As a birder, how do you contribute to the upcoming City Nature Challenge? Simply put, take a lot of photos of birds from April 30 to May 3 anywhere in Calgary, Cochrane, Okotoks, Chestermere, Airdrie and Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park. You will have until May 9 to upload the photos to iNaturalist.

You can photograph any living thing to upload to iNaturalist, but I would really like the local birding community to start contributing more bird photos. Many iNaturalist users take photos only with cell phones, which are ideal for photographing plants and insects, but not great for getting identifiable picture of birds. Calgary-area birders take thousands of high-quality bird photos every day.

Your bird photos do not have to be perfect, just good enough so that other iNaturalist users can identify them. It’s also important to get photos of common species that you may not normally bother to photograph.

Most birders have cell phones as well as cameras, so if you’re out birding this weekend, spend some time to photograph trees, flowers, and insects as well.

If you are not an iNaturalist user, you will still have until May 9 to upload your photos to the site or phone app.

It would be great to get a lot of reports from Airdrie, Chestermere, Okotoks, Cochrane, and Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park as well as from the city. If you are really ambitious, try to go to some areas that are new to you. The idea is to get documentation of living things everywhere within the Calgary metropolitan area, not just in city parks or well-travelled natural areas.

Have fun!