Diario del proyecto City Nature Challenge 2021: The Wasatch

Team Wasatch is doing an amazing job recording species! The spirit of the City Nature Challenge is collecting images of the WILD organisms all around us – like wild animals seen on a hike, insects living between flowers someone planted, weeds in park strips and sidewalk cracks, and squirrels and birds perched on buildings, power lines, and feeders. Observations of wild living or dead organisms, or evidence of those organisms (like shells, tracks, scat, fur, feathers, etc.) are all great photos to upload. If you take a photo of something you know is not wild (like a plant you planted in your yard!), please help the iNaturalist community by marking it as captive/cultivated before uploading it.

We hope you are enjoy exploring the wild plants, animals and other naturally occurring things throughout northern Utah this weekend! You can make observations of nature on your own through May 3rd. You can also join in one of the many events going on this weekend. Happy Exploring!

Here are just a few amazing highlights from yesterday:
-Fox Squirrel photobomb! observation by @chad_w
-Check out this cool Hairy Bear Scarab Beetle observation by @lksargent
-Beautiful birding by @connie43: Black-crowned Night-Heron
-Glacier Lilies are blooming! observation by @bellawetzler

See Wasatch project observations you like? Paste links in the comments of this journal, or Tag @nhmucitsci in the observation's comments!

Thanks to wonderful weekend weather and all our awesome observers, The Wasatch stats are currently at:

2,636 Observations
637 Species
305 Observers
185 Identifiers

And the Observer Awards go to...
Most Observations: @dprasad with 210 observations!
Most Species Observed: @bfox81 with 77 species observed!

Most observed species: Common Stork's Bill (39 observations), Common Dandelion (34 observations), American Robin (26 observations), and Arrowleaf Balsamroot (26 observations).

Big thanks to all who attended City Nature Challenge events across the Wasatch Front this weekend. Let's keep it up and continue to boost these numbers! Carry on making observations through May 3 in your backyard, around the block, hikes in the mountains, and wherever the wild things are!

What a gangbusters weekend! This has been an INCREDIBLE dive into the amazing biodiversity of our homes. Thank you to everyone who participated!

As of this morning, we've had:

3,421 observations of 704 species made by 229 folks! That's a ton of great data!

As the CNC begins to wrap up, I encourage everyone to take some time and reflect upon your highlights of this year's event. Did you learn a new bird that visits your feeder? Did you get a just gorgeous photo you'll share with all of your friends? Did you discover a new place you'll want to revisit?

No matter how you participated, from hundreds of observations to just one, know that YOU made a difference in the City Nature Challenge this year, and we all hope you'll keep getting outside and discovering the nature all around you.

So as we wrap up, again I'll say THANK YOU from all of the many community organizations which may have organized CNC this year, but only you made it possible! Here's to finishing strong, and keeping the Challenge alive all year long!

Patrick Kelly @patrickkelly907
Director of Education at Stokes Nature Center

THE CITY NATURE CHALLENGE ISN'T OVER YET! Thanks to the collective efforts of Utahns this weekend, we’ve surpassed 5K observations, and are on our way to identifying more than 800 different species living with us here in Northern Utah. Official global and local UT results for the CNC will be announced the week of 5/10, but there is still work to do! (1) Have photos from the weekend you haven’t uploaded yet? You have until 5/9/21 to get them on iNaturalist to count towards the 2021 CNC. Every observation helps! (2) Help make IDs and tell us about any exciting observations you come across! We need your help to look through the thousands of amazing observations made in UT. If you come across any first records, see a great photo, fun story, unique observation, or something piques your interest - post it in the comments here!

More details on how you can help:
-Finish uploading your April 30-May 3 observations-
As long as your photos were TAKEN April 30-May 3, 2021, then you can upload them through May 9 and have them count for the 2021 City Nature Challenge. If you took photos on your phone, you can upload them through the app. If you made observations using a camera, you can upload using the iNaturalist Upload page on your home computer; here is a short video with more info: https://vimeo.com/167431843

-Love the CNC? Have any CNC stories from this weekend? We'd love to hear it! Tell us in the comments section below.

