Diario de navin_sasikumar

Hey everyone!

The City Nature Challenge is back again this year from April 30-May 3! Like previous years, the challenge area is the county of Philadelphia plus all counties that directly share a border with Philadelphia. This includes Montgomery, Bucks, and Delaware counties in PA and Camden, Gloucester, and Burlington counties in NJ. During the CNC last year, the Greater Philadelphia Area did really well with over 23k observations (6th place if it was a competition), 1847 species (12th place), and 854 observers (11th place). Special shoutout to @srall who joined the Philly effort for the first time last year and was first in both observations (1740) and species (370) locally. Sara also had the 7th most number of observations among more the 43k observers around the world. That's an amazing effort, Sara, and we hope you join us again this year.

While COVID-19 still puts a dampener on things, vaccination rates are increasing and things are opening back up again. So this time around we have some group activities like guided walks (most require registration) but we are still encouraging individuals or small groups to go out on their own and make observations wherever they are comfortable. The CNC is not being pitched as a competition again this year, but rather as a collaborative effort where cities around the world work together to document biodiversity in urban areas. But individual cities are encouraged to do mini-competitions with each other.

I'm tagging all of you here because you are one of the top observers in our region (either all-time or recently) and we would love to have your help in making even more observations during this 4 day period at the end of the month. And to make sure we get as many species as possible, I've made a simple website that shows you all the species that have been reported in our region during April and May, but not yet seen during the CNC: http://targets.cncphilly.org/. The species are organized in descending order of how many observations have been made for that species. As people make observations, they will fall off that list every 30 minutes or so.

We would also love your help in spreading the word about the CNC among your family and friends. You can also tag them in the comments here.

Here are some useful links with more info:
Philly CNC website: https://cncphilly.org/
Philly CNC iNat project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021-greater-philadelphia-area
Main CNC website: http://citynaturechallenge.org/
Last year's results: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020

We also have some prize this year thanks to our partner organizations: https://cncphilly.org/events/prizes/

Thanks for documenting the biodiversity of our region and we hope you'll help us during the CNC as well.

@josephthebirder @keimwj @brennafarrell @johnnysap @linkmdavis @conboy @annebekker @srall @robizzy @danefroymson @ginsengandsoon @nmacelko2 @brianwhite @brittany101 @maricel-patino @jenovak @bugsandbirds @zroskoph @kmv @augien @prolleston @sammakler @michaelmorris @robm2 @kdstutzman @joedurrance @laurenhallden @mikehannisian @clearwing_moth @bmac922 @michaelpirrello @gracejeschke @jawnattenborough @sgreene13 @mycofreak @jason310 @tkr421 @ryan117 @sandykeller @bobby23 @adventurehiker @stretchwell @georgemushkal @seahound @ctiemann16 @ahimsavet @that_hippie_chick @birdzilla @milkweedhunter @jas651fcm @go2nature @kristym @godshallcs @rayray @colinpurrington @maxcavitch @cliffh @jonibaum @katesnowbird @javiehweg @leroytabb @mertensia @tkirk304 @kellyfrank98 @debbeer @jstippick @phillyphantailphan @anne302 @bull1 @jeffmollenhauer @linda142 @yan_tonz @tb_wildlife_photography @mahenry @galecannon @raincro @pachogut @cherz13 @talkstoplants @sammakler @dwiebe @hisongbird @naturejeanne

The 2021 City Nature Challenge is here! We had 15 observations when I went to bed last night a little after midnight, and we're already seeing observations come in this morning. We're off to a great start. The weather might be a bit of a downer this evening, so stay safe and try to get all your observations in nice and early. And we're doing a #5onFri social media campaign, so make at least 5 observations on your lunch break and share them on social media with the #5onFri hashtag. Of course, we expect many of you to make more than 5 observations, but it's a fun way to get the word out and get a bunch of people trying out the City Nature Challenge for the first time.

Here's to a great 2021 and let's try to beat our totals from last year!