Diario de navin_sasikumar

Hey everyone!

It's that time of year again when I tag you all to remind you to participate in the City Nature Challenge! This year's challenge runs from April 28-May 1. You just need to take photos during this phase. You have until May 7th to upload and ID your observations.

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 pretty well with just under 20k observations (yet again), 2190 species, and 905 observers (will we finally go past 1k observers this year?).

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/ (you can currently see the species we missed last year, but I'll be updating it for this year's CNC soon). 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-2023-greater-philadelphia-area
Main CNC website: http://citynaturechallenge.org/
Last year's results: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2022

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

PS: I know some of you aren't in the area anymore or are away during the CNC, but we'd still appreciate it if you can spread the word to everyone you know. Thank you!

@brennafarrell @linkmdavis @josephthebirder @keimwj @jstippick @johnnysap @conboy @jmole @srall @annebekker @mbwildlife @bugsandbirds @mattparr @pachogut @maricel-patino @brianwhite @nmacelko2 @seahound @danefroymson @robizzy @sammakler @kmv @augien @naturejeanne @michaelmorris @jenovak @dougwechsler @brittany101 @zroskoph @mertensia @michaelpirrello @kdstutzman @georgemushkal @jason310 @mikehannisian @phillymycobeth @evelyntomology @maryah @that_hippie_chick @laurenhallden @robm2 @arisingunder @chippop @clearwing_moth @adventurehiker @josephnaturalist @prolleston @ctiemann16 @wakk4457 @mahenry @birdzilla @galecannon @mycofreak @bughaven @bert_filemyr @tommymorris17 @macneal @mail540 @rpblack @thereuonema

Let's go, Philly! We have some not-ideal weather over the next few days, but it takes more than bad weather to stop Philly, doesn't it? The insects might not be as plentiful, but the plants are still there and we have good opportunities for some fungi. Let's see what we can find today, shall we? Good luck and happy iNatting!

We're now halfway through the 2023 City Nature Challenge. The weather hasn't been great and it shows in our numbers, unfortunately. We're far below our goal of 1k participants, and NYC, DC, and Boston are ahead of us in most, if not all, categories. Today looks like a bust weather-wise too, but we have some sunny weather forecast for the final day tomorrow, thankfully.

We still have a lot of fairly easy-to-find species on our needs list. You can see the full list at http://targets.cncphilly.org, but here's a snapshot of our top 50 needed species.

You can visit the site throughout the day today and tomorrow to see what we still need. It updates every 30 minutes and you can also filter by your area of interest.

How have everyone else's two days been so far? I'd love to hear about your experiences, any unexpected things you've found, what you're looking forward to, etc. I've found zero insects on the wing so far this CNC. Disappointing, but not unexpected. But I'm hoping to rectify that tomorrow. Happy iNatting, everyone! And let's go, Philly!