bruceneville's Journal

What is the City Nature Challenge? The CNC, as it is known to veterans, is a friendly competition to document the flora, fauna, and funga of urban areas around the world. It occurs the last weekend of April into May each year. This year, there are 16 “cities” in Texas participating. The challenge consists of two phases. Phase 1 is the observation phase and runs from 28 April to 1 May this year. Participants enter observations into iNaturalist. Phase 2 is the identification phase and runs from 2 May to 7 May this year. This phase is equally important, as we need to identify as many of the observations as we can in the time allotted.

How do I participate? Just go out and make as many iNaturalist observations as you can between 12:00 am on the 28th to 11:59 on the 1st in our six-county “city”: Brazos, Burleson, Grimes, Lee, Madison, and Robertson. The project automatically picks up any observations made in the appropriate area and time frame and adds them to the project. During the identification phase, if you can, identify others’ observations as far as you can. Even if you can’t identify to species, if you can get them to a general group (“bird,” “spider,” “grass”), someone else might be able to take it further.

Do I need to join the project to participate? No. The project automatically collects appropriate observations. We’d love to have you join, so we can see who is “playing.” I will try to post daily journal entries between now and the end of the challenge.

I’ve never used iNaturalist. How does it work? It’s really easy. A beginner’s guide to iNaturalist, with emphasis on the City Nature Challenge, can be found at https://bit.ly/3yCgkhp.

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley
CNC Coordinator

Last year, 138 observers made 2,811 observations of 822 species. The breakdown of species was:
 406 plants (49.7%)
 227 insects (27.8%)
 92 birds (11.3%)
 23 reptiles (2.8%)
 22 arachnids (2.7%)
 17 fungi and lichens (2.1%)
 12 mammals (1.5%)
 8 amphibians (1.0%)
 5 fishes (0.6%)
 5 other animals (0.6%)
 4 mollusks (0.5%)

Of our 334 observations of 92 species of bird, painted bunting had the most observations, with 23, followed by northern cardinal, with 17. We had a really good selection of warblers, with 17 species, including a nicely photographed Swainson’s (thanks to Greg Page for permission to use said photo for the banner of this year’s project page). Other good birds included 2 late dark-eyed juncos, 2 Philadelphia vireos, a clay-colored sparrow, a well-documented hairy woodpecker, a Wilson’s phalarope, and a sound recording of a chuck-will’s-widow (one of which is calling outside my house as I write this).

Of our 161 observations of 62 species of Lepidoptera, fir tussock moth came in first with 11 observations, all of the caterpillars. Pearl crescent was second and the top butterfly with 10 observations. One that puzzled me until well after the competition closed was “the butterfly from Mars” by Cameron Johnson at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/113929378. I finally tracked it to oak hairstreak. Clare Palmer got a painted schinia moth (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/113928715), which I have been wanting to, but still haven’t seen.

Among “other animals,” Amanda Chau documented a New Guinea flatworm, a very unwelcome invader and a big reason we do this.

Of our 1,629 observations of 407 species of plant, the most commonly observed was old plainsman, with 29 observations, mostly because I ran into a large patch of it with a wonderful diversity of pollinators and “double-dipped” with pollinator and pollinatee for each observation. Secondmost observed was pink ladies, with 28 observations. I don’t know enough about plants to know what observations were exceptional. I found an interesting small blue flower at Lake Madison that turned out to be “only” a blue scarlet pimpernel. We had 2 observations of spring ladies’-tresses, but none of Navasota ladies’-tresses, perhaps because they are a fall-blooming species. We also got one observation of dwarf sundew. Please add any comments on other unusual plant observations below.

