Citizen Science has been a wonderful eye opener for me personally. I first began documenting nature as a part of the Hawk Cliff Hawk Watch at Port Stanley, Ontario in the mid-1990s when I lived in St. Thomas, Ontario. I spent many an hour at the cliffs along Lake Erie as a spotter, along with many others on somedays and just me and the official counter on other days. http://www.ezlink.ca/~thebrowns/HawkCliff/
My favourite visit was on October 1, 2004 when butterfly met falcon. Two of us watched as a juvenile Peregrine Falcon came onto the farmer's field heading south-west along the north shore of Lake Erie. Monarch butterflies use this same route on their migration, it is not unusually to see many Monarch at this location on autumn days. -- This falcon reached out and took a Monarch in its talon, then almost immediately released it. To our amazement, Sue and I watched as it circled around the field and repeated this display. If you follow the links on the above address to that date, you can read the report. I am referred to as "Mark from the Soo".
In 2005, I purchased my first digital camera and began taking photos of birds. At that time I referred to birds in two categories; Birds of Prey and (food for Birds of Prey) non raptors. But when I learned about eBird.org and began uploading my photos and data to that citizen science site, I got hooked on documenting. I believe that was in 2009. As I encouraged others in the Soo to actively document their bird observations, onto eBird, I became more interested in all species of birds. My ability to hear birds and discern their calls is very limited, which caused me great frustration at time because I could not identify many birds correctly for documenting.
I was reviewing my photo folders, looking for birds when I came across a few frames of butterflies which I had taken previously. Some in Yukon and some in Ontario. I searched for an opportunity to share my findings on-line and discovered Butterflies and Moths of North America "BAMONA". I had zero knowledge of butterflies in 2014 when I did my first reports.
By posting to BAMONA, I met Ross Layberry, a co-author of "The Butterflies of Canada", UofT 1998 and he began to encourage me to explore. At the time he was vetting observations which then became a part of the Ontario Butterfly Atlas "OBA" . He introduced me to eButterfly and I began actively searching for butterflies in 2015. For the most part my butterfly observations have been originally posted there, 7550+ observations to date.
Recently, I have added to my iNaturalist account, some of my observations which had only been on eButterfly. In order to cause minimal confusion for members of Toronto Entomologists' Association "TEA" I have attempted to post all of the eButterfly references in my comment section.
As the administrator of this group BUTTERFLIES OF ALGOMA and Natural History of St Joseph Island including Camp D Ours Island, I wanted to highlight the variety of Butterfly species which can be found within those regions. According to OBA, I have recorded 82 species within Algoma but that number made be overstated by a few species. That said, I have now posted to iNaturalist 79 species in Algoma as of writing. The OBA stated that 101 species have historically been documented in Algoma, with many of them being one-time occurrences and/or vagrants.
Get out there, enjoy, photograph and document. All the best.
Mark Olivier
