International Biodiversity Championship.

Sea McKeon, the natural history special initiatives coordinator for the Ecological Society of America, has established a 'project' page for our team.

This global challenge has been set up for fun and as outreach- the project coordinator will be breathlessly broadcasting observations and pitfalls throughout the competition to the Ecological Society of America meetings, "The Naturalists" group on Facebook and beyond.

We have been asked to send them any photos, updates, or stories, and they will do their best to send the media to us for interviews. We have also been asked to use the hashtag "#biodiversitychamps" in our social media.

Not sure if our team is competing for prizes but according to the organizers prizes this year include swag and subscriptions to ESA journals, T-shirts from code5design.net, etc.