Welcome!
Welcome to the 2023 Western Massachusetts City Nature Challenge! This is part of the global, four-day bioblitz called the City Nature Challenge, with data collection hosted on iNaturalist. Our region includes the four western counties in Massachusetts: Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties. The four days of the bioblitz are Friday, April 28, 2023, through Monday, May 1, 2023, followed by six days devoted to uploading and identifying observations.
In previous years, this was the Pioneer Valley City Nature Challenge, but we’ve decided to include Berkshire County this year because, hey, the Berkshires are cool and we want everyone to have a reason to explore them!
Please join our iNaturalist project by going here and clicking Join in the upper right-hand corner. That way you’ll get our journal posts delivered to your dashboard, posts we hope will enlighten, educate, and perhaps even entertain you as we lead up to and through the challenge period. In our next journal post, a week from now, we’ll go into more detail about the City Nature Challenge, iNaturalist, and so on. Please feel free to ask any question you may have in the comments on the posts, or by direct-messaging either Lynn Harper (username lynnharper) or Melanie Radik (username mradik) through iNaturalist.
Note that this iNaturalist project is an automatic collection project, which means that you don’t have to specify manually that your observations belong in this project. Instead, every observation anyone – project members or not – uploads to iNaturalist from a Western Mass locality will automatically be included in this project.
While everyone from absolute beginners to world experts in obscure bugs is welcome to join us, here we are going to invite people who already make many iNaturalist observations in Western Mass or make many identifications for Western Mass observations. Identifiers, we know many of you don’t live here and may never even have the pleasure of visiting Western Massachusetts. Nonetheless, we want to take this opportunity to say thank you so much! and ask for your help in the six-day identification period after the four-day bioblitz.
@acarranza1, @adamkohl, @aguilita, @alanhorstmann, @alexegreen, @amandammvt, @anabellam, @anaturalfocus, @andieflorian, @animalview29, @annbodkhe, @anthony_rainey, @apgarm, @arethusa, @askorupa, @asroka, @axarus, @axlekb, @azik, @barbaragiguere, @bcrowmiller, @bdagley, @benkendrick, @berkshirenaturalist, @bgaudubon, @billryerson, @borisb, @brandonwoo, @brianhawthorne, @brothernorbert, @bryanconnolly, @btk, @bullard_farm, @calconey, @calloohcallay, @capradame, @carolinekmoore, @caseyhurley, @catullus, @cbpow, @cbuelow45, @ccalderara, @ceiseman, @chaffeemonell, @choess, @christopher246, @cozzzzz, @crazykniter, @d_kluza, @dancastriotta, @danjwilder, @danlharp, @davidenrique, @davidhsmall, @dbdrummey, @deparia1950, @dlnarango, @dmwilliams, @dogwoodvalley, @donlubin, @doucette121, @edanko, @edropkin, @edworn, @elaketinat, @ellenlutz, @elytra, @emquirk37, @ericpo1, @ericwilliams, @esgardner, @evanabramson, @explore413, @eyebirds89, @fireatwill, @freddy58, @friedsonoma, @genv, @girlysound, @goatnotes, @grazing, @grigorenko, @gryffonbaum, @hanly, @hatchg, @hayleysingleton, @headlesshessian, @hikewithheather, @hilltop2017, @hunter_mw, @iemess, @ihearttoads, @jackcadwell, @jackgilbert2, @jacobms, @janice22s, @jasmine104, @jbourget, @jcarm, @jeanfrancoisroch, @jeffmazur, @jennifer1272, @jeremiah54, @jeremycoleman, @jerry2000, @jformanorth, @jharkness, @jlayman, @jlisk, @jljones, @jlynchmurphy, @joannerusso, @joekunk, @john_baur, @johnascher, @johnkeisers, @johnmitchell1, @johnplischke, @joshknox, @josiah77, @jtdavis05, @julie_richburg1, @jwidness, @k8thegr8, @kady_bird, @karlcyr, @karolina, @karro_frost, @kbattaini, @kevinbarnes, @kevtolan, @kritten426, @krosenthal, @ladylovesplants, @laingjosie, @land387, @landfrog, @lbeltran, @leaflitter123, @lisabug, @lisaelaine, @lisefrac, @mainebirder, @maractwin, @markprice, @maryah, @massaudubon, @masswildlife, @matgerke, @maxallen, @maxwell_francke, @mcharpentier, @megachile, @mikeakresh, @miles_appleton, @mjpapay, @mmmmbugs, @mogwairadio, @mohale, @mountgrace, @mphansen, @mradik, @mthallworth, @mtjones, @mwallitis, @myawiles, @natemarchessault, @naturalist2073, @naturalista66, @neylon, @nick2524, @nishvibes, @nlblock, @noah_siegel, @nomolosx, @nsharp, @nventi, @oneillpe, @opihiman, @packardr90, @paintchippa, @pat_huckery_masswildlife, @patconlin, @patswain, @paulterkelsen, @peakaytea, @petesolis, @plantlovergus, @pshubin, @pwilson96, @rachaelpride, @radbackedsalamander, @rafflesiaiamstinky, @rayray, @rebotis, @rmless, @rmseifried, @rockerboo, @rynxs, @sarahshearer, @sargetsi, @sazs, @scienceshaina, @scolop98, @seeturtle, @sgingold, @smerjeevski, @smitam04, @someplant, @splnddfairywren, @stcloutier, @stomlins701, @swhitebread, @tarpinian, @teamontagna, @tfrench, @themez, @theresa_dooley, @thomashulsey, @threepogonias, @thulorax, @thurmanhart, @tieran, @tiranna, @tkbird, @tmu413, @tmurray74, @tomzuckerscharff, @treepublican, @treichard, @trscavo, @tsn, @undeux, @vernal3, @violetneckedsparrow, @weksen, @wernerehl, @westsidepalace, @whita, @wojciech, @wsweet321, @xianlee, @yarrowbrighteyes, @zacharyfisher, @zadams3
---Lynn Harper and Melanie Radik, co-organizers