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley CNC Coordinator

Last year, we got 822 species. Let’s try for 1000 this year! We can also use more representation from our “outlying” counties.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, we’re sure to miss some species. Can you believe that no one bothered to get a picture of a rock pigeon last year? There are probably 200+ species of bird in the area during the challenge. We recorded 92. Species that we should have documented include:

 rock dove
 chimney swift (remember, you can use sound recordings)
 American coot
 cormorant (either one!)
 eastern screech-owl
 great horned owl
 belted kingfisher
 pileated woodpecker
 purple martin
 eastern meadowlark

Among the insects, we missed a number of orders. We got no silverfish. I can usually find one with no problem at my house, but where are they when you need them?! We didn’t get an earwig, a stick insect, or a lacewing. Someone with a pet could contribute our first flea. We did pretty well with butterflies, but we didn’t get a queen! We did pretty well with mammals, too, but we didn’t get a striped skunk. Road kills count! We only had 5 species of fish and 4 species of mollusk. We should be able to do better than that.

Again, I don’t know enough about botany to know what we’re missing or where we could do better. If anyone has suggestions, please put them in the comments.

The moral of the story is, Whether you think it’s been observed for the CNC or not, if you have chance to “shoot” it, do it!

Bruce Neville
Brazos County CNC Coordinator

Last year, we got 822 species. Let’s try for 1000 this year!

Despite everyone’s best efforts, we’re sure to miss some species. Can you believe that no one bothered to get a picture of a rock pigeon last year? There are probably 200+ species of bird in the area during the challenge. We recorded 92. Species that we should have documented include:

 rock dove
 chimney swift (remember, you can use sound recordings)
 American coot
 cormorant (either one!)
 eastern screech-owl
 great horned owl
 belted kingfisher
 pileated woodpecker
 purple martin
 eastern meadowlark

Among the insects, we missed a number of orders. We got no silverfish. I can usually find one with no problem at my house, but where are they when you need them?! We didn’t get an earwig, a stick insect, or a lacewing. Someone with a pet could contribute our first flea. We did pretty well with butterflies, but we didn’t get a queen!

We only had 5 species of fish and 4 species of mollusk. We should be able to do better than that.

Again, I don’t know enough about botany to know what we’re missing or where we could do better. If anyone has suggestions, please put them in the comments.

The moral of the story is, Don't depend on others. Whether you think it’s been observed for the CNC or not, if you have chance to “shoot” it, do it!

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley CNC Coordinator

Last year, Brazos County accounted for over half the observations in the City Nature Challenge. To be precise, of the 2,811 total observations, the numbers for each county were:

 Brazos 1572 (56%)
 Burleson 255 (9%)
 Grimes 248 (9%)
 Leon 72 (3%)
 Madison 273 (10%)
 Robertson 391 (14%)

This is understandable, since Brazos County also accounts for about 70% of the population in the six-county area. This reflects the general effort in these counties. Brazos has nearly 7 times the number of observations (70,484) than the second county (Grimes, with 10,123), more than twice the number of species (4,646) than the second county (Grimes again, with 1,994), and more than three times the number of observers (2,753) than the second county (you guessed it, Grimes, with 819).

Access can be difficult to areas in some of these counties, but the results can be worth the effort. Southern Grimes County provides access to Blackland Prairies and eastern Leon County provides access to the Pineywoods, two ecoregions that are not represented in Brazos or the other counties in our region. There are two state parks in the region, Fort Boggy in Leon County and Lake Somerville in Burleson. Note that only the Birch Creek Unit of Lake Somerville SP is in our region.

Regardless of where you observe, all observations are welcome and needed!

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley CNC Coordinator

Does you camera want to focus on the background when trying to photograph a slender object, like a grass stem? You can force it to focus on the subject by placing something plain, like a notebook or your hand, behind the subject. If you use a lined notebook page, you have an automatic scale. See my observation https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/133532632. If you use your hand, you can use your fingers to manipulate the subject to show different aspects of said subjects in successive photographs.

Have you ever been taking pictures of a wildflower, only to have an insect fly in, then fly away, as you hit all those buttons to close one observation and open another? Don’t close your first observation--just keep clicking away! When you have enough pictures of the bug, you can go back to the wildflower, if you need more pictures of it. When you upload, duplicate the observation using the down arrow next to the blue Edit box in the upper right. Click to de-select the photos that don’t contain the insect, put in a placeholder name, and click save. See my observations https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/155971907 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/155972648.

