This year's Botany Summer School kicked off with a tutorial on iNaturalist and what makes a good observation. With the app downloaded about 44 students and their tutors headed for the remnant alluvial forest of Woodhaugh Garden in the Town Belt, to put theory into practice. After an hour of observation gathering it was back to the computer lab to curate observations, adding further descriptions, tags and annotations. Let's hope this is the start of a long relationship with iNaturalist and nature discovery!

About 30 students and tutors headed out to explore one of the less-frequented parts of the Town Belt in search of interesting observations. The group split into three to focus on different habitats. While some concentrated on native species others showed an interest in garden-escapes and other weeds. Students learnt to use the iNaturalist app and best practice for making excellent observations. Back in the lab all observations were reviewed and shared as a group. Students were impressed with how quickly some observations were confirmed by the NatureWatch community. Let's hope more observations keep flooding in!

It was great to have 23 keen students from the University of Otago Botany Summer School descend on the Woodhaugh Garden sector of the Townbelt last Monday. They started with an introduction to NatureWatch in one of the Botany labs before walking down to the magnificent swamp forest remnant of Woodhaugh. Here they split into several groups, each with a focus on a particular plant life-form. Most chose to use the iNaturalist app on their phones and were soon snapping away. After about an hour of gathering observations they returned to computers in the lab and reviewed and curated their observations. Here's hoping for lots more observations from this group.