Brenda Van Ryswyk

Joined: Apr 9, 2017 Last Active: Mar 27, 2024 iNaturalist Canada

Naturalist and outdoors person.

All my ode and lep sightings are sent in to the provincial compilers. No need to harvest sightings from here. Mainly add here for specific blitz activity or yard list. I originally joined just to help identify others observations.

I am now documenting some of my backyard wildlife as I am finding it fascinating both the diversity of species I have in a fairly urban backyard, but also the high numbers of individuals (22 individual skunks, for Feb - Dec 2020, based on stripe patterns). I have been using a "security camera" as a monitoring device. I have so many sightings of the same species (mostly skunks as they can be identified as individuals easily) as I am trying to submit one sighting of each individual that visits each day. Possibly for one year (thats the goal, but not sure I can keep up with all the sightings). Just to see how many individuals I get but also how long and how often each individual visits.

So right now much of the sightings I submit here are for my yard or bioblitz activities. (My other data is far to cumbersome for this format. I submit my odes and leps to provincial compilers in a table format.) But I do also submit data here to fill in obvious data gaps in the maps, provide data that may be helpful to others and to help me learn new taxa.

I am a Natural Heritage Ecologist. I have always loved the outdoors. I started photographing flowers as soon as my parents let me touch the camera. For work I perform Ecological Land Classification, butterfly monitoring and wildlife inventories. I specialize in Odonata and butterflies and spend much of my spare time making observations and taking photos of them. I am also developing my bee identification and mussel identification.

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