In the same way, you can “double-dip” your observations. If you have multiple subjects in one picture, you can duplicate the observations and put comments in the observation notes. The simplest is, for pictures of a flower and a pollinator, duplicate and indicate “This observation is for the insect” and “This observation is for the flower.” If you have multiple shorebirds in a picture, you can indicate “This observation is for the third bird from the left” or “This observation is for the taller bird in the center.” Another way is to use the simple paint programs that come with most computers and draw a circle around the different subjects you want to document or have identified. See my observations at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/114329993 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/114329511. (I think you can do this directly in iNat, but I haven’t tried.)

Finally, be sure you put something in the “Suggest an identification” box. Even if it’s just something as basic as “plant” or “snake” or “bird,” it will help it get found and identified. Many times I see this in the notes, but not in the identification. During the nature challenge, we will be looking at everything in the six-county area, but the real experts, who know the flies or the grasses or the mushrooms aren’t going to be going through the thousands of “Unknowns” to find the few that need their expertise. Putting in “plant” lets an amateur botanist find your observation. They may be able to get it to family, where a specialist, who may not even be in the US, will pick up on it and be able to put a name to it. Without that initial hint, “plant,” it can go unidentified for years.

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley CNC Coordinator

Today, we have a guest post from Dwight Bohlmeyer on how best to photograph plants for the best chance of getting an identification. Plants (usually) don't run away, so you can take as many pictures as you need.

Bruce

Photography Tips for iNaturalist Plant Observations

1. Photograph the entire plant, even if it is a tree or shrub. Photograph the bark as well if it is a large woody plant.
2. Photograph the leaves. Take a closeup of the leaves both front and back. Small hairs on the surface of the leaf may be diagnostic. The shapes of the leaf margins and the leaf arrangement (e.g. opposite, alternate, whorled etc.) are also important diagnostic tools.
3. Photograph the stem. Again, the types of hairs, thorns, prickles etc. on the stem may be needed to properly identify the plant.

4. Photograph the flower from the front and from the side or back. This is particularly important for asters in the sunflower family where the length & shape of the phyllaries are an important diagnostic tool. Be sure to include a size reference as well. Your hand will give identifiers an idea of the size of the bloom. The presence or absence of leafy bracts subtending the flower are important for identifying winecups in the genus
   Callirhoe.

5. Photograph the fruit when present.

Dwight Bohlmeyer
Guest poster

The City Nature Challenge and, indeed, iNaturalist are a attempts to document the wild flora, funga, and fauna of their respective areas. But just what is “wild”? I guess the simplest definition is “a member of a self-sustaining population that subsists without human intervention.” But that raises as many questions as it answers.

Obviously, any organism that was native to this area prior to European settlement and has been native continuously to the present is “wild.” This includes such things as great blue herons, white-tailed deer, monarchs, post oaks, Spanish moss, Indian blankets, Devil’s dipsticks, and golden-eye lichens. The “continuous” part rules out organisms, such as American bison, that have been extirpated from our area but now occur here only as reintroductions dependent upon human support.

Organisms that have made natural range extensions into our area and have established self-sustaining populations are considered wild. One example that comes to mind is cattle egret, which “introduced” itself from Africa in the twentieth century and “island-hopped” the Caribbean to Florida and is now present throughout the Southeastern United States.

Organisms that were introduced by humans and have established self-sustaining populations without human intervention are also considered wild, even if their origin is another part of North America. No one can argue that rock pigeons or European starlings are not “wild.” The European wild boar is also, for better or worse, a well-established part of Texas’s wild fauna. Established non-native plant species that are likely to be encountered in our area include Chinese tallow, quihoui privet, and giant reed. The website texasinvasives.org is a good place to look for some of the worst invasive species.

Organisms (primarily animals) that are taken from the wild and preserved as specimens or used for other purposes are considered wild, rather than captive/cultivated for CNC and iNat purposes. Thus, fishes caught by fishers from the wild and either released or kept for dinner are considered wild. Birds, including hummingbirds, at feeders are wild, as they are free to come and go. Insects collected for collections are considered wild. In this case, be sure that the locality and date of the observation are those of the original collection, not the locality and date of the later photography. (Thus, for the CNC, they must have been collected in the 4-day CNC period.) The same applies to microscopic observations.

