58/250 Project – March 2024 update
In 2015 I took on the goal of photo-documenting 250 species in each of California’s 58 counties. It amazes me that almost nine years have passed since then! Over the years, I’ve explored parts of the state that I’m certain I wouldn’t have otherwise visited and have learned about a diversity of taxa far beyond what I had previously studied. In pursuit of this project, I’ve looked for cave-dwelling insects, flocks of urban parrots, wandered desert dunes for night-blooming wildflowers, photographed weeds cracking up through city sidewalks, and hiked near treeline in the Sierras.
Most recently, I completed Santa Clara County, home to the San Jose metropolitan area, the south end of San Francisco Bay, and extensive tracts of wooded hills and grasslands. Even though this county is technically “finished” it still doesn’t feel done to me. I have yet to photograph the recently introduced but well-established Mediterranean Spiny False Wolf Spider or the flocks Mitered Parakeets that live in the area.
To update, out of California’s 58 Counties, I now have:
48 with at least one observation
9 with between 100 and 249 species observations
6 with 250 species or more observations.
My goal over the rest of the year is to focus not necessarily on completing any more counties, but to add extensively to the counties that include parts of the Sierra Nevadas. I would also like to look for the Sandstone Night Lizard (a San Diego County endemic), some of the state’s rare manzanita species, White-tailed Ptarmagins, southern California parrots, and more. Later this month I will be visiting eastern Mono County and look forward to seeing the region’s Greater Sage Grouse and early blooming wildflowers.
My other goals for the year include improving my “dark macro” photography abilities for night hikes and cave exploration as well as my lichen identification skills.
I'm also excited about the prospect of naturalizing in Kings, California's most challenging county. With less than 3,200 total observations, a surprising number of which consist of garden plants and orchard trees, it is almost entirely devoted to intensive agriculture and oil extraction, has no wildlife preserves, refuges, or state parks, and has very little publicly accessible land. To meet my goal in this county I am going to have to get extremely comfortable identifying Central Valley weeds and other hardy, non-native species.
