- Friday through Monday, April 24 -27
- Anyone can participate
If you can take a photo with your smartphone, you can participate in the City Nature Challenge. Just download the iNaturalist app, take a photo of any living thing or sign of it, and upload the photo.
The app will help to identify what you saw using its AI, and the worldwide community of participants (many of whom are experts in their fields) will also help to narrow it down to a particular species.
If you have a camera you can also upload your photos to the iNaturalist site on your desktop. This works great for birds and mammals. For insects and small plants a smartphone is best.
This can easily be done safely in your yard. Document all the plants (domestic or wild), insects, birds or mammals you see. You can also go to any park or anywhere at all in the city to do it.
This is very easy to do, and it’s a lot of fun. Any observations you make in the Calgary City Nature Challenge area will automatically become part of the challenge, and added to the growing database of our biodiversity.
Don’t neglect the species in your house – fruit flies, spiders, plants! Turn over some rocks and leaf litter in your yard and find some bugs and ants!
Read about the challenge on iNaturalist here. Note that you can also participate in Okotoks, Airdrie, Chestermere, and Cochrane this year.