Organisms that do not have a self-sustaining population or that cannot exist in the wild without human intervention are not considered wild for CNC or iNat purposes. As fond as we are of them, these include pets and cultivated plants. Feral cats in a human-supported colony are not valid, but wild feral cats without human support would be. The blackbucks in the paddocks at Rock Prairie and Bird Pond Road and the giraffes at Aggieland Safari are also off-limits. The CNC was originally established to encourage "urban ecology," and such observations are still encouraged, but parks and yards can be problematic in determining what is wild and what is not. Keep in mind the “human-support” criterion. Thus the crepe myrtles and the Bermuda grass are probably not wild, but the dandelions and the fox squirrels probably are. (People are probably feeding the squirrels, but the squirrels could probably survive without the supplemental feeding.)

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley CBC Coordinator

The identification piece is just as important as the observation piece. That’s how we’ll get to 1000 species this year. You can actually start the identifications as soon as the first observations start to roll in.
You’ve already found the project. Click on “Observations.” Click on the “Identify” box above the grid of photos (not “Identify” in the top menu; using the box above the grid assures that you’re just getting CNC 2023 observations). If you don’t want to see everything, you can use the “Filters” to the right of the “Go” button. There is a series of icons so that you can limit yourself to just birds, just plants, just amphibians, just mushrooms, etc. (Click on multiple icons, if you wish, like amphibians and reptiles to get all herps.) There are other filters you can use. Now click go to see the observations that haven’t made it to Research Grade*.

If you don’t feel yourself comfortable being the final authority in any particular group, but you can tell a robin from an oak tree, you can use the “unknown” filter, the outline of the leaf with the question mark inside. Identifiers who are just looking for their own group (birds, beetles, grasses) will miss these unknowns. You can help by putting in a preliminary identification. Go as far down in the identification as you feel comfortable. If you know a Northern Mockingbird or an American Beautyberry when you see it, go ahead and confirm it. If all you know is “plant,” put “Plants.” If all you can do is put “bird,” put “Birds.” Even that little bit of help will bring additional observations to the attention of the appropriate “expert” and your effort will be worthwhile.

As mentioned in earlier posts, we are looking for wild organisms. You can also help by identifying observations that are obviously not wild. If you see something that is obviously not wild (in a clay pot, in a garden surrounded by mulch, an obvious pet or zoo animal), you can scroll down to the bottom and mark “captive/cultivated.” Be careful, though. I almost marked something cultivated today, before I saw the note “fly” and a small fly hiding on one leaf.

*Research Grade generally means that two independent identifiers agree on the identification. If there is disagreement among the identifiers, then a complicated algorithm determines when and if Research Grade is achieved. Sometimes it never is.

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley CNC Coordinator

As I write this, there are barely 3 hours before the City Nature Challenge begins! In fact, it’s already begun in New Zealand, where it’s early afternoon tomorrow! They’ve already chalked up 331 species, including little spotted kiwi, New Zealand bellbird (wow!), common brushtail possum, puriri moth, queen paua, pie crust crab, Wellington tree weta, taupata, karamu, pohutukawa, and kotukutuku. Check them out at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2023-te-upoko-o-te-ika-wellington. Observers will be waking up in a few hours in Paris (France, not Texas) to start their observations. While these posts have often highlighted citizen science value and the competitive nature of the competition, what I want to emphasize tonight is something else entirely--HAVE FUN!! This is a great excuse to get outside and appreciate the nature of the Brazos Valley. Take the kids. Let them revel in and point out the small things to you. Find some new creatures, animal or vegetable. Find a new group to learn about.

If you have additional questions, the CNC organizers have created a FAQ at https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/faq. I’ll be out in the field as much as possible, but you can email me at b2neville@gmail.com and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can.

Happy hunting!
Bruce