Field Trips for City Nature Challenge This Weekend

Apr19

CORRECTION: A previous post said that these trips were scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. The correct dates are Sunday April 21 for the Reader Rock Garden trip, and Monday April 22 for Britannia Slopes.

There are two opportunities in Calgary this weekend to go out in the field and learn how iNaturalist and the City Nature Challenge works before the actual competition on April 26-29. On Sunday April 21, join Gus Yaki and Calgary Challenge organizer Matt Wallace at Reader Rock Garden from 1:30 to 3:30 pm. Learn how to take photos with your smartphone or camera and record the observations on the iNaturalist app on your phone or on the website on your desktop computer.

I took this photo at Pearce Estate Park during last week’s workshop. When I uploaded the photo, the iNaturalist artificial intelligence suggested it was in the Bulrushes and Cattails family, and another iNaturalist user later identified it as Broadleaf Cattail. Photo by Bob Lefebvre, Pearce Estate Park, April 13, 2019.

See this page for all the information on this workshop and field trip. No registration is required for these free events; just show up and join the fun!

On Monday afternoon, April 22, from 2 to 4 pm, join Gus and Matt at Britannia Slopes for another workshop/field trip. See this page for all the information.

If you can’t make it to the workshops but want to participate in the Challenge, get the iNaturalist app on your phone or open an account on the website, and you can learn to make observations on your own. Here is the iNaturalist Canada page.

There will be many events held during the challenge that everyone is welcome to participate in. See this page for all the events.

Any observations submitted within the city limits from April 26-29 will automatically be included in Calgary’s totals. So you can participate in the organized events, make observations on your own, or both. You don’t necessarily have to be able to identify the species you record, as the iNaturalist site will make suggested ID’s, and the iNaturalist community will follow up. The period from April 30 to May 5 will be used to try to finalize the identifications of all species identified in Calgary during the challenge. Any iNaturalist user can help with this.

Smartphones are excellent for recording photos of plants but if you are taking photos of mammals and birds you can usually get a better shot with a camera. Then you have to upload the photos to the iNaturalist site on your computer. When I went to the workshop last week, I used both phone and camera and took photos of birds, mammals, plants including fungi and lichens, and even signs of animals such as this:

This is recorded on iNaturalist as Canadian Beaver. Signs and evidence of wildlife are also included in the database. Photo by Bob Lefebvre, Pearce Estate Park, April 13, 2019.

Using iNaturalist is a great way to document our biodiversity, and to learn about our wildlife. This is from the iNaturalist.ca website:

“We can build a living record of life in Canada that scientists and environmental managers can use to monitor changes in biodiversity, and that anyone can use to learn more about Canada’s amazing natural history.

“Every piece of information on a species, combined with the vast network of citizen scientists can give a big picture of Canada’s natural history and can be a key contribution for conservation decisions.”

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