-Help with Identifications through May 9th-
In the same way that anyone can be an observer, anyone can also help identify observations. Identifications are a crucial step to an observation becoming a research quality record. To get started, select "Observations" on our project page and then choose “Identify.” From this page, you can add various filters to your search, to explore groups of species you know a little bit about. If you’re not an expert in any group, you can still help by identifying the “unknowns” - the observations with no IDs at all! To do this, click the “Filters” button and then select the dashed-line leaf with a question mark in it. This will show you all the observations that are currently listed as “unknown.” It’s really helpful to go through these and add high-level IDs like “plants” or “insects” or “birds” or “fungi” - whatever you know about the organism - so people who do know how to ID these groups down to species can find them! Here is a video about using the Identify page: https://vimeo.com/246153496

No matter what, please only add an ID of which you can be reasonably sure - it’s fine if you don’t know what something is, and it’s fine to only add a genus or family or even kingdom level ID.

If you are interested, you can also expand your identification skills beyond Utah - to help ID observations made during the CNC worldwide (over 1.1 MILLION observations so far!) Here is the Identify page for the entire City Nature Challenge.

Thank you for your amazing observations over the weekend, and if you are able/interested, for helping to make these 2021 CNC observations research-quality data points.

Don't forget to tell us about any interesting observations you come across (e.g., first records, interesting photos, observations that were hard to get, one of your own you are proud of, etc.), or thoughts on the 2021 CNC by posting below!

-NHMU Citizen Science & the 2021 UT CNC Organizers

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who participated in and identified observations from the 6th annual City Nature Challenge! Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, on a global scale there were over 10,000 more people participating compared to last year, and for the first time ever, we collectively made over one million observations in the four days of the challenge!

Here are the collective global results:
Observations: 1,270,767
Species: 45,300+, including more than 2,100 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 52,777
Most-observed species globally: Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

In Utah, our results were (as of 5/9/21):
5905 Observations (we ranked 64th out of 400+ cities participating worldwide)
906 Species, including 14 rare/endangered/threatened species
417 Observers
Most observed species: Mallard, with Arrowleaf Balsamroot a close second

Some Highlights from The Wasatch project:
-This vulnerable Maguire's Primrose (Primula cusickiana var. maguirei), endemic to Cache County (meaning it doesn't occur anywhere else!). Of Utah's roughly 600 rare plant species, it is one of only 25 that is protected by the Endangered Species Act.
-Long-Tailed Weasel at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Box Elder County
-An almost huggable Hairy Bear Scarab Beetle in Cache County
-Shaggy Mane mushroom in Davis County
-A Habronattus festus jumping spider taking on some large prey in SLC
-Lovely Glacier Lily blooming just after snow melts in Summit County
-Western Tanager spotted in Utah County, migrating back to Utah
-An elusive Western Skink spotted in Wasatch County
-Osprey nesting in Weber county

And, if you are curious, here are some of the interesting observations from around the world:
Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)
Lixus placidus weevil
Turkish Snail (Helix lucorum)
Witches’ Cauldron (Sarcosoma globosum)
Blainville’s Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma blainvillii)
Purplish-backed Jay (Cyanocorax beecheii)
Sargassumfish (Histrio histrio)
Southern Lion (Panthera leo ssp. melanochaita)
Common Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista philippensis)
Euglossa macrorhyncha bee
Adelpha zea butterfly
Short-clubbed Wasp Orchid (Chiloglottis reflexa)

The City Nature Challenge also contributed to the most observations uploaded in a week on iNaturalist again - and also gave iNaturalist the first two weeks ever with over one million observations uploaded!

Thanks everyone! Continue to help IDing those CNC observations - it takes awhile to get through them! We're looking forward to CNC 2022!

-Natural History Museum of Utah Citizen Science team