Some tips for making LOTS of observations over the City Nature Challenge

4 days, 12 hours a day, is 2,880 minutes. Yet, each year the top observers in the City Nature Challenge make many thousands of observations. My record so far is 4,438 observations, in the 2022 CNC. The top observer globally in last year's CNC made 5,794 observations.

How do we do it? And still find time to eat and sleep? Here are a few tips for efficiently making lots of observations (of lots of species).

Take photos and upload later

Remember that the CNC is four days of observing then a week for uploading and identifying. If you know what a species is, quickly snap the photo during the four-days and move on. Upload and identify it later in the week.

If you know it's a common species, but you don't know its name, still, just snap a photo and upload later. For species you don't know, upload those photos earlier in the week to give identifiers the time to identify it.

Bulk upload photos via the iNaturalist website

If you use the free iNaturalist app, you're stuck in a one-observation-at-a-time workflow. That's fun for a few observations an hour, but it doesn't scale well.

If you're planning on making hundreds of observations, consider skipping the app. Just take photos with your phone's camera (or with a real camera), and download them to a computer later.

You can then drag all of your photos onto the iNaturalist website's Upload page, at once. The Uploader will automatically grab all the information it can from the photos, including the date, time, and location. All you need to do is add the species identification to each, if you know it. Otherwise, if you just know it's a plant, give your identification as plant—that ensures that the botanists will see it.

Like the app, the web Uploader gives you iNat's automated suggestions of what a species likely is. This speeds up the process of adding IDs, but remember that these are just suggestions and can be wrong. If none of the suggestions look quite right, don't pick them. Just add a higher taxon as your ID (plant, fungus, spider, etc.) and let iNat's identification experts add their IDs.

Look for species living on species

If you take a photo of an interesting plant, take a moment to look again. What insect and fungal damage are on it? Are there insects visiting its flowers or eating its leaves? Are there lichens growing on its stems? Are their leaf mines or stem galls on the plant?

With some attention and curiosity, one observation of one species can easily turn into 10 observations of 10 species.

Go to places with lots of species

Tangled wild places are great for quickly photographing lots of species. Forests, wetlands, rocky shores, they all have lots of species waiting to be photographed. Spend time where a lot of the biodiversity lives.

Go small

If your phone or camera does macro, look for small things. There will be lots of invertebrates and mosses and lichens all around you. Even in a regular city lawn you can find a surprising number of species if you get down on your knees and look closely.

Go out at night

A lot of critters hide from the birds in the day time and only come out at night. I always spend an evening or two in my garden after dark, with a torch, seeking out the insects and spiders and other creatures that come out at night.

Photograph every species you can find in your garden

Each CNC I make myself the challenge of finding every species I can find (that's big enough to see) in my suburban garden. You'll be surprised at how much is out there to find. We're up to 719 species in my garden at the moment.

Look out for species you've not see before

Every CNC we find species in the city that have never been seen here before. Some are new exotics, others new natives to the city. While out exploring, do keep a keen eye out for things that look odd, that you don't remember seeing before. Discovering new species to the city is one of the important outcomes of the CNC, and the more people are out looking, the more we find.

Photograph the same species at lots of places

If you've photographed a species at one park, then see it at another park, photograph it again. Mapping out where species are across the city is as useful as adding species to the city's species list.

Carry spare batteries or a power bank

If you take lots of photos throughout the day, you'll flatten your phone or camera's battery. I have a USB power bank that I can use to recharge my phone and camera. I also have cameras and a phone, so when one's recharging, I can be using another device.

Have fun!

Remember that the City Nature Challenge is a fun, collective activity to celebrate our city's nature. Take as few or as many observations as you want to, and have fun exploring our nature with other people.

Posted on April 24, 2024 10:52 PM by